If You're Going To San Francisco...

Last week I was in San Francisco for four days for a work/fun trip, and I managed to pack about a week's worth of stuff into just a few days.  If you're headed out west, I recommend that you do at least some of these things:

Walk down to the Embarcadero and look out at the water and back at the skyline.

Take a free walking tour through San Francisco City Guides.  I actually took two, since I had a full free day on Friday, and they were both amazing.  One was called "City Scapes and Public Places" and we learned all about rooftop gardens and other green areas open to the public.  

The other tour I took was about the Gold Rush and how it changed the shoreline and downtown area of San Francisco.  The guides for both tours were wonderful, and I highly recommend San Francisco Guides.  Next time I go back I'm going to check out at least two more tours.

I also accidentally walked all the way up to Coit Tower.  I saw it from a few streets over and thought to myself "Huh, that doesn't look too far away."  But it was actually so, so far away and involved so, so many stairs.  By the time I realized this I was too far along to quit.  My legs are still sore.

But the view from the top is totally worth it.

I went to Chinatown on a quest for red bean paste buns.  This was a treat I fell in love with after discovering them at a little bakery in Chicago's Chinatown.  I found a place called Golden Gate Bakery on Yelp and hoofed it over to Chinatown one afternoon between sessions.  The bakery was small and kind of tucked away and I almost walked right past it.  I was definitely the only non-Chinese person in there and one of the tallest at 5'2", but it was one of the best red bean paste cakes I've ever had.  Worth it.

I also walked all the way to the top of Lombard Street, and the view was totally worth the burning calves.  See how far away Coit tower is?  Yeah.  I probably walked 10 miles that day, uphill both ways.

Some very nice and well-meaning foreign tourist asked me if I wanted my picture taken at the bottom of Lombard Street.  This is what we came up with, and the only proof that I was actually in San Francisco instead of stealing someone else's images off Instagram.

I also walked miles around the North Beach neighborhood and went to City Lights Bookstore twice.  This place was amazing.  I dare you to go and leave without buying at least five books.

Other things I did include going to Fisherman's Wharf (do not recommend), eating In-n-Out Burger (highly recommend), taking a cable car (kind of recommend), meeting a friend for delicious sushi, shopping in Union Square, drinking lots and lots of local coffee, and walking miles and miles every day while loving the fact that San Francisco is on a grid and I always knew where I was going.  Man, I love cities, and San Francisco sure is a fine one.

Book Review: However Long the Night

It’s always been a pipe dream of mine to quit my job, move to a foreign country, and go native.  I would love to live somewhere that was the polar opposite of where I grew up, somewhere so foreign that I can’t even conceive of it from where I live now.  Molly Melching did all this, in the age before computers and the internet, and started an international NGO to boot.  Now I’m wondering why I hadn’t heard of her organization, Tostan, before I read this book, and why this woman doesn’t have a Nobel Peace Price yet.

However Long the Night is the extraordinary story of one woman’s determination to create a movement toward change, and a better future, for millions of girls and women across Africa. 

Molly Melching grew up in the Midwest but was called to explore the world outside her hometown when she arrived in Senegal in 1974. Once there she quickly grew invested in the fate of the Senegalese women she met. Based on her experiences living in a remote African village, she founded Tostan, an organization dedicated to empowering African communities by using democracy and human-rights-based education to promote relationships built upon dignity, equality, and respect.

Unlike many Western organizations that have tried to transform various African cultures from the outside, Melching understands that true change comes only from within. Tostan’s groundbreaking strategies have led to better education for the women of rural Africa, improved health care, a decrease in child/forced marriage, and declarations by thousands of African communities to abandon the centuries-old practice of female genital cutting (FGC). 

I couldn’t put this book down.  Once I started reading it, I was absolutely fascinated by how fearless and brave Molly Melching is.  I’ve been to Senegal, and I can only imagine how hard her transition from the midwest to Dakar must have been.  When she arrived she didn’t know anyone there and didn’t speak Wolof, the native language.  Senegal is poor, almost 90% muslim, and very much a developing country.  Instead of letting any of these factors intimidate her, she saw areas of need, rolled up her sleeves, and got to work.  Amazing.

She started out as a Peace Corps volunteer in Dakar, the capital city, and created the first radio program for children in their native African language (as opposed to French, the colonizing language, which many people, especially children, do not speak).  Her work then took her into the rural villages, where she saw that many development effors from outside groups were not addressing the actual needs of the communities.  Together with a team of Senegalese she developed a revolutionary type of program, one that engaged communities as partners by working in their own language and using traditional methods of learning, such a dialogue, theater, and dance.  Working with communities instead of in opposition to them, and in their native language instead of in the language of the former colonizing country, resonated with the Senagalese and spurred real and lasting change.

In 1991 she formed the nonprofit organization Tostan, which in Wolof means “breakthrough”, to continue her work.  Through this organization, Melching was able to begin to address the tradition of Female Genital Cutting (FGC), a practice that had existed in Senegal for 2,000 years.  Tostan participants prepared and recited public declarations promising to stop FGC in their villages.  Through this kind of community buy-in, groups of villages all agree to abandon the practice so that no one group is outcast or ostracized.  This work was so successful in Senegal that Tostan has expanded into seven other African countries:  Djibouti, Guinea, Guinea-Bissoa, Mali, Mauritania, Somalia, and The Gambia.  The Senegalese government has adapted Tostan’s model and is working with the organization to end FGC in 2015.  In two years, in one generation, this dangerous practice may be gone for good.  I’m convinced Molly Melching is superwoman.

Now, although the story is amazing, the book is not without its flaws.  I really enjoyed the parts that detailed Molly Melching’s childhood, her thoughts and inspiration, and her life in Africa.  When the author veered away from that into reciting statistics and facts, the book got a little more dry.  As a reader I found myself craving more stories about Melching and her army of fearless Senegalese staffers (because even someone that amazing doesn’t work alone, and I wanted to learn about their lives and stories too).  However, whatever flaws the book had, the story was so amazing that it’s easy to overlook them and get caught up in the wonderful, inspiring journey of Molly Melching, Tostan, and her quest to empower women, improve lives, and end FGC once and for all.

Disclosure: TLC Book Tours provided me with a complimentary copy of this book to review. The opinions and views are all mine.

Book Review: The Girl Who Married An Eagle

The thing is, it’s hard to write about Africa.  I’ve never written about Africa of course, but I’ve read enough African fiction (west African fiction, South African fiction, historical African fiction, you name it I’ve read it or taken a class on it) that I know it’s a hard continent to write about, to write from.  I think many authors make the mistake of lumping the whole continent into one “Africa” when it’s actually a huge area made of many complex, moving parts.  Luckily Tamar Myers writes from experience, having been born and raised in the Belgian Congo to missionary parents, and avoids making sweeping generalizations about what authors sometimes seem to think of as “Planet Africa.”

When Julia Elaine Newton, a young, pretty Ohio girl, volunteered to go on a mission to the Belgian Congo, she knew it was going to be a huge change. But she never expected to wind up teaching at an all-girls boarding school that consisted mostly of runaway child brides!

Much to her chagrin, Buakane was born beautiful. If only she’d been ugly, Chief Eagle would not have noticed her. Escaping from an arranged marriage, the scrappy young girl finds her way to Julia Newton and the school. But this time her jilted husband will not be denied. Now it’s up to Julia and Buakane to try to save the school as Congolese independence looms and Chief Eagle is set on revenge. With the help of Cripple, Cripple’s husband, and even Amanda Brown, these plucky women must learn to save themselves.

This book is actually the fourth in a Belgian Congo mystery series, but I found that it really stands alone as a book that one can enjoy without having read the others.  I didn’t find it to be much of a mystery--that aspect of the story really plays a minor role, but the book does offer a solid glimpse into the culture of the tribe, the plight of tribal women in the 1960’s (and sadly, probably even today), and I enjoyed reading it immensely.  I liked that, in contrast to the patriarchal society of both the tribe and the religion of the missionaries, there were several wonderful strong female characters in the book whose voices and thoughts really shined through.

The cultural anthropologist in me appreciated that the book was told from two different viewpoints--that of the Africans’ and of the missionaries’--which helped keep it from feeling too one-sided (a problem with many Africa books I’ve read).  I also liked that it highlights a problem still too common in the world today: the fact that women are married off too young to men who are much older than they are, and that women in many societies are treated as a commodity rather than a human being.  This book talked about these practices within the context of the story, without beating the reader over the head with depressing facts, which I sometimes find to be off-putting.

The story isn’t perfect--I thought the characters could have been fleshed out a little bit more, and that the book does not need to be marketed as a mystery when it would have more impact marketed as something else--but I did thoroughly enjoy it.  Tamar Myers definitely did her homework, and writes about the Congo with the feeling of someone who has lived there and loved that country, whatever its faults may be.

Disclosure: TLC Book Tours provided me with a complimentary copy of this book to review. The opinions and views are all mine.