Orangpples

Nelson Mandel’s said “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” And he should know, South Africa is a country of 11 official languages. TV shows here have multiple languages in just once sentence! I’m not quite sure how anyone can keep it straight. (Interestingly, that goes in reverse to. For my first 6-9 months here when ever I’d say Ngiyabonga (Thankyou) I didn’t actually feel like I’d thanked the person until I’ve said Thankyou in English. Rationally I knew that Ngiyabonga = Thankyou, but emotionally it took about 10 months for Ngiyabonga to feel like Thankyou.

You wouldn’t believe how far a simple greeting can go to bridge gaps between cultures and people. Often all I have to do is greet someone in SiSwati and not only will they be amazed that I “speak” SiSwati, but their whole attitude towards me changes. Greetings might not be as big a part of the culture here as else where in Africa, but I still say them hundreds of times a week, so it be pretty hard for me not to know them by now.

There are two versions of SiSwati greetings (well four if you count formal and nonformal versions, but that just complicates matters), but for this post I only want to talk about one. Here’s the formal SiSwati greeting between person A and B with a literal translation in the middle and roughly what one might say in America in a similar situation.

I absolutely love what this greeting means. Ngiyaphila, I am alive. It’s a deceleration of being and a subtle reminder of what ultimately and is truly important. In the end nothing else really matters. It’s pouring rain (or snowed over 3 ft). Siyaphila, We are alive. Overwhelmed with work and stressed about the ever growing ToDo list required to maintain normalcy and fight the entropy of life. Ngiyaphila, I am alive. The day didn’t go as planned, you broke your favorite cup, spilled tea on your laptop, lost your wallet or phone: Unjani? Ngiyaphila. How are you? I’m I alive!

But just as it’s important to remember your aliveness in those times when life throws you an inevitable curve ball unexpectedly and you feel like your treading water just to breath, its also important to be aware of the fact that uyaphilia (you are alive) when life seems beautiful, full, and peaceful. It’s really the same thing as counting your blessings. Being appreciative of a spectacular sun set. That sunset should make you sing; Ngiyaphila, I am alive. Eating a delicious meal, savor each moment of it and know that uyaphilia. Bought the coolest new gadget in the shop, marvel at the human ingenuity, tenacity, and industry that created it and know that uyaphilia. Going for a run, playing with kids, watching a bird make its nest, staring up at the stars, searching the internet, reading a book, watching TV, making dinner, doing the laundry; every action is a reason to remind yourself that you are alive and be grateful for the chance experience it with wonder and awe.

The essence of knowing your alive was eloquently stated by Paul Hawken at the University of Portland commencement address in 2009.

Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, … can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life.

This prompted me to do some research into what exactly happens in those septillion simultaneous activities. Obviously I’m no cell biologist and most my sources come for pages I found on the intertubes and would hardly stand up to scientific rigor, but that’s not what I’m going for. I’m going for the crux of what it means to be alive and that can not be found in anyone fact, it’s the sum total of all those septillion activities over each and every moment. However, it helps appreciate how undeniably amazing everything that is you does, just so you can be you.

There’s never nothing going on in your body. At an average heart rate of 80 beats per minute your heart beats 115 thousand times a day and 42 million times a year all to so about 25 trillion red blood cells (approximately a quarter of all your cells) can each complete a circuit of your body in about 1 min so that in one day 400 gallons of recycled blood are pumped through the kidneys. For a muscle that roughly adds 1 pound to our body weight that’s impressive. Each one of those red blood cells has a around 270 million hemoglobin molecules so that the total amount of iron in your blood is about 2.5 grams.

Estimates have placed the total number of cells in the body at 10-50 trillion. Of those 300 million cells die in the human body every minute. But not to worry; every day an adult body produces 300 billion new cells. The you today isn’t the same as the you of yesterday or the you of tomorrow.

Every square inch of the human body has about 19,000,000 skin cells. While in one square inch of our hand we have nine feet of blood vessels, 600 pain sensors, 9000 nerve endings, 36 heat sensors and 75 pressure sensors. You get a new stomach lining every three to four days. Just your feat along have 500,000 sweat glands and can produce more than a pint of sweat a day.

Keeping your body going takes a lot of work. You use 200 muscles just to take one step and that’s something you do thousands of times a day. All that work creates a lot of energy and in 30 minutes, the average body gives off enough heat (combined) to bring a half gallon of water to boil.

Most amazing of all is the 3 pound group of cells between our ears. When we touch something, we send a message to our brain at 124 mph. Nerve impulses to and from the brain travel as fast as 170 miles per hour. This may pale in comparison to the speed at which electrical signals travel on a quad core computer processor. But the neural connection graph of the brain dwarfs any we have yet created in silicon. There are about 100,000,000,000 neurons in the adult brain each neuron being connected to between 2,000 and 5,000 others. In fact if you estimated the amount of energy needed not only to keep you thinking all day, but coordinating the great cellular symphony that is you in M&M’s it come out to around 250.

Below is a picture that I took of one of the kids I play with everyday after work.  To me this picture emodies Siyaphilia.  The aliveness each and everyone one of us feels and knows.  Let it be a reminder to you so that the next time someone asks you how you’re doing you can replay with an enthusiastic: I am alive!

Some sources

• http://www.funshun.com/amazing-facts/human-body-facts.html
• http://vadim.oversigma.com/MAS862/Project.html
• Red blood cell – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It really is a simple invention that in hindsight seems as obvious as the wheel, but apparently it wasn’t until 1861 that the putting wire mesh over a hole in the wall became common place. While it’s rare to find a house in the United States without window screens, it’s just as rare to find one that does here. Part of this might be due to the type of window used here. I can count on my hands the number of times I’ve seen a Sash Window here. That classic sliding window that I had in every room growing up just doesn’t seem to exist here, and I can’t figure out why. Originally I thought maybe that’s what they used in England and Holland, but no Sash windows were in use in Europe by the mid-17th century.

So if there aren’t sliding windows here, what are there? They are all Casement Windows. And not the type you sometimes see back home with the crank shaft to open them up from behind a window screen. No, these you just slide a latch and push right open. If you can visualize that for a second it means there can’t be any window screen, because you’ve just pushed right through it to open the window. I’ve seen and heard of some usual solutions to this problem. Some volunteers in the group before me used double sided Velcro and an old mosquito net to try to bug proof their room. Every time they wanted to open the window, they’d peel back the mosquito net, unlatch and push out the window, and then reattach the Velcro. Even more elaborate, at a guest house in Kimberly on my recent vacation the had build giant screen cages to go around the open windows! Some volunteers, and most people on my street, go with the the closed window option. But, when it’s over 90 degrees in my room I consider that to much suffering and much prefer to sleep under my mosquito net and feel a slight breeze to sweating it way on top of my sheets.

All this got me thinking about what a screen window or door really represents. Living here without AC or central heating sometimes its hard to remember how in the States a house is a bastion of control and stability against the chaotic elements and seasonal fluctuations outside. My room here is a sauna in the summer and I have to ware a warm hat to sit at my desk in the winter. I am not in control of the inside temperature and must adapt accordingly. A screen on the window is a selective sieve by which we can bring the outside in. It lets the cool breeze and humid air pass right through put keeps the insects out of the pristine home. It represents both our control over our environment and our eagerness to escape the stuffiness we feel at that control. As a kid I always loved sleeping with the window next to my bed open, even on hot summer nights – where I’d put my head right next to the window urning for the smallest breeze – and crisp fall ones – where I’d wrap my self up in a warm blanket and feel the nights chill on my face. Maybe that’s also why I ended up here in the Peace Corps; I didn’t want to be locked up behind a window looking out, but wanted to through that widow right open and experience what ever was on the other side.

Today I went to help an 8^th grader with his math assignment. He had to use a compass and straight edge to make angle bisectors, perpendicular bisectors, altitudes, and midpoint lines on triangles making inscribed and circumscribed circles. I was excited since I had loved doing this exact same stuff way back in 9^th grade. Unfortunately it turned out to be a much more painful process than I ever could have imagined. We would read the instructions in the book on how to bisect an angle but then when I drew an angle and asked him to bisect it he had no idea where to start. I then demonstrated how to do it; pointing out how each action corresponded to the instruction in the book which he had read and then drew another angle and ask him to bisect it. Still no idea where to start. I would literally have to hold his hand and place the compass in the correct spot and if I didn’t tell him which direction he needed to go, he’d go the wrong way (mysteriously way more than half the time) and have to make an entire circle before getting to the right spot when all that was needed was a small mark in the opposite direction. And after doing three angles like this I expected him to be able to do one on his own. Nope no success. Still no idea where to start, though this time he did understand that he was supposed to draw arcs on the paper and did so at random points along the line.

I don’t want to put to much blame on this one kid for I could go on and on describing similar anecdotes from the last several months. The 12^th grader who had to make chicken scratches for 3×3, the blank stares I got today when asking what the x and y coordinates of a point were (they were (1,0) and the point was on the unit circle and the students were supposed to graph cos(θ)), the total inability to pick any meaning out of word problem unless I explicitly explain it. The level of mathematical literacy is so frustrating below the level of understanding the curriculum requests that it makes me slightly mad just to think about it. I’ve decided to make it my battle for the next 18 months to do my part in helping improve mathematical understanding, intuition, and problem solving at all grade levels. I feel that math is a good thing to pick because you can do it with out any fancy equipment, the critical thinking skills required to solve math problems can be translated to other areas of school as well as life, and math is easy to teach because it has concrete principles that you can fall back on (remember those chicken scratches to multiply). I have lots of great ideas on how to do that, but nothing that is making any progress as of the moment. I hope in the next few months to have something productive started with that regard.

But none of that is what I’ve been thinking about tonight. While I was watching this kid attempt to bisect an angle and find the midpoints of lines I started thinking how the Ancient Greeks could make regular pentagons with just a straight edge and ruler over 2,500 years and yet this kid was struggling with something so much simpler. At the same time, several times while helping him I saw him pull out a cell phone capable of 3G data access. The juxtaposition of those two events really got me thinking that not much about human cognition or intelligence has really changed since the dawning of civilization. The simple key to all the great successes we credit to the human mind is a memory of what came before and the ingenuity to go further. In the 12^th century Bernard of Chartres wrote

We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size

Just think how much the collective human mind has created, invented and discovered in the 9 centuries since that was written. Just think how much its done in the last century alone. Just think how much has happened in my short life time of 22 years. The computer world has a very famous axiom of growth first quantified by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in the mid 1960’s which basically states that the number of transistors that can economically be placed on an integrated circuit grows exponential to time – double approximately every two years to be moore exact. Such exponential growth is only made possible because each generation of integrated circuit stands on the shoulders of the last. And this analogy can be extended to technological change anywhere and at anytime because one change leads to two more changes which lead to four more changes ad infinitum. The whole process is due to the fact that knowledge does not have to be reinvented and each generation sits upon the mighty progress of the last. It is interesting to observe the effects of that cycle being broken as happened in South Africa during the years of Apartheid. How it only takes a few generations of cruelty, hatred and fear for a society to lose its collective conscience and how hard it is to restart the engines of human creativity, inspiration and ingenuity as this countries school system has been trying to do virtually over night.

I think its also important to note that the only thing that has changed in the last 5000 years is the amount of collective knowledge and technological prowess. I doubt the basic intelligence of the average human has changed very much in the last 3000 years. Our capacity to feel and be loved hasn’t grown in the last 2000 years. The desires and needs of a new born infant are still almost the same as they must have been a few million years ago. So while technological change is exponential biological change is relatively constant. This is why technology without foresight and vision is so dangerous. Technology breaks barriers. It shortens time and distance. It is the great instant pill reducing the amount of physical labor necessary to live. But its also blind. The chain saw doesn’t care if it cuts down every tree. The TV doesn’t care if it shows WWE or Sesame Street to a generation of South African kids. The cell phone doesn’t care if its used as the detonating device in a large bomb or to call 911 once the bomb explodes.

We are basically large apes running really fast to change the world but staying in the someplace because we can’t change ourselves.

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.”

“A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

We are like the Red Queen in Through The Looking Glass and the only solution we can think of is to run faster, when maybe the right choice is to slow down and make sure we’re not running in circles. Its easy to change the world with our technology but much much harder to change ourselves so we can use it efficiently, effectively and ethically.

Its interesting the places you mind can go when set out to help an 8^th grade student with maths. Just imagine all the places it can go when you set out to explore the world.

On February 12th 1809 both Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born.  I’m not really sure if anyone else finds that as fascinating as I do, but ever since I read an article about it way back in August I’ve thought it absolutely amazing.  Really it shouldn’t be, since the chances that any two randomly selected individuals are born on the same day are just the same weather their Darwin and Lincoln or not.  But it’s like when your grocery bill comes out to exactly $30.00. I always think what are the chances of that.  And its has the exact same chance of being exactly $30.00 as being exactly $29.42 or exactly $30.28, thirty even just stands out so much more.

But all probabilities aside I think the real reason this fact seems so surprising to me is that I never associate Darwin and Lincoln as being contemporaries.  I mean I’ve read biology books that list the dates of the Beagle trip was in the 1830’s and the Civil war in the 1840’s 1860’s but I never really connected the two in my mind.  This probably has a lot to do with how subjects are taught in school. I’m not saying its necessarily bad, and its probably mostly necessary, but school compartmentalizes knowledge.  You learn about Lincoln in 7th grade American History and Darwin in 9th grade biology.  The two are never connected in your mind, ever. Which is perfectly ok, since there really is no reason to connect them.  But then out of left field a magazine article titled Darwin v.s Lincoln catches your eye and you ask your self: “Isn’t that sort of like Apples v.s. Oranges”.

Facts by them self are great and nessisary to learn.  But whats really so amazing is how all those facts combine to make the complicated intertwined reality that is the world.  And that’s why the Wikipedia On this day feature is so cool.  You connect all the random dots and facts floating in your head in weird truly unique ways that you never would have come up with if asked to make something up.  And that is way I find the fact that Darwin and Lincoln shared a birthday 200 years ago, not because the probablity seems so low for it to be true.

One of the things I bought at Target before I left was I giant wall map of the world. It’s nothing special just the typical map you would see in any class room or geography book. Sometimes I wish I had more unusual map like the ones with Antarctica on the top or the equator running vertically where they prime meridian is. But even still this simple map gives me a lot to think about.

It’s one the wall right in front of where I do my daily sit-ups so I get to stare at it for 5-6 min each day. Since normally while I do my morning work out I listen to the Roz Row’s podcast (Roz arrived in Hawaii way back in September but in my world of much enjoyed snail mailed podcasts she still has a week before she gets there) I’ve been spending time just sort of staring at the Pacific Ocean.

In the middle of a sit-up yesterday I suddenly thought how fortunate it is that 180 degrees longitude doesn’t really cross any major continents. Unlike the lines of latitude, which are based on the rotational axis of the Earth, the longitude lines are completely arbitrary and the 0 degrees could have been anywhere. The opposite of the 0 degree line, 180 degrees, is the line that on the typical map layout is the edge and runs very nicely up and down the Pacific ocean only cutting off a small portion of Russia. This is quite convenient for map making since the distortion is most extrema at the edges and having to split a major continent would make the map much harder to read.

Just imagine if Hong Kong we used as 0 degrees latitude. 180 degrees would then go right through the United States and when you flattened the globe would split North and South America across the edges. There really aren’t many lines of longitude that you can draw with one half mostly in the ocean and the fact that almost all of such lines run right through the area of the world from which explorers who would draw the first maps of the complete globe originated is a very fortunate coincidence, at least for the appeasing look of wall maps.