My name is Karel and I am an Internet dating failure. Yes, I have met a few nice men on OK Cupid for the requisite coffees, drinks or dinners and “nice meeting you, good-bye.” There of course have been the fascinating respondents who live in “New York, New York” but only write back at 2:00 AM and have no idea where the George Washington Bridge is. The men who live in suburban apartments who had very lavish life styles and were very financially successful, but “lost everything in the divorce.” (I don’t know which planet these men are from since, having been divorced myself, I happen to know first hand that wives definitely do not “get everything” as these men claim was their judicial fate.) There was the very attractive somewhat familiar looking man who was wearing an Eddie Bauer shirt with the logo prominently displayed in every photo; nicely scanned from the catalogue.
My profile remains on OK C and I check in from time to time approximately once a month because though not an enthusiast, I am sort of academically interested in the process, maybe even a little bit hopeful. And recently to refresh my memory, I checked in few times before writing this blog.
Of course I have heard the various urban legends of a cousin of a friend of someone’s sister-in-law who found true love, got married and had five children and lived happily ever after with a man she met on eHarmony. Or the neighbor of a woman in yoga class who is engaged to a man she met on Match. There was even an article in the New York Times “Weddings” about two people who met on OK Cupid. Read it, Believe it! If it is in the New York Times it must be true. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/fashion/weddings/malini-sur-arpan-jhaveri-weddings.html
Alas, I have not even come close to this experience, although I suppose it would help if I updated my profile from time to time (I went to St Petersburg, Russia two years ago.) Maybe I need to add something really compelling like my broken ankle last winter with a photo of my scar. Kind of makes me think of Ben Stiller’s Walter Mitty trying to get a wink on eHarmony, although I actually have been to the Himalayas and Iceland.
In spite of this failure to find true love on my computer, two years ago I met David and since then we have exchanged I am sure hundreds of emails, photos, ideas, feelings, thoughts, plans. We have written sometimes several times in one day. About year ago when I wanted to set up a meeting, he disappeared for over a month and I thought it was over. I was pretty angry. And there have been times when he has been angry and critical and seemingly very demanding. But still we continue and in fact I just received an email from him this morning. “Good morning,” he wrote. “Thank you for your humble reply. We have much work to do.” David lives in Uganda and I live in New York.
David and I didn’t meet on a dating site. We met on the Global Health Forum of LinkedIn when I posted my MPH thesis in 2011. Over the two years we have been working together to establish Holistic Care for Mothers, a project of the Makindye Rotary and soon to be an independent not for profit registered with the Ugandan government. I am more than academically interested; I am hopeful that we can make some positive change for women and girls.
This is not my only Internet relationship. Early in my thesis process at New York Medical College, probably around 2008, I found the Birthing Kit Foundation and Dr. Joy O’Hazy. Joy and I have written to each other over the years about the distribution and efficacy of birthing kits,, but also about her travel, her singing and dancing; her wisdom and experiences. There are often long gaps in our correspondence, but I always feel a connection to her and every day I look at the beautiful appointment book she sent me last year with her photographs and poems. It was Joy who was my contact to the Foundation that yielded the donation of birthing kits to Holistic Care for Mothers that David has distributed in rural Uganda. http://www.birthingkitfoundation.org.au/
I met Kirtiman Tumbahangphe in Nepal, the director of MIRA, Mother and Infant Research Activities http://www.mira.org.np/mira/ and after many emails and exchange of phone numbers, Kirti and I did meet in Hetauda where I visited several women’s projects out in the beautiful lush mountains of southern Nepal. We talked about maternal mortality in Nepal and the very successful MIRA project using women’s empowerment, peer health education and community leadership. Kirti and I even had dinner together at the Hotel Avocado and Orchid Resort where I stayed. We said goodbye in the parking lot and he rode off on his motorcycle.
Diana Nabiruma is a health writer for the Ugandan newspaper The Observer. I was researching health in Uganda when I found one her articles about violence against women and girls. Thinking she might be interested in Holistic Care for Mothers I sent an email to the address in her by-line; an arrow shot into the cyber dark for sure, but she wrote back. She was interested and interesting and funny and smart. And, she interviewed David and Dr. Sarah Nkonge. And….she did indeed write an article about maternal mortality in Uganda, about the Holistic Care for Mothers. The%20Observer%20-%20No%20more%20%E2%80%98labour%20suites%E2%80%99%20in%20banana%20plantation.html
And then there is Mike Cook who is one of the most amazing Internet contacts I have ever had. I was thinking about how razor blades in birthing kits might be replaced with natural, local sustainable materials. I thought about repurposing broken glass bottles; could blades be made from glass? So I searched “GLASS BLADES.” And there was Mike Cook. His website states, “Hi I am Mike Cook and I was born to be a flintknapper.” Mike lives in Portland, Michigan and has a company called Art of Ishi www.artofishi.com He in fact makes blades from glass and stone, but not the kind of glass I was thinking of. He uses natural volcanic glass, obsidian, flint, chert. Take a look at his website and you will be totally astonished. You can watch his videos about how he makes these blades. For those of you who are not faint of heart, watch him shave with a blade he strikes off of a hunk of obsidian http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWSTE6WLB0Y All I can say is “DON”T TRY THIS AT HOME.” So I wrote to Mike. Generous, thoughtful and expressing interest in birthing kits, Mike sent me a few of his blades. I have them on my desk (although I have not used them on my legs,) and there is the possibility of natural blades to cut umbilical cords safely, cleanly, sustainably. Thanks, Mike.
These are some of my Internet relationships. I don’t think any of them will lead to a date for New Years Eve, dinner on Valentines Day, not even the cup of coffee or drink. I have not found my one true love, but I have found passion.
As I, a la Joseph Campbell follow my (Internet) bliss, I think of a web perhaps not so different from our www in Walt Whitman’s “A Noiseless Patient Spider”:
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.
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