The End

I cleaned my apartment and found more pennies. Now I'm sure they aren't mine, and instead rise up from the floorboards, or maybe from our downstairs neighbor Geoffrey's apartment. He's the one that makes the strange superhero "POW!" sound, so in my mind, all kinds of supernatural circumstances are possible.

I care about money, but it's no longer something I associate with security. I used to think that there was some magic number, some amount of income that I could generate in a year, that would lead me to upper-middle-class satisfaction...health care, school, retirement, house. But it was an elusive beast, and the more I worked, the farther away the satisfaction seemed. Plus, it seems that the more you have, the more that can be taken away from you. But wanting a house for security, and wanting a house because you are tired of living in small apartments run by slum lords and would like to set up your drum kit are really the same thing at the end of the day. You still want a house. It's something M and I have been exploring, even in these uncertain times.

Ah, these uncertain times. Sitting here watching my retirement account plunge into oblivion, watching as the world panics, and yesterday when my entire neighborhood lost power for a long time, even though there was no storm, I have to admit that it crossed my mind that this could be the end. Maybe we broke America. The house of credit cards has collapsed. And if it were really the end, how long until I would know about it?

So I was sitting here yesterday, at my cheerful, yellow kitchen table, surrounded by foul-smelling IKEA candles (cheap for a reason, apparently), typing away about what else, but Africa. When the power goes out, an unnatural silence settles around the neighborhood, as all the refrigerators stop their buzzing and stereos power off. All I could hear was the clickity-clack of the keys. (It seems strange that I can't listen to a record when the power goes out, but I can use my laptop, doesn't it?)

In Uganda, as is the case across most of the developing world, people don't usually have access to credit, so it takes a long time to save up for things like a new metal roof for the house, or a motorcycle, and things are always coming up like your kid getting sick and needing to go to the clinic, or school fees coming due, and maybe you never do get around to getting that motorcycle, and just end up walking everywhere for your entire life.

I guess we'd all be walking, without credit. I don't know too many people who just buy their cars with cash. Of course, we don't have quite the income problem of our friends in Uganda, who have a per capita annual income of $300, rather low even for sub-Saharan Africa. So it may be a bit more conceivable for us to save up automobile money. What credit really does in America is increase the quality and quantity of what you can "afford". You could save for a used Honda Civic hatchback but you can buy a brand new Ford Explorer right now. But with this distorted scale of affordability, it can be hard to figure out what you really have money for. Credit pumps up the whole economy, but my salary is just as much a part of that economy as the Ford Explorer, which is why I don't make $300 a year. Economics majors, feel free to write in if I'm wrong about this.

Enough about money, though. I finished the piece of text I was working on for our Uganda presentation, and the world didn't end, although, when the lights came back on, I discovered that those crappy IKEA candles had melted wax all over my cheerful, yellow kitchen table.

Tomorrow, we're going to Ocean City for M's cousin's wedding. It's been a while since I've dipped my toes in the Atlantic.