Road Rage

I had a moment today in the car. I’m not proud of the moment and whilst it was happening I had a fleeting thought about how embarrassed I would be if people could see me. Or rather hear me. I was making up a song. Outloud. The song was about how much I don’t like Oregon drivers. Oregon drivers are not to be confused with Oregonians. I love Oregonians, I almost am one. There was a certain amount of anger in my tune. I was saying things like, “you are all terrible drivers, you don’t even know how to merge, you’re so stupid and you get mad at me, but it’s just because you’re jealous that I live in California and can go visit there on Alaska Airlines for relatively little expense…” There were some other more developed ideas coming out in my lyrics, but you get the idea. I may have some unresolved anger. Or, maybe I’m just a passionate person. Nope, I’m not super passionate, I think I have some anger lurking.
I was thinking about Cape Town today, as I often find myself doing throughout my days, and I was remembering that I used to be angry when I was there about things that were much more important than how much I am hindered in making good time from a. to b. by Oregon Drivers. I was angry about things like racism or the general unfairness of life as so blatantly characterized by society in Cape Town. Now it’s just the Oregon drivers. Why is my world getting smaller these days? Is it that drivers in this state are really that bad? It’s very possible, they are quite terrible. But also, I felt a twinge of small mindedness for my road rage. You see, it wasn’t an isolated incident; I’m a frequent road rager lately.
I’d like to capture moments where I forget about how big and lovely and wretched the whole world is and get caught up in pouring my energy in to things like road rage or spending money on things that distract me momentarily or choosing productivity over relationship. I’d like to look at the world through wider eyes.
All this to say…we’re back in Oregon and there is a chance, be it ever so small, that the armourville blog may live on.

Picassa updated!!

For anyone who still looks at our seriously lacking blog I wanted to let you know that I have updated our picassa picture site with recent photos. I think there are 4 new albums. Check em out!! You can also click on the flickr link where I post more of the artsy photos. Feel free to leave comments or just browse the images.

onfallingfromthetree

We came down from the same seed
fruit from the same tree
and now far down the road
far
far
down
We hate and kill for arbitrary items listed by people given over
fully to their darkest corner
And I’m of the same fruit of just that one
the one who kills
who hates for made up reasons
For reasons we believe deeply in, reasons we die for
and kill for
And now down this road I have come, and around this corner I have seen
this mess.
And I don’t have means for cleaning, or a mind sharp enough for ideas
my hands can’t lift this weight, my motives don’t seem to matter, my ideology is a mist in the ears of the people left behind.
Fear has made some of us rotten with the idea of trying to preserve what cannot be lost and chasing after what can never be taken.
And the ones at the bottom of it all have lost the will to compete
and then the others hate them for the way they ended up.
I know something new is beneath the surface
And I’m supposed to wait for it and hope in it’s coming,
but this confusion and fear is sometimes all I can see.
And I feel exhausted.
And I look away.

reasons to like tanzania

Sorry we seem to never post anymore. We just got back from a great trip to Tanzania. We stayed in Dar es Salaam, which is the major port city there and then took a ferry boat to Zanzibar. It was so wonderfully African. One of the main reasons it was a breath of fresh air (besides being as tropical as can be) was that the local people were very present in our time on the beach lazing around. In South Africa, life can still seem very segregated which is ultimately exhausting unless we let ourselves become numb to the inequality (which is a bigger problem for our souls). So it was refreshing to be able to walk through the city freely and interact with the local people without feeling unsafe. And it was lovely to sit on the beach and watch Tanzanian women wading through the aqua waters in their long colorful kangas harvesting seaweed while simultaneously catching rays. Don't worry moms, we wore sunblock! Don't worry Anna, it was only spf 8.

Armour family visits SA!!

Dad being himself

The Armour Family

Cort and Odwa

Amy and Akhona

Mom, Dad and some ASP kids

So my family came to visit Lisa and I here in SA. We had a wonderful time sharing our life here with them and introducing them to all of our friends and co-workers. They met our puppy Sipho and I am pretty sure my parents hated him. Oh well, we love him. It was great for Lisa and I to have family here with us and sharing in everything that we are doing. We have amazing support from them. My brother and sister also had the chance to hangout with some of the students from Bridges Academy. Odwa and Akhona are still asking about them everyday! Hopefully my family will not soon forget their experience here and will continue to seek out the ideas of community development.

African Window

22 Aug, 08
There are things that make me feel like I’m in Africa, the way that certain songs can make me feel like I’m in a movie that someone cares about watching and the way some fumbling mistake I make or some crazy person I’m interacting with makes me feel like I’m on a candid camera show and people are laughing, but I don’t know it.
I have a fairly normal kitchen, but the window is not normal. The window I look through is African. It has metal pains painted white and a metal latch that is hard to work. It also never closes, so that when the wind howls my window whistles me a cold tune. And it has thin white bars on it to keep me safe. It’s what’s outside my window above my ordinary sink that is the most foreign. I see tall grass blowing underneath our Mulberry tree and lining our homemade brick stoop. And in the near distance is a pre-fabricated shack. Like if there were many, many of these shacks they could be a track shack neighborhood. And in that track shack live three African men who work on this farm doing construction.
And so we have neighbors on each side with no fences to block our lives from one another. Their track shack has no windows so they have a little more privacy than us with our African windows. In the afternoons these men play soccer outside my African window with the metal panes and the cold whistling tunes. They put up two iron posts for a goal and take turns shooting goals at one another. They talk in a loud, jolly, foreign language and end their days with this game in the tall grass. When one scores a goal, the ragged ball goes sailing into the overgrown pear orchard and the man with his turn there goes high stepping after it.
And then I turn around from my African window with the dirty white panes and the streaky glass, the pear trees and the tall moving grass, and black men and I see my home which is remarkably unremarkable and home-like, with pictures of familiar faces taped onto our small refrigerator.
Some time I’m sure we’ll be in a place that feels even more unremarkable and home-like than this. And I’ll remember all the people and scenes that made me feel like I was far from home and at home in South Africa. And I’ll be sad (maybe), but I’ll remember that Annie Dillard says, “enough is enough. One turns at last even from glory itself with a sigh of relief. From the depths of mystery, and even from the heights of splendor, we bounce back and hurry for the latitudes of home.”

TNHF visits SA!!

So our friend Justin Zoradi started an organization called These Numbers Have Faces. Please check out their site. Their mission statement "The mission of These Numbers Have Faces is to move from fatalistic statistics to identifiable persons. We aim to discern a felt need through relationships and create effective partnerships to provide opportunity and hope with networks of caring people." They are currently working with JL Zwane Football Club in Cape Town. A few weeks ago the TNHF crew came to South Africa for a vision trip. Here is a picture of the crew Jered, Kirsten, George, Morgan, Andy, Lisa, Anda, Dominique, Justin, Trish and myself: Lisa and I got to spend a few wonderful days catching up with the old Portland crew and some of the new folks. It was a great group of people and at one point I was begging them all to stay because it just felt good to have some community. We learned more about all that TNHF has been doing and hopes to do in the future. We had a wonderful time with the whole team and just wanted to share a few photos with you.Couldn't help putting this last shot in!! The movie theaters around here come up with some interesting names. The ladies could not get their minds out of the gutter.
It was wonderful spending time with TNHF and we hope to see them out here again soon!!