we let marcia know that we want to go to Norma Jean’s tonight, and she lets us know that she needs our help to eat four crabs. (so it’s marÃa and didier that help out…) her other guest is an impressive woman called joan. she’s native american, with one belgian grandparent, and to somehow make the point she gives us waffels (the thin galettes) that she baked – the best i ever had.
but it’s her story that impressed me most. more than 10 years ago she set up the Native American AIDS Project in San Francisco. there’s a population of 70.000 (!!) Native Americans in the Bay Area, there’s a high incidence of HIV in the population (one of the highest), and the project is the only one specifically focused on Native Americans. this means that they try to address the specific conditions that hit the population really hard, like homelessness and sustance abuse, and also that they rely on traditional rituals and practices of medicine and healing in their work. in many cases they basically accompany people dying, and they do traditional burial rituals. lots of work with little people nor resources, and in the face of great insensitivity from the health sector (including an umbrella Native American health organization) about the problems Native Americans with HIV often face. i want to visit the project, and i wished i had already encountered joan while sahar was here – sahar, you will have to come back.
Norma Jean’s is different tonight. very little people showed up for the announced christmas night (and show). among the ones that did, a bunch of strictly butch/femme couples, from Salinas, we find out. when marÃa and i join them on the dancefloor, there’s a sweet dynamic: one of the butches invites marÃa to dance, and basically leaves me with her femme woman. how one gets positioned, without asking for it, to be explored further, with sarahjain in the house and sahar & giulia on the phone…