Running the Run-Around

Upon entering the country for the second time, an immigration official stamping my passport casually told me that I would have to go to the Department of Security within the first two weeks to get a foreigner's identification card otherwise I would technically be staying in the country illegally. Oh. Why didn't the consulate of the other immigration official who let me into the country in July tell me anything about that?

This meant that I spent all of last Friday running around the city trying to get all the necessary documents in order. First to DAS at 7:30 am to pick up the official list. I then walked around the Belen neighborhood to 4 different laboratories until I found one that would test for my blood type so early in the morning. (The woman pricking my finger thought that my name should be a web address because of how silly of a last name "Shaw" is: www.alinashaw.com). Two copies of that certificate, two copies of the biographical page of my passport, two copies of my visa, two copies of pretty much every other important document that tells anything about me. Six photographs, with a blue background and no gloss. I could only pay the $40 processing fee at one bank in the city which is not accessible by Metro, so I trekked up there and went through the most insane security I have ever seen at anywhere but an airport: I had to leave everything but my wallet in a locker outside the main room and then go through a device that checked for explosives by blowing spurts of air at me. Oh yeah, and make two copies of that receipt. I can only imagine what people applying for visas and green cards in the US have to go through...

By the time I went back to the office Monday morning and finally started getting my piles of paperwork processed, I was halfway expecting that I had forgetten one document and have to wait in the long line all over again. But luckily my perfectionism paid off and I just had to sit in a swivel chair for half an hour while a woman entered all my information into an old-fashioned ledger and cut and pasted my card into existence. As a final touch she made me go into a back room and proceeded to fingerprint every part of my hand she could blacken with ink. Each forefinger four times, every other finger at least twice. Palm, all fingers together, heel. I was about to ask her if I should take off my shoes and socks so she could print my toes just to cover all our bases. But she didn't seem to be in the mood for humor, not with the stack of everyone else's papers waiting at her desk to become part of the national identification process. At least I know that if any of my fingers gets chopped off accidentally they will have its print on file so they know to whom it should be returned...

So I now have a temporary card and cedula number I can give to the pharmacist when he asks me if I want to be entered into their free-stuff lottery. Despite the hassle and the three days of lost work, I guess for the sake of my own safety it is good that the Colombian government can track me throughout the year.

An example...

As an example of the previous posting, I just thought I would share the bountiful load of produce I picked up from the street market today (all for about $10.00), and the Colombian-style meal I made:

left: guavas, red onions, avocados, green plantains, tomatoes, beets, red bell peppers, limes, red grapes, criollo potatoes, and fresh beans.
right: a soup/stew made with beans, a diced plantain, half a tomato, an onion, several cloves of garlic, and spices with slices of tomato, avocado and corn bread on the side. (not shown is the fresh guava juice I blended up to accompany the meal). yum!

Although I don't think organic certification really exists or would matter here, I do know that every piece of produce came from nearby. Some of it I even bought at a little store down the road that just sells fruit and veg and whose tag line is: "Direct from the fields to your house!"

**I just wanted to acknowledge the fact that my mother is the person kind as to internationally lend me Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. A year and a half ago we got into a very heated discussion (one might even consider it an argument) in the car while my parents were visiting me during family weekend at Scripps. I was saying that organic certification has lost most of the potency it once held since the organic food industry is just as corrupt with problems and it is now better (for your health and the world) to support local. My mother, on the other hand, maintained that organic was still a safer bet since the consumer knows that pesticides aren't used.

I think that the deeper undercurrent raising our personal investment in the topic was based on the fact that my parents lovingly raised us on extremely healthy, home-made food into which much consideration was involved. And by repudiating organics my mom felt like I was disregarding the sacrifices they had made to feed me as best they could--which I definitely wasn't since I think they did an amazing job at solving our family's odd but serious health issues by changing our diet. Before we remodeled our old house, we even had a huge garden that provided us with most of our produce. Fifteen years ago organic was the cutting-edge of health food, and they were right in there with the rest of the crazies preaching about the harmful effects of pesticides on the nation.

That February night in 2007 I challenged my mother to research the new local food movement and see if she couldn't update her knowledge on the current food situation. The last time I visited my parent's kitchen in July, they had a cornucopia of local produce spread out on the counter that they had received from their weekly subscription to a local food co-op. They recently had ordered half a free-range buffalo from Montana to replace the red meat they usually bought from the market, and made me try the local honey they use in their morning tea whcih supposedly helps build up immunity to airborne allergens. When I looked a the hallway bookshelf, I was greeted with the spines of different non-fiction books on the local food movement and sustainable farming. Out in the backyard my parents had even started growing all their own herbs, eggplants, fruit trees, and tomatoes! I quickly realized that my mom and dad had truly taken our conversation to heart and learned enough to adapt their lifestyles to the concepts I had preached even more than I have done for myself; making me somewhat of a hyppocrite. But really, it was just one more example confirming my belief that I have the coolest parents ever and feel increasingly lucky to have been raised by them!

Foodstories

Latest on the reading list: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and her family.

Now I know it might be silly to be reading about the faults in the American food system (I am somewhat obsessed, if I haven't mentioned it before) while living in Colombia, but it has actually sparked some interesting thoughts and conversations. Sorry for the massive quote, but I love her writing and would quote the whole book if I could:

Strong food cultures are both aesthetic and functional, keeping the quality and quantity of foods consumed relatively consistent from one generation to the next, and so, while the economies of many Western countries expanded massively in the 20th century, their citizens did not...Food culture in the US has long been cast as the property of a privileged class. It is nothing of the kind. Culture is the property of a species. Humans don't do everything we crave to do--that is what arguably makes us human. We're genetically predisposed toward certain behaviors that we've collectively decided are unhelpful; adultery and racism being examples. With reasonable success, we mitigate those impulses through civil codes, religious rituals, maternal warnings--the whole bag of tricks we call culture. Food cultures concentrate a population's collective wisdom about the plants and animals that grow in a place, and the complex ways of rendering them tasty. These are mores of survival, good health, and control of excess. Living without such a culture would seem dangerous...At its heart, a genuine food culture is an affinity between people and the land that feeds them. (emphasis my own)

One of my favorite parts of traveling is immersing myself into a new food culture and learning as much as I can about the fuel that drives people. In Medellin, people always seem to be sitting down to eat a meal, snacking, drinking coffee, or discussing the best place in the country to eat a certain something. I think it's because food is yet another excuse to talk--either while eating or about eating, and paisas sure do like to talk. But I do have to admit that the food here is exceptional, so they have reason enough to raise some noise about it.

During my first month here I was too excited to try new dishes and as many different kinds of arepas as possible to really think about where it all came from, but I slowly started picking up a granadilla or looking at a piece of steak on the end of my fork and asking it "where did you come from?" Living in the middle of a city means that food generally comes shrink-wrapped with pretty labels stamped on the packages, but I love wandering through side-street markets with the hand-pulled carts stacked high with dirty piles of potatoes, corn, cabbage, red beans, huge grapes, bananas, and papayas. It makes food seem more real to buy it while it is still covered in earth (the whole point of Kingsolver's book).

Since my fruit and meat never answered, I turned to my trusted friend/research advisor/learned man Octavio. When I asked how far food generally has to travel to get to Medellin he looked at me as if I was joking. After realizing that I was serious he slowly chuckled and said "Oh, about 10 km." Now I think this must be an exaggeration since we were sitting within a 10-km radius of city (cement, buses, apartment buildings), but I do know that Medellin is located within the 'cafetero' region which is lush with farms and various crops. I learned that everything from cows to cotton to coal and rice to broccoli to strawberries are all grown nearby, and therefore transported into the city fresh every day in one form or another. Within the entire country the main thing they import is wheat; in pretty much every other way Colombia is self-sustainable.

People here don't need to ask themselves from where their food comes, they grow up knowing what farmers in what regions produce the vegetables in their soup and pass the fields that feed them whenever they leave the city. This affinity betwee the people and the land is exactly what Kingsolver discusses, and from what I can tell it has yielded a culture that is overall very healthy and happy. To me this seems like a luxury, but it really shouldn't. With the amount of fuel costs that go into transporting our food these days every city should be focusing on growing compatible crops in their open spaces. I could go on and on, but I think Kingsolver explians it with much more wit and research so recommend reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle or anything by Michael Polan.

What I am trying to say is that I feel lucky that I have chosen a place to live where my daily food purchases don't have to involve a moral struggle like they did in the US. I can eat healthy, gluten- and guilt-free for very inexpensively, and by choosing to shop at the local stands closest to my house know that the easiest consumer choice is the one that also supports the local farmers. It's a win-win situation!

Oil and Linen

I am taking painting classes!

Finally after 3 years of only dabbling in doodles and travel-sized watercolors I smell like turpentine and have streaks of green and yellow paint in my hair. I don't know why it has taken me so long to get back into it; time, money, the usual excuses. But I was starting to feel like I could no longer describe myself as an 'artist' or 'painter' since my creativity was expressed in other ways. (Like cooking?).

A group of women get together on Wednesdays at the Facultad Nacional de Salud Publica for two hours to take free painting lessons offered by the University's Department of Well-Being (like a student events office--I think). When I first heard about it last week I didn't want to get my hopes up too high, but after showing up at the first class and seeing how serious these ladies take their art, I realized that I have found the perfect way to get my painting juices flowing again.

Of course I couldn't start painting that first day since I brought no supplies with me, but on Saturday I set out by myself on a mission to get everything I need to start making pretty pretty artwork. The teacher suggested I go to a shopping center called "El Rio" which is near "El Hueco", one of the craziest, compact, churning shopping districts in the city. Imagine the grand bizarre (for those of you who have been there), on third-world steroids. Shops after shops piled on top of each other selling anything from pantie-hose to watch batteries, from foreign perfumes to prescription glasses. I absolutely love wandering aimlessly, anonymously through the tight stalls marveling at how much random stuff exists in this world, (most of it made in China), and on a Saturday afternoon it was absolutely teeming with shoppers--to the point where I couldn't even feel my pockets people were packed against me so tightly.

But since I was out with a purpose, the confusing maze of stalls was overwhelming as I entered one shopping center after another asking for a place that sold art supplies without seeing anything that looked like a paintbrush or pallet knife. My wild-goose chase finally led me to 'El Rio', and as I wove between men carrying boxes packed with sanitary napkins that they almost almost spilled all over me as I blundered through looking for 'number 148' I crossed my fingers behind my back hoping that my efforts would yield something better than kiddie paints. At the end of the hallway I looked up and the display of paints, brushes, canvases, and craft supplies seemed to glow and hum like the apparition of the Virgen de Guadalupe must have appeared to Juan Diego. They had everything I wanted, and at a great price--I paid about $8 for a 30cm by 40cm canvas! (Ok, I know this is starting to sound like a cheesy television ad...but I was really excited!).

I eventually walked away with a huge bag of British and Chinese paints (just for a cost-quality comparison), the rest of the supplies on my list (in Spanish because I realized my artistic vocabulary is rather low: I thought a canvas was a 'lienzo' not a 'bastidor'), and three new friends. The older men and girl my age working the stall were all facinated by the fact that I was a foreign artist buying out half their stock, especially since they couldn't guess for the life of them where I was from: (Argentina? No? Then definitely Spain. No? You're American!?!), and a huge sense of accomplishment. The feeling of being independently competent in a foreign culture is entirely rewarding when it yields such sought-after results!

Now all I need to fiure out is what to paint...

Substance

I realize that after all these entries of the fun activities I am doing (or not doing, in some cases), you might be wondering about the research work which I came here to do. The truth of the matter is that after a month and a half, I am wondering the same thing. Not because I lack initiative or anything like that, but rather because the process of getting business done around here seems to take forever. Every time I seem to ask about a specific topic in which I would be interested in researching, five people jump in and offer five different perspectives of how I and where I should go about working. Although this is extremely helpful and I am learning a lot, it has also left me very confused.

I spent the first few weeks learning about the health system, wandering around the hallways of the public health school meeting tons of different professors and grad students hearing about the work they are doing, and trying to get a feel for a place. In anthropological work you can't just jump in right away without getting your bearings...it takes time to learn about possible research options and then decide on one that will probably turn into something else anyway. So eventually I decided on a group of contracted public health professionals who are in the conception stage of a project that sounds really interesting.

Just today we turned in a draft of the theoretical background to get full approval and funding from the university after diligently reading, writing, and revising for two weeks. The title of it is "Bienes Preferentes y Bienes Meritorios en salud y mecanismos de mercado en el contexto del Sistema General de Seguridad Social en Salud: Caso atencion materno-infantil, Medellin 2008." A mouth-full, eh? It basically deals with looking at the faults in the health system due to the fact that the government contracts out services to hospitals and clinics who then administer the services, which results in those sites operating in their best economic interests rather than for the good of the people. The specific part of the population that we are looking at is pregnant woman, and the ethical issues that come into play when an unborn baby doesn't get the chance to live because their mothers receive inadequate attention. The legal and economic foundations for the work have turned out to be much more in-depth than I originally anticiapted; which has proved difficult yet beneficial in that I have had to teach myself a crash-course in health economics.

We still have to work out the methodology and break-down of research responsibilities, but I am looking forward to leading discussions with health officials from the city, doctors and nurses, as well as the women themselves. I am not sure how, as a medical anthropologist, I am supposed to fit in with the other public health administration majors etc., but it seems like the faculty here have a very holistic approach to their research which fits in well with my own training. More to follow....

As for my independent research, I have a meeting next week with the dean, head of the investigation department, and research advisor to whom I will present my grand plan. Deep down I know what I want to investigate: the mental/emotional effects of being displaced by drug-related violence, but the problem is that I don't know how to go about conducting this research in a safe manner. Since being here I have felt somewhat disconnected from the reality of poverty that the majority of the population experiences. Rotarians, friends, and university contacts alike are all very or relatively well-off compared to national standards; something that doens't provide me with a very comprehensive understanding of the people. I think that in order to really fulful my duties as an embassador (so that I return to the US with as much information and experience I can possibly accumulate in one year), as well as live up to the service-oriented ideals of Rotary, I must find a way to access the impoverished communities and work on their behalf.

Colombia has the second-largest population of internally displaced people after Sudan, and Antioquia--and Medellin--is one of the districts that hosts a large influx of them. These people move into the city and settle in the most precarious places, and suffer from many environmental factors. (Every day on the news there are reports of 5-10 people--read displaced persons--who die during the torrential rains because their corrugated-tin homes are washed into the bloated rivers running down the sides of the mountains all around the city). These people also bring with them involvement with informal economies and their own set of violence, which makes their new settlements dangerous--especially for outsiders like myself.

I also have this somewhat fantastical impression that the (medical) anthropologists who have written the most interesting and widely-read ethnographies are those who took the most personal and professional risks. At this point I don't really have professional training or an established career, (nor is my scholarship about accomplishing personal career goals), but my idea is that if I could find a community of people with an untold story from an important helath perspective, maybe this could be a big break that in a year could get me into my preferred PhD program. But at the same time maybe I am young and overly optimistic and shouldn't jeopardize my chances by making stupid decisions now. Or maybe I am just blowing things out of perspective.

Either way, I have a lot of thinking or planning to do, and any advice or insight would be much appreciated.

Festival del Maiz

The master calendar makers who invented three-day weekends have my utmost gratitude. Here in Medellin they are called 'puentes,' or bridges, that extra day uniting the weekend and start of the week with a unanimous vote to completely skip over Monday by refashioning it into an extra day for sleeping in, strolling around a park, or, as in my case, recovering after a riotous trip to the countryside.

Saturday evening witnessed five of us cramming into a little car with sleeping bags, backpacks, and high expectations. 1. Me. 2. My dear friend Esteban. 3. Esteban's cousin Marcela who grew up in Culver City and just moved down here for the year after graduating from high school. 4. Daniel, a microfutbol friend of Esteban's who lived in Irvine for four years (although this isn't a defining feature of his), and 5. Ronald, aka Flaco, another microfutbol player with the best paisa banter I have yet encountered.

As it grew dark and excessively rainy we wound our way up La Avenida Las Palmas, out of the city and into the country. Around dinnertime we stopped for the best arepa de chocolo con queso I have ever savored and still leaves me salivating just thinking about the moist, wood-fired warmth and buttery crispness. Then it was another four hours of roadsicknening curves and fun chatter through eroding hillsides leaving huge potholes in our way and delaying our arrival to Sonson until 10:00.

Nobody in the group had previously visited the small town, but it was supposed to be very typical of the region with old colonial houses, cowboy culture, and gorgeous surrounding hills. We were somewhat surprised by the crowds mulling around a secondary plaza near our chosen parking spot, and became increasingly curious about the amount of people after realizing that three hotels were already completely booked up but had couches we could sleep on for 15.000 pesos. Perhaps there was something going on about which we were not aware?

After walking closer and closer toward the main plaza I noticed corn stalks tied to every lamp-post, window shutter, in bunches across the portals of bars, as well as strewn across the sidewalks. People were wearing ponchos and hand-made cowboy hats; most of them inebriated and some prancing around on horses trained in high-stepping. By the time we reached the center of the action we had figured out that our unplanned visit just so happened to coincide with the 75th Festival de Maiz, ie: the biggest party the town had ever known.

Realizing that this was too fun of an opportunity to be dampened by a steady downpour of cold rain, we started trying to catch up with the rest of the town in their celebrations and knocked on random doors in search of a cheap bed. Eventually we found a tiny hotel with enough room for us all to sleep at a reasonable price, and changed into more water-friendly clothes while discussing the craziness in which the entirety of Sonson was enveloped. Now, I know it might be somewhat unsavory to talk about the extreme party culture here, but I feel I have to explain the state of absurdity to which I have seen people drink themselves in order to incite your opinions on why old and young alike would do such a thing?

(Before you proceed, I would like to say as a disclaimer that my friends and I were out for a cultural experience rather than drinkfest, and that despite the absurdity I was completely safe the entire trip and never felt uncomfortable.)

Throughout the evening I saw various verbal street fights, people falling off of horses, and someone's grandparents making out (I personally found the latter more endearing than inappropriate). At one point I enlisted the help of my friends to pull an older man out of the street who had fallen over a road block and passed out, lucky enough to be lying after a speed bump which made cars slow down enough to see and swerve around his body. After we placed him on the sidewalk he violently jerked back into the street, this time rolling down the road which was very steep and slick with rain. His 'woman' was trying to coax him home, but when "Carlos" responded with garbled burps she gave up and left him to the sniffing dogs wandering around.

My mind is analytically trained to ponder the causes behind what I experience, and so the question still pursuing me after witnessing this is: what are these people trying to escape by drowning their minds in alcohol? I know that the town isn't extremely economically prosperous; are these men (and women) just tired farmers who have overwhelming financial and family responsibilities? That area of the country also suffered under the presence of guerrilla forces, and maybe they had seen enough violence or experienced enough tragedy to need the escape of aguardiente in order to stay sane the rest of the time?

Either way, I was overwhelmed by the pompousness of the children roaming the streets and staggering couples, happy to crawl into my sleeping bag and listen to the salsa songs blasting into the night from the bar across the street the entire night. The next morning everything was much more tranquil; the men from the night before passed out in bars with chairs overturned on top of them and the proprietors picking up their limp arms to clean the bar beneath them. Even if their livers were complaining I got a great picture.

Now daylight and somewhat sunny, we wandered through the cobblestone streets admiring the bright colors and greeting the untended horses eating leftover oranges and arepas. Although I think I appreciate corn more than most people given my dietary restrictions and obsession with food histories, I didn't think that the entire population of a town could be so obsessed with one grain. The town seal of Sonson shows a lovely mountain framed by two ears of corn; imprinted on the plaza's sitting stools, painted on the sides of buildings, and forged into the storm drains. In honor of the festival, people were wearing necklaces strung with kernels of...corn, with a small dried arepa serving as a medallion. There was even a parade honoring the different cycles of corn cultivation, ending with a young and beautiful corn queen riding in the back of a pickup truck and waving at the hungover crowds with the grace of a fairytale princess. If I subscribed to a gluten-free pagan religion I might just choose this corn goddess as my deity.

Eventually we had explored the entirety of the small town and piled into the car for the anticipated ride home--this time able to appreciate the absolute gorgeousness of our surroundings. I know some of you are probably tired of hearing me rave about the natural beauty of Colombia, but seriously people, what beats a semi-tropical terrain dotted with waterfalls cascading down the hillsides, old ranches boasting orange and blue porches with terracotta pots overflowing with fuchsias and supertunias hanging from their eaves, and kids running through flower fields with horses? Every curve provoked a communal gasp--even the native Paisas were impressed.

I was really surprised at how well-patrolled the roads were; with police stops every 20 miles or so and young men in military garb posted every 5 miles. Most of them were wearing red bands around their arms, something that used to be an indication of the ELN (one of the prominent paramilitary groups in the ocuntry). But my friends assured me that this zone was safe now and that it must be the sign for some special police force. Either way they were friendly and made the unpopulated road feel much safer...you know just in case we had car troubles or something.

By the time I stumbled, exhausted, into my apartment at 7 that night completely overwhelmed with the immense diversity of Colombian culture and geography, I was already starting to plan a trip for the next puente.

Rotarian Stardom

During my first Thursday back in Medellin I was posed with a heavy decision (not uncommon in these busy days of mine): to attend a forum preceding the 6th annual National Conference of Public Health sponsored by the Universidad de Antioquia--which my friend the dean Dr. Gonzalez invited me to a month ago, or to go to the weekly Rotary meeting. As you can probably deduce, my reasoning led me to choose the forum since it only happens once while the Rotary club meets every Thursday.

Y'all have heard of Juanes, right? "Tengo la camisa negra" pop star from Colombia (born in Medellin)? The Bono of Latin America? Heart-throb of the century? Well, even if you haven't, hopefully you can tell by that description that he is a pretty big deal down here... and I have to admit that I have been a fan of his myself for not only his catchy music but also the humanitarian work for which he has become a spokesman over the past few years.

So, if it isn't obvious already, Juanes came to the Rotary meeting...not me. I not only missed out on one of the most interesting Rotarian alliances of the year--his non-profit wants to do get support by the Rotary Club of Medellin)--but I also missed possibly the most exciting photo-op of my scholarship (imagine me with Juanes as my Facebook profile pic!). The only consolation I have for being so unlucky is that the visit truly was improptu, and the club had to cancel their scheduled speaker just to accomodate the rockstar.

And I would have been blisfully unaware of my scheduling blunder had my professor/research advisor/Rotarian friend not come back to our office after the meeting and said, "Alina, Alina, Alina...you'll never want to miss another meeting after hearing who came today." I don't think I will.

Arrival of the Olympics

I have a confession to make. I guess it's not that embarrassing though, so I'll tell you: while recovering from intense jet-lag and trying to find company in a television set (David is traveling on business in the States leaving me alone in the apartment for a month), I have been addicted to late-night Olympic events. Oh, how fun it is to watch gymnastic floor routines and 200-m dashes while almost falling asleep! And how proud I feel when I see fellow Americans competing in Beijing so the world can hear our national anthem playing while they bask on the podium!

It is a different kind of experience displaying my US allegiance by shouting loudly at the TV while excitedly jumping up and down in a foreign country. Colombians don't excel in very many sports, (mainly inline skating, power walking, shot put, and wrestling as far as I can tell so far), and so the channels broadcasting the Olympics spend a lot of their time going over highlights from the day and focusing on other South American and Caribbean athletes. Last night I was extremely frustrated while channel 17 showed the 20K power walk for literally the entire hour and a half race while I couldn't find other Olympic coverage anywhere else on cable. Imagine how I swore at the anchors when after a short advertisement they returned to the rubber-legged men swinging their hips like salsa dancers for the umpteenth time!!!

While it is interesting to get a different perspective of the rest of the world's Olympic viewing style, more than anything it makes me appreciate being American. No matter what random sport is taking place, I don't have to root for someone that comes from my same continent like many smaller countries. As a nation, America (individuals, companies, and the government alike) has an insane amount of money to spend on athletic training and facilities. People from all different countries come to train or coach in the US. And the result is an overwhelming dominance in our exceptional performance and abundance of athletes we produce.

Just watching the Opening Ceremonies was telling in how we had almost as many people competing as China--the world's most populous country. Obviously the athletes competing: population size ratio is not standard criteria. The Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, and Bolivian Olympic teams literally got three seconds of airtime while Kobe Bryant alone got three minutes. Now that just doesn't seem fair. The Olympics are supposed to be a unifying competition bringing athletes together from around the world to represent their home countries, and everyone should be acknowledged for the sweat and blood they have poured into qualifying to be in Beijing.

But enough of my chatter, men's swimming is on and I want to see if Phelps is going to add another gold to his impressive count!

Deviation from Reality

Although it has been almost a month since I last posted, that does not mean I have not been busy...just in a different way than how I spent my first four weeks as an Ambassadorial Scholar.

As some of you are aware, my paternal grandmother passed away two years ago. She always made the extra efforts to be close to her grandchildren, and I spent a lot of time with her baking cookies, visiting botanical gardens, picking fruit from her backyard, and learning our family history from her fascinating stories. Despite the long months my family spent together cleaning out her house and reliving the memories from her life, we never organized a formal farewell. "Grammy" loved Hawaii and determined at a young age that it was the only place in the world she deemed worthy of visiting despite the (physical and literal) pains of traveling. This meant that I was lucky enough to spend almost every other summer of my childhood exploring a different Hawaiian island with my parents, brother, grandmother, aunt and uncle, and cousins. For such a large group, we were always perfect travel companions and friends; snorkeling together at tranquil beaches, hiking through dense bamboo forests to access hidden waterfalls, and peacefully tanning like bookworm lizards . The last family trip that we took together was in 2003 on Kauai, and we all envisioned that the best way to lay Grammy to rest was by dispersing her ashes into the tropical Pacific. Despite the fact that I live on a different continent while the rest of my family lives in Southern California, it was extremely important for me to be with them for this event.

For this reason I spent the first days of August trekking between the Medellin, Miami, Los Angeles, and Lihue airports; experiencing massive culture-shock when I stepped into the perfectly manicured streets of Kauaii and was greeted (in English) by splendid first-world vacationland. We spent our entire time relaxing; cooking wonderful meals for each other, taking short day trips along the NaPali coast, and basking in Gram memories. At Secret Beach we all convened to spill her ashes in turquoise tide pools, placing fresh plumaria flowers on top of the water to trace her journey into the ocean. I was surprised at how little pain from her death remained while missing her presence so vividly; my mourning eased by recalling all the happy grandma memories I have stored away. If anything, we were living out the message that Grammy stressed most vividly to my family: stick together and remain close friends--exactly what the eight of us were accomplishing by aligning our busy lives to spend the week together. I knew that wherever she is now Gram was beaming down on us and wouldn't want us to be anything but content standing on a Hawaiian beach together in her honor.

With the birth of my cousin's baby a year ago to commence the next generation of Shaws and the upcoming marriage of my other cousin, we all know that our family is happily expanding into new faces and traditions. This was the last time we had to be together in our old format, and I think that everyone quietly relished the simple fluidity of each other's company. After spending my first month in the new anonymity of Medellin, it was both comforting and somewhat disconcerting for me to be reminded of my obvious roots.

I sometimes like to think that my personality and life I have created for myself is a result of my independent drive and accumulation of vast experience. But after seeing the conglomerate of traits I have inherited from both sides of the family mirrored in my parent's countenance and decision-making during the past weeks I knew that I will never be able to break out of my family's strong mold. Not that I would want to anyway since overall I consider myself extremely fortunate to come from such an amazing line-up of people.

Now back to my real life of public health research as an American scholar/superstar in a foreign country, if it can be considered as such. Grammy would be proud of me.