i start nursing school in less than a month. i am excited about this, and nervous. i have quit my job and am finishing up microbiology and organic chemistry. i have had my head in the books and have had very little time or creative energy for writing. i think about the day that i will be delivering babies as a fully trained and accredited midwife and it revs me up. i imagine myself working with women in refugee camps abroad. i imagine myself in america, in appalachia. i have never been to appalachia but i know the people there are poor, and it is rugged, and i am attracted to those things.
i originally shied away from the nurse-midwifery route because i was afraid of the prerequisites. i had avoided science and got a degree in art. then, while i was volunteering as a doula at the local hospital i had a realization. i looked around at the nurses and the doctors and the midwives in the room and i thought "what do they have that i don't?".
i am certain many of the people in that room were much smarter than i.
i am certain i was more intelligent than some of the others.
but what they all had that i didn't was grit and a period of time where they worked their (excuse my french) asses off and forfeited everything to become what they wanted to be.
i am ready for that time.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
We were back in the corner of my office, where no one could see us. Noor was sitting in a chair in front of my desk, as I was proofreading his resume. He was telling me stories, grand stories of his work as an interpreter with the United States Army. I had heard similar stories before, or so I thought. I nodded my head and continued to scroll my finger down the page. I was taking it in, but also, I was multitasking- so in reality I wasn't taking it ALL in.
Until he took off his shirt.
A big hairy man belly was staring me in the face. And it was decorated.
"See here?" he said, tracing a thick pink zig zag scar from his low hip diagonally across his abdomen. "And here?" He turned his back to me and pointed to 2 star-like holes. "I'm a miracle." He began laughing hard.
"Are those bullet holes???"
"Yes Miss Kacie. I was shot 5 times. See? Here, here, here and two times through my hand. Ha! Really. Straight through the front, and over my heart. But that was all on the second attack."
I put his resume down, and spent the afternoon learning more about this man who had been in my class for over 2 weeks and I apparently knew nothing about. He invited me for dinner that night, and I awkwardly ate with him the meal his wife prepared for us. Young and beautiful and painfully shy, she cowered behind a corner in the hallway and poked her head out every couple of minutes. The rice was fluffy and soft and smelled of spices. Noor brought out a stack of pictures which showed of a time where he was dressed in fatigues and strapped with an AK-47. He didn't look younger then, the war hadn't aged him the way it does some. Instead, his story, his past, his experiences, they energized him. He radiated a certain confidence that I hadn't seen in quite some time. He said he never wanted to give it up. He never wanted to stop working for the US Army. He loved it. But after his second recovery his Sergeant got him an expedited special visa and flew him and his family straight to San Diego. He told Noor, "You gotta get out of here. They're after you."
I took him to a few security agencies in attempts of finding him a job. I wrote special letters of recommendation explaining all that he had been through and how he had succeeded. But I advised him to keep his shirt down in the interviews.
That was 3 months ago, and he is still unemployed.
Today when I drove home from work I saw a teenager standing at the intersection across from my house. She had a fresh cardboard sign; "Hungry. Please help." It jostled me, seeing this young, lonely, semi-attractive girl begging. I watched her secretly count her dollar bills and then stash them away. I wondered about her, as I'm sure most people do.
Why did her situation seem more sad to me then the man I had seen that morning? Why was I so disturbed and intrigued?
I put my head out my car window. "Hey where you from?"
She turned and answered "Huh?"
"Where are you from?"
"Florida."
I saw her eyes and they told of her age. She looked to be about 15. They also told of something much more.
"Florida?"
"Well, ya Florida. But I've been here since I was 13."
There is nothing more sad than a child who has lost hope.
"Why aren't you working?" I asked the loaded question, but the timing of the light forced it into superficiality.
"I've tried to find work and there aren't any jobs. I need to eat."
She had a preteen whine in her voice, like I was her parent and she was justifying herself.
"I understand." I said. The light turned green. "It's hard. But there are jobs. You will get one." I gave her an encouraging smile and drove over to my house.
When I got inside I thought about her a lot. I wondered about life, about the ingredients that can rob a person of their zeal, that can push them to scribble with a big black felt pen words of desperation for all to see.
How do people find hope? How do they lose it?
Hope isn't designed to be elusive. I think about my own depressions. I think about who and what offered me hope in those times, and surprisingly, it wasn't the grand gestures that pulled me up. It was the small doses of encouragement from oftentimes unlikely sources, at unlikely times; humans are designed to receive, and offer, encouragement. It is one of our most powerful tools.
Of course, there are people who have survived incredible odds and through that they have evolved in to very serious, very potent messages of hope. Noor is one of these people.
But then there are the rest of us, millions of us, who through small commitments and momentary decisions, also help empower and fuel the engine of humanity into beautiful places.
Until he took off his shirt.
A big hairy man belly was staring me in the face. And it was decorated.
"See here?" he said, tracing a thick pink zig zag scar from his low hip diagonally across his abdomen. "And here?" He turned his back to me and pointed to 2 star-like holes. "I'm a miracle." He began laughing hard.
"Are those bullet holes???"
"Yes Miss Kacie. I was shot 5 times. See? Here, here, here and two times through my hand. Ha! Really. Straight through the front, and over my heart. But that was all on the second attack."
I put his resume down, and spent the afternoon learning more about this man who had been in my class for over 2 weeks and I apparently knew nothing about. He invited me for dinner that night, and I awkwardly ate with him the meal his wife prepared for us. Young and beautiful and painfully shy, she cowered behind a corner in the hallway and poked her head out every couple of minutes. The rice was fluffy and soft and smelled of spices. Noor brought out a stack of pictures which showed of a time where he was dressed in fatigues and strapped with an AK-47. He didn't look younger then, the war hadn't aged him the way it does some. Instead, his story, his past, his experiences, they energized him. He radiated a certain confidence that I hadn't seen in quite some time. He said he never wanted to give it up. He never wanted to stop working for the US Army. He loved it. But after his second recovery his Sergeant got him an expedited special visa and flew him and his family straight to San Diego. He told Noor, "You gotta get out of here. They're after you."
I took him to a few security agencies in attempts of finding him a job. I wrote special letters of recommendation explaining all that he had been through and how he had succeeded. But I advised him to keep his shirt down in the interviews.
That was 3 months ago, and he is still unemployed.
Today when I drove home from work I saw a teenager standing at the intersection across from my house. She had a fresh cardboard sign; "Hungry. Please help." It jostled me, seeing this young, lonely, semi-attractive girl begging. I watched her secretly count her dollar bills and then stash them away. I wondered about her, as I'm sure most people do.
Why did her situation seem more sad to me then the man I had seen that morning? Why was I so disturbed and intrigued?
I put my head out my car window. "Hey where you from?"
She turned and answered "Huh?"
"Where are you from?"
"Florida."
I saw her eyes and they told of her age. She looked to be about 15. They also told of something much more.
"Florida?"
"Well, ya Florida. But I've been here since I was 13."
There is nothing more sad than a child who has lost hope.
"Why aren't you working?" I asked the loaded question, but the timing of the light forced it into superficiality.
"I've tried to find work and there aren't any jobs. I need to eat."
She had a preteen whine in her voice, like I was her parent and she was justifying herself.
"I understand." I said. The light turned green. "It's hard. But there are jobs. You will get one." I gave her an encouraging smile and drove over to my house.
When I got inside I thought about her a lot. I wondered about life, about the ingredients that can rob a person of their zeal, that can push them to scribble with a big black felt pen words of desperation for all to see.
How do people find hope? How do they lose it?
Hope isn't designed to be elusive. I think about my own depressions. I think about who and what offered me hope in those times, and surprisingly, it wasn't the grand gestures that pulled me up. It was the small doses of encouragement from oftentimes unlikely sources, at unlikely times; humans are designed to receive, and offer, encouragement. It is one of our most powerful tools.
Of course, there are people who have survived incredible odds and through that they have evolved in to very serious, very potent messages of hope. Noor is one of these people.
But then there are the rest of us, millions of us, who through small commitments and momentary decisions, also help empower and fuel the engine of humanity into beautiful places.
Friday, September 18, 2009
It isn't that easy
I am coteaching a daily job club, an employment-readiness class to about 45 refugees. Many of them are from Africa; Somalia, Kenya, Eritrea, Burundi, Rwanda and Sudan. Some of them are Burmese; Karen and Chin. And I have a handful of people from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan. The group is interesting and the class is going well. My favorite times are when a job-related subject paves the way into something much deeper, something which allows for desires to be expressed and communal pains to be shared.
During the first week, my coworker, Rufael, and I decided we would start with the basics. To build a good house there must be a solid foundation, and none of my clients are going to get a job with bad breath and body odor. "This food in America" Rufael explained, "is what makes for the foul-smelling odors. I am sorry to say Kacie, we were never smelling like this in our home countries. We ate fresh. Our sweat was pure. Things were fine! But the food here? Have you read the ingredients?"
We decided a day's lesson on Hygiene was essential.
I cringed when I first saw the handouts. Rufael had come up from the copy room with stapled packets in his hand and gave them to me. They were still warm. I flipped through some of the pages, each had 3 or 4 simple childlike pictures of every day products important to health and cleanliness. The first page had a bar of soap with the caption "Soap". Underneath that was a toothbrush and toothpaste.
I figured we didn't have enough material to make it through the first hour, let alone the entire morning, but he seemed confidant so I went along with it. Secretly I was embarrassed, and I didn't want to offend the class by treating them like kindergartners.
I walked around the room and passed out the papers. People looked down and slowly read the names of the images underneath their breath.
Most of the participants of the training are not new to the U.S. They are mothers and fathers who receive welfare money and are required to complete mandatory educational hours each week to continue getting their checks. They are supposed to be building their employability skills. Most of them, I assumed, knew they should be brushing their teeth. I looked at Rufael and let the bottom corners of my mouth slack a bit. "I don't know..."
He gave me a serious nod. "Its important. Teach it."
I held the picture up for the class. "Who in here knows what this is?"
They stared at me, listless and blank.
"Oh c'mon!" I said, smiling. "Who in here knows what this is?"
I saw one of the beautiful women, who always comes to class draped in fabric with sequins and pastels, look down and smirk.
I feel so stupid, I thought.
Noor, the Afghani father of 2 who worked 5 years as an interpreter for the US Army, raised his hand. "It is soap."
"Good." I said. "And beneath that?"
Amina, an outspoken Somali woman who has a tendency to challenge even the most neutral comment shouted out "Toothbrush and toothpaste."
"Perfect."
I told them a story about when I was living in the village in Ghana. "My roommates were all men, and they kept close watch on me. Some mornings they would go into town and buy a big batch of porridge, then bring it home before I had woken up. They'd knock on my door and ask if I wanted breakfast and I'd go out to eat with them. But before they'd serve me a bowl they'd send me to brush my teeth. They came to the conclusion that because I didn't automatically brush my teeth in the morning before breakfast, they thought I didn't brush them at all. I didn't speak enough Twi to explain to them that I brushed AFTER I ate, and they couldn't understand me when I tried to explain. It didn't make sense to them. People were supposed to brush before they ate."
The class laughed and said it was true. When you wake up in the morning, you need to brush. I told them Americans think it is best to brush after you eat, to keep your breath smelling nicely. We talked about bad breath and bad first impressions and how ultimately it could cost you a job.
Amina raised her hand. I could barely talk for more than 3 or 4 minutes before she had something very important to say.
"I don't see why it matters if you brush before or if you brush after, for us it doesn't, because we don't use toothpaste."
Some people, I'm assuming the ones who use toothpaste, laughed.
I didn't believe her, in fact, I was starting to tire of her constant challenging.
"You don't use toothpaste?"
She sneered and cocked her head to the side, without answering.
I asked again, more direct. "You don't use toothpaste?"
I couldn't get a response from her and she was visibly annoyed. I decided to move on. Rufael had included an image of mouthwash, which I don't consider a necessity but tried to briefly touch upon before Amina yelled out in an accusatory tone, "We can't afford all this! Who is going to give us this stuff? You tell us we need this but we can't afford this!"
I could feel a reaction forming and I knew it wasn't professional, so I tried to stand in silence and think of something more diplomatic to say. The class took my silence and filled in the gap. People began shouting their opinions back at Amina.
Verbal warfare had been ignited. It was like a runway of opinions each with its own accent to match. After one person had fully expressed their thoughts on her comment, the next was just around the corner waiting to be released.
I didn't try to calm anybody, or hush the class. I looked at Rufael and our eyes locked. She had hit upon a social nerve.
"How can you say 'Who is going to give us this stuff'? How can you say that?" Someone yelled from the back. People murmured in agreement and in disbelief.
The class simmered down and a hand delicately shot up. I called on the woman, a dignified intelligent lady from Eritrea who rarely spoke out. She shifted the papers on her desk in circles and took a deep breath. "You know, I don't know how people can be expecting the American government to give them everything. I had to leave my country. I believe we all had to leave our countries, because of war and because our governments could not provide the things we needed. The Americans have let us live here. They have given us safety from our wars. They have given us a lot. I do not think it is right to ask for any more. I will take what is given to me and I will work hard to be a better person."
Some people really liked what this woman had to say, and they gave heavy nods in agreement.
Amina shot back. "How many children do you have?"
"One." the woman said.
"Hmf."
People had begun to sit back down in their chairs and turn to the front of the room. I wanted to harness the energy, the concepts, and the spectrum of feelings in the room and use them, but I wasn't sure how so I let the comments continue.
Ariel, someone who struck me as consistently jolly, asked if she could speak.
"Sure go ahead." I said.
"Every day" she started "we make a choice for this or a choice for that. When a person says they cannot buy something it is because they have chosen not to because they think it is not important. The teachers are here to tell us these things are important. The toothpaste is important. You see? The teachers are trying to help us get jobs. So maybe instead of buying new clothes you should save your money for other things."
This elicited a round of applause, and Amina sunk deeper in her chair.
Because of Amina's consistent attitude of purposefully setting up roadblocks to explain why she wouldn't or couldn't get a job I I was allowing for the continuation of an avalanche of comments which seemed to be burying her alive.
Rufael made a short speech about prioritizing needs versus wants and made note of how he himself came over as a refugee and understands their challenges. When he was finished everyone was quiet and waiting.
Far in the corner of the classroom sat a very dark, very small woman from Uganda. She spent her entire life as a secondary school teacher, yet she reminded me more of a librarian. Sort of mouseish, extremely quiet, respectful in her demeanor. She stood up slowly and unwrinkled her pant suit. "Miss Kacie, I am listening to everyone and I understand what they are saying. I also am wondering if people are understanding what Amina is saying?" She looked at Amina. "I am sorry, but I think I know the problem you are facing because I have the same problem. Can I ask you..."
"Go ahead." Amina said.
"What amount of money do you receive from welfare each month?"
"$865."
"And how much is your rent?"
"$850."
The teacher looked at me. "This is the problem. We come here as refugees and we are thankful to be here, but we are resettled in to poverty and it is very difficult to get out of that. Amina, how many children do you have?"
"Four."
"I have the same. I am being honest when I tell you that I cannot afford toothpaste. I do make choices, but they are for example, the choice to keep my electricity on instead of brush my teeth with paste. There are many things we are grateful to know, but not all of them we can do."
I scanned the room. I saw the weary faces. Many people were relating, whether they were voicing it or not. The challenges began to rain down in front of me and the reality behind it was exhausting.
It is hard to reverse roles without an actual relevant prompt in that visualization. But imagine the difficulties you or I may have if we had to personally live through combat, watch our family die, perhaps our husbands or God-forbid our children. If you are a woman, which most of my students are, you have been most likely raped. On top of this your home is no longer safe and your neighborhood, your city, is no longer the way it used to be. You have to leave and you do not have the time, or the mind, to gather yourself together. Eventually you get sent somewhere safer, but you don't have a choice. The UNHCR has decided to send you to a country where you don't speak the language and really, you don't know anything about how to survive there. You get on the plane, you get off. You slowly learn about who to ask for what. You can survive with what is given to you. You are wounded from what you have experienced but life in this new place is not stopping for you so you drag yourself along and do your best.
I realize every person who lives as a refugee has their own unique experience. But the above scenario is not far from typical and it is important to meet people where they are at. Many issues which arise at work, from a direct perspective, can be irritating and sometimes overlooked as something less important or less severe than the issues they are truly pointing to.
Unemployment was a symptom of something much more complex.
Somebody asked me earnestly "Miss Kacie, can you please ask the city to increase the amount we receive because San Diego is an expensive place to come and live!"
I laughed a little, wishing it was that easy.
"Yes, if we could just get some more money, I think our life might be easier and we could do the things you are telling us to do and also, I think it may free our worries. Because right now, living like this, I stay up at night and think and think and think. I wonder every night how I can help my family."
"It is difficult to take the welfare money but I do not know what else to do. We have the mandatory hours to keep each week or else they stop our check. So we go to class, but also, I have 7 children and I do not have a husband. So if you can give me a job it would be better. I do not have the time to look and to go to class."
The day continued like this, where everyone began to share their stories and personal challenges. The stories were waiting to be told, one by one, and I could tell it was relieving the tense atmosphere. It elevated the level of camaraderie between the classmates, but honestly, for me, I felt like every story, every voice, each issue was a big black billowing cloud of polluted smoke, and I was suffocating.
I like injecting hope and promise and vision into dullness and apathy. But the issues my students are dealing with require a special kind of strength that is nurtured mostly by people who have been forced to develop it.
It is called, "long-suffering".
To stand in front of a class and give them words of encouragement about issues I haven't had to face seemed close to futile, and at the same time it is all I have to offer.
I do not have jobs to hand out, and I can't give money away. I can't fix people's problems. In a room where the problems grow exponentially, and in direct relation to this my utter helplessness is magnified, I am made aware of a different purpose.
I sat down at the front of the class and let go of trying to have any control or trying to be able to fix anyone's problems. I took a deep breath and I opened myself up as a conduit for all things good. I wanted to be available for God.
At the end of the day, Amina and I talked privately. She put her head down on my desk and broke down crying, wiping away the flow of tears with the long fabric of her hijab. She looked precious and sad and really really tired. And I saw that she wasn't the confrontational tough girl I had previously been interacting with, rather, a scared, brave, and uncertain mother trying to hold together the pieces of a delicate life.
When I got home from work that day, I did the most inconsequential thing, really the only thing I could think to do. I went to the corner store and bought her some toothpaste.
During the first week, my coworker, Rufael, and I decided we would start with the basics. To build a good house there must be a solid foundation, and none of my clients are going to get a job with bad breath and body odor. "This food in America" Rufael explained, "is what makes for the foul-smelling odors. I am sorry to say Kacie, we were never smelling like this in our home countries. We ate fresh. Our sweat was pure. Things were fine! But the food here? Have you read the ingredients?"
We decided a day's lesson on Hygiene was essential.
I cringed when I first saw the handouts. Rufael had come up from the copy room with stapled packets in his hand and gave them to me. They were still warm. I flipped through some of the pages, each had 3 or 4 simple childlike pictures of every day products important to health and cleanliness. The first page had a bar of soap with the caption "Soap". Underneath that was a toothbrush and toothpaste.
I figured we didn't have enough material to make it through the first hour, let alone the entire morning, but he seemed confidant so I went along with it. Secretly I was embarrassed, and I didn't want to offend the class by treating them like kindergartners.
I walked around the room and passed out the papers. People looked down and slowly read the names of the images underneath their breath.
Most of the participants of the training are not new to the U.S. They are mothers and fathers who receive welfare money and are required to complete mandatory educational hours each week to continue getting their checks. They are supposed to be building their employability skills. Most of them, I assumed, knew they should be brushing their teeth. I looked at Rufael and let the bottom corners of my mouth slack a bit. "I don't know..."
He gave me a serious nod. "Its important. Teach it."
I held the picture up for the class. "Who in here knows what this is?"
They stared at me, listless and blank.
"Oh c'mon!" I said, smiling. "Who in here knows what this is?"
I saw one of the beautiful women, who always comes to class draped in fabric with sequins and pastels, look down and smirk.
I feel so stupid, I thought.
Noor, the Afghani father of 2 who worked 5 years as an interpreter for the US Army, raised his hand. "It is soap."
"Good." I said. "And beneath that?"
Amina, an outspoken Somali woman who has a tendency to challenge even the most neutral comment shouted out "Toothbrush and toothpaste."
"Perfect."
I told them a story about when I was living in the village in Ghana. "My roommates were all men, and they kept close watch on me. Some mornings they would go into town and buy a big batch of porridge, then bring it home before I had woken up. They'd knock on my door and ask if I wanted breakfast and I'd go out to eat with them. But before they'd serve me a bowl they'd send me to brush my teeth. They came to the conclusion that because I didn't automatically brush my teeth in the morning before breakfast, they thought I didn't brush them at all. I didn't speak enough Twi to explain to them that I brushed AFTER I ate, and they couldn't understand me when I tried to explain. It didn't make sense to them. People were supposed to brush before they ate."
The class laughed and said it was true. When you wake up in the morning, you need to brush. I told them Americans think it is best to brush after you eat, to keep your breath smelling nicely. We talked about bad breath and bad first impressions and how ultimately it could cost you a job.
Amina raised her hand. I could barely talk for more than 3 or 4 minutes before she had something very important to say.
"I don't see why it matters if you brush before or if you brush after, for us it doesn't, because we don't use toothpaste."
Some people, I'm assuming the ones who use toothpaste, laughed.
I didn't believe her, in fact, I was starting to tire of her constant challenging.
"You don't use toothpaste?"
She sneered and cocked her head to the side, without answering.
I asked again, more direct. "You don't use toothpaste?"
I couldn't get a response from her and she was visibly annoyed. I decided to move on. Rufael had included an image of mouthwash, which I don't consider a necessity but tried to briefly touch upon before Amina yelled out in an accusatory tone, "We can't afford all this! Who is going to give us this stuff? You tell us we need this but we can't afford this!"
I could feel a reaction forming and I knew it wasn't professional, so I tried to stand in silence and think of something more diplomatic to say. The class took my silence and filled in the gap. People began shouting their opinions back at Amina.
Verbal warfare had been ignited. It was like a runway of opinions each with its own accent to match. After one person had fully expressed their thoughts on her comment, the next was just around the corner waiting to be released.
I didn't try to calm anybody, or hush the class. I looked at Rufael and our eyes locked. She had hit upon a social nerve.
"How can you say 'Who is going to give us this stuff'? How can you say that?" Someone yelled from the back. People murmured in agreement and in disbelief.
The class simmered down and a hand delicately shot up. I called on the woman, a dignified intelligent lady from Eritrea who rarely spoke out. She shifted the papers on her desk in circles and took a deep breath. "You know, I don't know how people can be expecting the American government to give them everything. I had to leave my country. I believe we all had to leave our countries, because of war and because our governments could not provide the things we needed. The Americans have let us live here. They have given us safety from our wars. They have given us a lot. I do not think it is right to ask for any more. I will take what is given to me and I will work hard to be a better person."
Some people really liked what this woman had to say, and they gave heavy nods in agreement.
Amina shot back. "How many children do you have?"
"One." the woman said.
"Hmf."
People had begun to sit back down in their chairs and turn to the front of the room. I wanted to harness the energy, the concepts, and the spectrum of feelings in the room and use them, but I wasn't sure how so I let the comments continue.
Ariel, someone who struck me as consistently jolly, asked if she could speak.
"Sure go ahead." I said.
"Every day" she started "we make a choice for this or a choice for that. When a person says they cannot buy something it is because they have chosen not to because they think it is not important. The teachers are here to tell us these things are important. The toothpaste is important. You see? The teachers are trying to help us get jobs. So maybe instead of buying new clothes you should save your money for other things."
This elicited a round of applause, and Amina sunk deeper in her chair.
Because of Amina's consistent attitude of purposefully setting up roadblocks to explain why she wouldn't or couldn't get a job I I was allowing for the continuation of an avalanche of comments which seemed to be burying her alive.
Rufael made a short speech about prioritizing needs versus wants and made note of how he himself came over as a refugee and understands their challenges. When he was finished everyone was quiet and waiting.
Far in the corner of the classroom sat a very dark, very small woman from Uganda. She spent her entire life as a secondary school teacher, yet she reminded me more of a librarian. Sort of mouseish, extremely quiet, respectful in her demeanor. She stood up slowly and unwrinkled her pant suit. "Miss Kacie, I am listening to everyone and I understand what they are saying. I also am wondering if people are understanding what Amina is saying?" She looked at Amina. "I am sorry, but I think I know the problem you are facing because I have the same problem. Can I ask you..."
"Go ahead." Amina said.
"What amount of money do you receive from welfare each month?"
"$865."
"And how much is your rent?"
"$850."
The teacher looked at me. "This is the problem. We come here as refugees and we are thankful to be here, but we are resettled in to poverty and it is very difficult to get out of that. Amina, how many children do you have?"
"Four."
"I have the same. I am being honest when I tell you that I cannot afford toothpaste. I do make choices, but they are for example, the choice to keep my electricity on instead of brush my teeth with paste. There are many things we are grateful to know, but not all of them we can do."
I scanned the room. I saw the weary faces. Many people were relating, whether they were voicing it or not. The challenges began to rain down in front of me and the reality behind it was exhausting.
It is hard to reverse roles without an actual relevant prompt in that visualization. But imagine the difficulties you or I may have if we had to personally live through combat, watch our family die, perhaps our husbands or God-forbid our children. If you are a woman, which most of my students are, you have been most likely raped. On top of this your home is no longer safe and your neighborhood, your city, is no longer the way it used to be. You have to leave and you do not have the time, or the mind, to gather yourself together. Eventually you get sent somewhere safer, but you don't have a choice. The UNHCR has decided to send you to a country where you don't speak the language and really, you don't know anything about how to survive there. You get on the plane, you get off. You slowly learn about who to ask for what. You can survive with what is given to you. You are wounded from what you have experienced but life in this new place is not stopping for you so you drag yourself along and do your best.
I realize every person who lives as a refugee has their own unique experience. But the above scenario is not far from typical and it is important to meet people where they are at. Many issues which arise at work, from a direct perspective, can be irritating and sometimes overlooked as something less important or less severe than the issues they are truly pointing to.
Unemployment was a symptom of something much more complex.
Somebody asked me earnestly "Miss Kacie, can you please ask the city to increase the amount we receive because San Diego is an expensive place to come and live!"
I laughed a little, wishing it was that easy.
"Yes, if we could just get some more money, I think our life might be easier and we could do the things you are telling us to do and also, I think it may free our worries. Because right now, living like this, I stay up at night and think and think and think. I wonder every night how I can help my family."
"It is difficult to take the welfare money but I do not know what else to do. We have the mandatory hours to keep each week or else they stop our check. So we go to class, but also, I have 7 children and I do not have a husband. So if you can give me a job it would be better. I do not have the time to look and to go to class."
The day continued like this, where everyone began to share their stories and personal challenges. The stories were waiting to be told, one by one, and I could tell it was relieving the tense atmosphere. It elevated the level of camaraderie between the classmates, but honestly, for me, I felt like every story, every voice, each issue was a big black billowing cloud of polluted smoke, and I was suffocating.
I like injecting hope and promise and vision into dullness and apathy. But the issues my students are dealing with require a special kind of strength that is nurtured mostly by people who have been forced to develop it.
It is called, "long-suffering".
To stand in front of a class and give them words of encouragement about issues I haven't had to face seemed close to futile, and at the same time it is all I have to offer.
I do not have jobs to hand out, and I can't give money away. I can't fix people's problems. In a room where the problems grow exponentially, and in direct relation to this my utter helplessness is magnified, I am made aware of a different purpose.
I sat down at the front of the class and let go of trying to have any control or trying to be able to fix anyone's problems. I took a deep breath and I opened myself up as a conduit for all things good. I wanted to be available for God.
At the end of the day, Amina and I talked privately. She put her head down on my desk and broke down crying, wiping away the flow of tears with the long fabric of her hijab. She looked precious and sad and really really tired. And I saw that she wasn't the confrontational tough girl I had previously been interacting with, rather, a scared, brave, and uncertain mother trying to hold together the pieces of a delicate life.
When I got home from work that day, I did the most inconsequential thing, really the only thing I could think to do. I went to the corner store and bought her some toothpaste.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
A Mother's Love
I was sitting at a table after church, enjoying a post-sermon meal, and having fun watching the pastors son devour a chocolate chip cookie. I asked him if it was good and he said "yeah".
"How good? Like, on a scale from 1 to 10, ten being the best ever, how good?"
He had dark smudges lining the corners of his mouth. He looked up, cocked his head to the side and said "8".
"8? What would make it a 10?" I asked.
I thought he was going to say they needed to be softer, or warm, or accompanied with milk. I was sure he would, in some form, want to improve upon the cookie itself.
But without stopping to give my question a second thought he put down his dessert, looked me straight in the eye, smiled dark-teeth and all, and said "if my mom made 'em."
"How good? Like, on a scale from 1 to 10, ten being the best ever, how good?"
He had dark smudges lining the corners of his mouth. He looked up, cocked his head to the side and said "8".
"8? What would make it a 10?" I asked.
I thought he was going to say they needed to be softer, or warm, or accompanied with milk. I was sure he would, in some form, want to improve upon the cookie itself.
But without stopping to give my question a second thought he put down his dessert, looked me straight in the eye, smiled dark-teeth and all, and said "if my mom made 'em."
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Midwife chronicles
A friend sent me a link to this documentary which follows the story of a midwife in Mozambique. I watched it and welled up with passion. I love midwifery. I love the strength of the women (and men) who are called in to this profession. If we could measure wisdom in years, I often think midwives may run eternal. I sometimes wonder if being given this journey is one of the best things that has, and will ever happen to me? And I look forward to all that I have to learn...
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/birth-of-a-surgeon/introduction/747/
Another clip of video journalism that is much shorter than the story above, but just as powerful and full of heart is a 7-minute story about an American midwife in Malawi. It is a very sobering glimpse into the realities of childbirth in Subsaharan Africa but a video I have watched again and again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uTESGZz_Ro
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/birth-of-a-surgeon/introduction/747/
Another clip of video journalism that is much shorter than the story above, but just as powerful and full of heart is a 7-minute story about an American midwife in Malawi. It is a very sobering glimpse into the realities of childbirth in Subsaharan Africa but a video I have watched again and again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uTESGZz_Ro
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
I am listing 1 place below which offers a program to sponsor a child and provide him/her with an education.
Homeless Children International is an organization I worked with in 2003, where I visited, taught, and played a lot of soccer in a Kenyan elementary school. Originally HCI-Kenya began because of 1 man who decided to reach out to the street children of Nairobi. Most of these children were addicts living in slums, and he helped them through recovery and sent them to school. I remember walking to the marketplace with an 8-year old student and she asked me if I smoked cigarettes or sniffed glue. I said no. She said, "That's good. I quit all that when I was 5."
Due to the volatile nature of recovery the man who started HCI decided to build a place far away from the city, from temptation, from gangs, from distraction. He chose the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro. It is here where I fell in love with Africa.
Although the website is out of date and a little bit shoddy the program is alive and well and continues to grow in very creative directions. It is too bad they do not document this via the world wide web (However I do receive letters that keep me updated). There are many kids who pray daily to be sponsored (believe me I've heard the prayers!) so if you are interested, here you go...
www.homelesskids.org
Homeless Children International is an organization I worked with in 2003, where I visited, taught, and played a lot of soccer in a Kenyan elementary school. Originally HCI-Kenya began because of 1 man who decided to reach out to the street children of Nairobi. Most of these children were addicts living in slums, and he helped them through recovery and sent them to school. I remember walking to the marketplace with an 8-year old student and she asked me if I smoked cigarettes or sniffed glue. I said no. She said, "That's good. I quit all that when I was 5."
Due to the volatile nature of recovery the man who started HCI decided to build a place far away from the city, from temptation, from gangs, from distraction. He chose the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro. It is here where I fell in love with Africa.
Although the website is out of date and a little bit shoddy the program is alive and well and continues to grow in very creative directions. It is too bad they do not document this via the world wide web (However I do receive letters that keep me updated). There are many kids who pray daily to be sponsored (believe me I've heard the prayers!) so if you are interested, here you go...
www.homelesskids.org
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Some thoughts on our Nieces and Nephews
I was outside of the birth clinic one evening, walking in slow circles on the lawn, drinking water and thinking in the pitch black. There weren't any laboring women inside and my room was stale with the days heat. I was staving off bedtime, when I would have to go and plop down on my old foam mattress and force a premature sleep. Nighttime in the village is severe in its presence, and somehow always happens too early and continues forever.
I walked behind the clinic, to a clearing where the moon hangs high and spills light onto the surrounding fields. It is a beautiful spot, a semi-hidden nook where a solitary evening can stay that way, where sweet echoes of 'this is my life' dance through my heart and spread a smile across my face.
But this particular evening I noticed my friend David was there, sitting with his back against the wall and his neck at a 90 degree angle, looking up at the stars. I went and sat next to him.
David had recently been hired at the clinic, overseeing administrative details and taking care of the villagers National Health Insurance paperwork. I asked him about his work, how he liked his new job. He said he loved it, he was thankful that he was able to work for Foundation Human Nature and continue aiding in the process of allowing the clinic to flourish. He was glad to be learning.
I was happy to see him there because the previous year when I had met him he was living in a very tiny village about 3 miles away from the clinic working on his family's farm and volunteering at the clinic on his days off. Sophie (the Swiss volunteer doctor) noticed his capabilities and recommended him for the position. By the time I returned he was in it.
Earning a paid position in a village is difficult but David is the type of person who seems to travel through life holding on to the tail of 1 giant miracle. The miracle has dragged him through different times all of which have proved to be a stepping stone for his next chapter.
He told me about his past, how he was educated in the next village over, in one of the wall-less, pencil-less, chair-less classrooms. Somehow, in an environment which squelched most children's ability to learn, he excelled, and he LOVED school. By the time he had made it to Secondary School (high school) his family could no longer afford to keep him enrolled, so he occasionally returned home to work in the farm and save up his pennies.
One of his uncles living in the city agreed to pay the $10 school fees and he returned. David was given a position as a precinct which also helped to alleviate some of the other costs that came up. He explained the work as "yelling and controlling hundreds of boys during mealtime in the cafeteria. But it allowed me to stay in school, so I did it."
"I can't imagine you yelling." I said, laughing. He is a soft-spoken, genteel.
"I can yell, I can make people fear me, really. If I make my face like this and say 'Hey! One serving only! Enough rice for you!'. Do you see?"
He still was not threatening but I agreed.
The longer we talked the more it began to dawn on me. I had taken my entire educational life for granted. Every school, every class, all my teachers. My books, my assignments, my choices in subjects. My learning aids, my group study, my resources. The opportunity to study abroad.
I had never ONCE thought that I was privileged to have received any of it.
I love school there is no question about that. But as an American I felt I was entitled to all of it and it sat in my hands like a fistful of sand. It was ordinary and therefore under appreciated. Many times it bordered closer to a duty than anything else.
David cradled his like a precious emerald, fending off any attempts life made at stealing it away.
He opened my eyes to this invisible gift.
The more he spoke the more I could feel my insides cringe. As if every story of every attempt he made to pursue one grade higher, every cent he pocketed from selling maize, every torn paperback textbook he wore down to the last page was held up in comparison to what I had been given.
Placed in context, in a village-setting where not much had changed since David was a child, his testimony saddened me. The fact that something as commonplace (in some parts of the US) as graduating high school was considered a MIRACLE here? Is this disparity not detestable?
And what about the other children who held just as much promise but did not have a rich Uncle. What about the other children, who thirsted for knowledge; who could be little chemists, or teachers, or lawyers, or engineers but who will never be taught to read.
Poverty is a disservice to mankind, keeping people trapped in a dimension they are born to rise above.
I would like to state here that I do not believe in a hierarchy of callings, for example that a doctor is more important or has an existence which is more valid than a farmer. Both require different forms of intelligence and both jobs play a vital role in society. However, I do not believe each individual who is born and raised in an agrarian society is optimizing their specific potential; and therefore wouldn't it be incredible if they could afford to develop in to their natural skills and abilities? Or better yet, their passions?
Which brings me around to the bigger issue here and a question I have often reflected upon... Is discovering "who you are meant to be" or "living out your purpose" a luxury sought after only by those who have the time and the means? Or is it a God-given right?
If perhaps it is a God-given right, is it my duty- your duty- our duty- to reach out and lift up and become the rich Uncle?
I walked behind the clinic, to a clearing where the moon hangs high and spills light onto the surrounding fields. It is a beautiful spot, a semi-hidden nook where a solitary evening can stay that way, where sweet echoes of 'this is my life' dance through my heart and spread a smile across my face.
But this particular evening I noticed my friend David was there, sitting with his back against the wall and his neck at a 90 degree angle, looking up at the stars. I went and sat next to him.
David had recently been hired at the clinic, overseeing administrative details and taking care of the villagers National Health Insurance paperwork. I asked him about his work, how he liked his new job. He said he loved it, he was thankful that he was able to work for Foundation Human Nature and continue aiding in the process of allowing the clinic to flourish. He was glad to be learning.
I was happy to see him there because the previous year when I had met him he was living in a very tiny village about 3 miles away from the clinic working on his family's farm and volunteering at the clinic on his days off. Sophie (the Swiss volunteer doctor) noticed his capabilities and recommended him for the position. By the time I returned he was in it.
Earning a paid position in a village is difficult but David is the type of person who seems to travel through life holding on to the tail of 1 giant miracle. The miracle has dragged him through different times all of which have proved to be a stepping stone for his next chapter.
He told me about his past, how he was educated in the next village over, in one of the wall-less, pencil-less, chair-less classrooms. Somehow, in an environment which squelched most children's ability to learn, he excelled, and he LOVED school. By the time he had made it to Secondary School (high school) his family could no longer afford to keep him enrolled, so he occasionally returned home to work in the farm and save up his pennies.
One of his uncles living in the city agreed to pay the $10 school fees and he returned. David was given a position as a precinct which also helped to alleviate some of the other costs that came up. He explained the work as "yelling and controlling hundreds of boys during mealtime in the cafeteria. But it allowed me to stay in school, so I did it."
"I can't imagine you yelling." I said, laughing. He is a soft-spoken, genteel.
"I can yell, I can make people fear me, really. If I make my face like this and say 'Hey! One serving only! Enough rice for you!'. Do you see?"
He still was not threatening but I agreed.
The longer we talked the more it began to dawn on me. I had taken my entire educational life for granted. Every school, every class, all my teachers. My books, my assignments, my choices in subjects. My learning aids, my group study, my resources. The opportunity to study abroad.
I had never ONCE thought that I was privileged to have received any of it.
I love school there is no question about that. But as an American I felt I was entitled to all of it and it sat in my hands like a fistful of sand. It was ordinary and therefore under appreciated. Many times it bordered closer to a duty than anything else.
David cradled his like a precious emerald, fending off any attempts life made at stealing it away.
He opened my eyes to this invisible gift.
The more he spoke the more I could feel my insides cringe. As if every story of every attempt he made to pursue one grade higher, every cent he pocketed from selling maize, every torn paperback textbook he wore down to the last page was held up in comparison to what I had been given.
Placed in context, in a village-setting where not much had changed since David was a child, his testimony saddened me. The fact that something as commonplace (in some parts of the US) as graduating high school was considered a MIRACLE here? Is this disparity not detestable?
And what about the other children who held just as much promise but did not have a rich Uncle. What about the other children, who thirsted for knowledge; who could be little chemists, or teachers, or lawyers, or engineers but who will never be taught to read.
Poverty is a disservice to mankind, keeping people trapped in a dimension they are born to rise above.
I would like to state here that I do not believe in a hierarchy of callings, for example that a doctor is more important or has an existence which is more valid than a farmer. Both require different forms of intelligence and both jobs play a vital role in society. However, I do not believe each individual who is born and raised in an agrarian society is optimizing their specific potential; and therefore wouldn't it be incredible if they could afford to develop in to their natural skills and abilities? Or better yet, their passions?
Which brings me around to the bigger issue here and a question I have often reflected upon... Is discovering "who you are meant to be" or "living out your purpose" a luxury sought after only by those who have the time and the means? Or is it a God-given right?
If perhaps it is a God-given right, is it my duty- your duty- our duty- to reach out and lift up and become the rich Uncle?
Thursday, July 2, 2009
To see your neighbor
I often seek to know, but will never fully understand, the lives of my clients before they boarded their plane with a ticket in hand that said "San Diego".
And that is why I love home visits. I learn so much. When I walked in to the tiny 3 bedroom apartment I bottled up my opinion that this boisterous Congolese family of 10 was going to need a bigger space. I sat on their couch and sank deep in to the cushion. Their 3 year-old daughter was in the middle of what was soon to be a 15 minute headstand. But all the other children were busy running around at high speeds, bouncing in to the walls. Their father walked over to me with a huge smile and beat his fist up against the wall.
"I like this." He said, with a proud look on his face.
"The wall?"
"Yes! The wall! My children have never had one before. We have been feeling the breeze for all of their life." Then he peered around the room and lowered himself in to a recliner, contemplating this new blessed life.
And that is why I love home visits. I learn so much. When I walked in to the tiny 3 bedroom apartment I bottled up my opinion that this boisterous Congolese family of 10 was going to need a bigger space. I sat on their couch and sank deep in to the cushion. Their 3 year-old daughter was in the middle of what was soon to be a 15 minute headstand. But all the other children were busy running around at high speeds, bouncing in to the walls. Their father walked over to me with a huge smile and beat his fist up against the wall.
"I like this." He said, with a proud look on his face.
"The wall?"
"Yes! The wall! My children have never had one before. We have been feeling the breeze for all of their life." Then he peered around the room and lowered himself in to a recliner, contemplating this new blessed life.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
A Journey from Iraq into Disneyland: Part II
After our meal Rozelyn, Nabeed, Isa and I moved to the couch to stretch out and digest. Post-dining is around the time when I begin to feel guilty, when I begin to doubt if I am a valuable employee and not just some satiety-seeking creep. But if I have learned one thing from my travels it is that America is the only place where people can eat and run and not terribly offend. So I face a dilemma, of whether to teach my lovely immigrant hosts a cultural lesson and most definitely hurt their feelings, or to spend an extra half hour and keep our relationships strong. I always choose the latter.
"Do you cook like this every day?" I asked, impressed.
Rozelyn shook her head yes, and hung her head heavy. "Every day Miss Kacie, every day."
Looking at Rozelyn can make a person tired. She is in her mid-40's, but if her hair turned gray she could pass as an 80 year old. I cannot imagine the journey she has traveled, and nor would I want to. Much of what she eludes to is too much for my imagination to bear, too graphic and disturbing that i prefer to not even write about it here. It is mankind at his worst, and these memories are seared so deeply in to the psyche that we spent only a few minutes digesting our lunch and she began again.
"You know at times Miss Kacie it became so horrible, that I tried to make a joke with some friends. They would ask me how everything is going, during the war, and I would say to them, it is just as happy as Disneyland. I no longer knew what to say, so I just said this." She laughed to herself, incredulously.
At times it is uncomfortable because I don't know what to say. I don't want to minimize her experience with filler conversation or wrong words muttered, so i try to remember in the power of stories. When a victim is given a chance to share their story, when they have reached a point when they CAN share their story, a divine work begins to happen at a deeper level. I believe they are closer to healing, to some sort of freedom, to knowing their truth whatever it may be.
So I sat and listened and a little thought began tinkering away in the back of my mind.
My sister became a manager of the busiest Jamba Juice in all of America last year. This Jamba Juice also happens to be located on Disneyland property in Anaheim, which in turn, allows for her to obtain 3 free daily passes in to the park. The tickets are meant for mostly employee related business, but with 3 a day, everyday... c'mon! My sister has a big heart and not a lot of time to spare so after a few months she had to make some rules. I backed off from asking her any Disneyland favors, not wanting to be another secret headache she said yes to.
But listening to Rozelyn speak, and holding the power to make something happen, I had to give her a call.
When I finally got back to my office I wrote her a brief email explaining their situation and asking for her magic. She wrote back and said of course. I called Rozelyn to ask if this was something she thought Isa would want to do and she gasped and said she wanted it more, but that "Of course Miss Kacie, for Isa too."
We set a date 3 months in advance, to give her time to save a little extra money (I informed her of Disneyland prices!) and frankly I thought 3 months of excited anticipation could be a healthy medicine. The night before we left I called her and asked if she was prepared. I was worried they wouldn't have enough money to buy food and she wouldn't know how to pack food to-go.
"If anyone is a professional at preparing for a day it is me." She said. "You know, when I was applying to become a refugee, do you know what I had to do? I had to travel 12 hours on a bus once a week and get in line at the UN by 4:00 in the morning. Then I would stand in line ALL day until they shut their doors. I would pack food, but once you were inside the building you could not bring your food in. Sometimes you were inside the building all day. So believe me Miss Kacie, I am very skilled at this. I will bring food tomorrow, I am finished preparing it. But even if I don't eat I am fine."
I told her to wear comfortable shoes and bring a hat and that I'd see them at 7:30 am. She hung up with power and enthusiasm.
The next morning I had a slight premonition that I should buy them a disposable camera. I wasn't planning on spoiling them, the trip up to Anaheim was as much for me as it was for them. I hadn't seen my sister in awhile. I wasn't giving them extra money or buying them souvenirs. I was just a vessel transporting them into a dream. But I wanted them to be able to capture this dream in an image, or multiple images, that would last forever. I stopped by a Rite-Aid and bought a cheap camera and some sunscreen.
When I pulled up to their complex Nabeed was waiting in the grimy parking lot smoking a cigarette. Isa came bounding from around the corner and Rozelyn scuffled after him with bags hanging from every inch of her arm. Nabeed walked over and gave me his sweet smile, along with a handshake.
"Good Morning." He said, making serious eye contact as if to thank me already.
I hurried around to the back of my car and pulled the surprise out from a plastic bag in the trunk. "I was thinking you didn't have one of these..." I held it up "...so here you go!"
Both Rozelyn and Nabeed caved in to one another and looked up at me. "OH! How wonderful, how wonderful. Oh wonderful! I sent Nabeed to every house last night asking to borrow a camera, but no one here owns a camera. Even this morning he woke up and went around looking for someones camera, just for a day. Oh you do not know how great this is, oh! Look Nabeed, look, a camera!"
He grinned and I saw where his son got the sparkly eyes.
Despite all the beauty of that morning, and when the memory of Nabeed dashing to the Chevron counter to fill up my gas tank faded, I found that I was tired and amazingly... a little bit grumpy. Rozelyn pointed out that the rolling hills north of San Diego looked very similar to the mountains in Iraq. "It snows there you know." She wanted to chat, she was excited.
As much as I've tried, I've reverted. The mornings are not my time, so I smiled and rolled down the window and tried to wake myself up. I looked back at Isa who was clueless about the day. He didn't understand the power behind the word Disneyland, I could tell because he didn't perk up or recognize it at all. The car became humid with food smells so I had to ask. "What food did you bring?"
"I cooked chicken and potatoes."
I smiled at the thought, a sit-down meal on the go.
I learned once we arrived that from my house in San Diego I take less than 3 turns to get to Disneyland and I felt foolish for not having visited sooner.
My sister met us in the employee parking lot, where she walked us through Disneyland's Downtown- an area to eat and shop before you get in to the park. She filled them up on Jamba Juice smoothies and watched Isa as his eyes illuminated each time he saw a person wearing something with Mickey Mouse embedded on it. I watched him as the contagious thrill of Disney began to infect.
She looked at me and said "He has no idea what he's in for, does he?"
I laughed and said no.
"Kace, I'm here everyday and I can't stand walking through Disneyland, but look at his face! We might have to hang out."
I didn't take my eyes off of Isa, because his joy was so pure and overspilling it filled me up. My sister was doing the same thing. We could barely talk because we were smiling so much, and laughing at the mere idea that Isa's world was about to turn 3 dimensional and begin talking back to him.
Each time we passed through a line, whether it be bag check or getting our hands stamped, I noticed Nabeed became flustered and panicked. After having spent the last few years in lines at border crossings and getting stopped by Iraqi police, in United States immigration, in airports, at the United Nations- being questioned, scrutinized, and carefully interrogated and considered, I tried to explain that there are no interviews to get in to Disneyland, you just walk through the line and go.
The day was cloudy with a slight breeze, so my sister and I decided we had enough energy to deal with it for a few hours before retreating to her house to catch-up and relax. Isa's gait had turned in to a full-blown bounce, and he suddenly perked up with a confidence I hadn't witnessed before.
I'm glad we stayed, mostly because I now have a new perspective of Disneyland. Even though many consider it to be the happiest place on earth- including Rozelyn, Nabeed, and Isa- I'm sure we could all now agree that there seems to be an awful lot of bombs.
The first ride the parents laid their eyes on were shooting rockets that peacefully glided around in a circle. Similar to the Dumbo affair, but park goers nestle themselves into a rocket instead of an elephant. I was holding Isa's hand when I looked back and saw the two of them bent over in hysterics, pointing at the "amusement".
My sister asked what was so funny and Rozelyn blurted out "In Iraq we have the real thing flying through the air!" Then Nabeed wrapped his arms around his stomach as if to hug himself to stop the laughing. I saw my sisters mind shift, a subtle awareness of a world different than what she knows. We laughed, because it was funny, even though it wasn't.
As a child I always loved Mr. Toad's wild ride so I convinced our pack to wait in the short 15 minute line and take a spin. The three of them crammed in to a cart in front of us and flew off in to the darkness of make-believe. Tess and I loaded up and just as we were going in to a dark cave-like room a fake bomb exploded and shot us around. Lights began to flash and dry ice filled up the area. I never remembered Mr. Toad's Wild Ride reenacting a war scene? Our cart sped through into another room where explosions were occurring on every side of us. I grabbed her arm and screamed out a few cuss words, dodging the figures of the exhibit stole my thoughts. What had I done? I tried to catch a glimpse of their faces as they sped by on the opposite side of the track, but all I saw was darkness. More bombs, more rattling, more disarray.
When the ride finished I jumped out and ran over to Rozelyn. She looked a bit shaken, but her husband and Isa appeared just fine. "How was that?" I asked, embarrassed at having claimed that as one of my favorite rides.
"Ahhh- it was..."
"Scary?" I asked.
"Uhh...?"
"Stupid?"
"I would like to go somewhere happier than that."
My sister had ideas that ToonTown would relieve our last experience, so we trudged across the park and immediately Isa was in heaven. We walked over to all the fake cars, the bright blue cars and bright orange cars and he climbed inside and drove like a madman. ToonTown literally looks as if you just flew into your children's Saturday morning cartoon set and decided to spend the day. Isa was obsessed with the cars and Nabeed had to gently remind him that other kids were waiting. We turned the corner and laying in front of us was a fake TNT handle which supposedly linked up to the second story of the ToonTown home in front of us, where a pile of explosives is activated which causes ANOTHER explosion and the entire house to light up, shake ferociously and spit thick clouds of smoke out from up above. It came as a complete surprise, just as our nerves were settling and we all were feeling easy again. I looked at Tessa and shook my head, while Nabeed and Rozelyn ducked for cover. Isa was oblivious. I ushered them out of the area as if a true attack had just taken place and asked them if they were alright. Rozelyn laughed a true laugh and shrugged her shoulders. "I guess I was not lying when I told people Iraq is as nice as Disneyland. From all that I have seen I think they are taking their ideas from my country!"
Her husband looked fine, he was enjoying himself by watching his son's delight.
"Yes, Nabeed is not scared because we are familiar with this Miss Kacie. But here, it is not real, so it is funny. Why Americans do this for fun I do not understand, that is what is funny! Actually I am happy Miss Kacie. Did you see how Isa did not notice a thing? There are bombs all around here and he is just fine. He is doing well. I don't think his life in Iraq has done the same thing for him as it has for us. I am very happy for this, I am very glad to be here."
After this my sister and I forced them to follow us on a manic search to find the real Mickey. He was our only safe bet, unless he now stored ammo in his pockets or carried an AK47. As if a divine force had carved out the way, we quickly found Mickey's house where all visitors are welcome, there were no lines, and hugs were given freely. When Isa nuzzled his face into Mickey Mouse's stomach and stretched his arms as wide as they could go without ever making them around and wanted to refuse to let go after a few minutes of intense gripping (but has been raised with better manners than that so he didn't) I knew the trip was worth it. I never thought watching a kid hug a big fake rat could restore such peace, but it did.
"Do you cook like this every day?" I asked, impressed.
Rozelyn shook her head yes, and hung her head heavy. "Every day Miss Kacie, every day."
Looking at Rozelyn can make a person tired. She is in her mid-40's, but if her hair turned gray she could pass as an 80 year old. I cannot imagine the journey she has traveled, and nor would I want to. Much of what she eludes to is too much for my imagination to bear, too graphic and disturbing that i prefer to not even write about it here. It is mankind at his worst, and these memories are seared so deeply in to the psyche that we spent only a few minutes digesting our lunch and she began again.
"You know at times Miss Kacie it became so horrible, that I tried to make a joke with some friends. They would ask me how everything is going, during the war, and I would say to them, it is just as happy as Disneyland. I no longer knew what to say, so I just said this." She laughed to herself, incredulously.
At times it is uncomfortable because I don't know what to say. I don't want to minimize her experience with filler conversation or wrong words muttered, so i try to remember in the power of stories. When a victim is given a chance to share their story, when they have reached a point when they CAN share their story, a divine work begins to happen at a deeper level. I believe they are closer to healing, to some sort of freedom, to knowing their truth whatever it may be.
So I sat and listened and a little thought began tinkering away in the back of my mind.
My sister became a manager of the busiest Jamba Juice in all of America last year. This Jamba Juice also happens to be located on Disneyland property in Anaheim, which in turn, allows for her to obtain 3 free daily passes in to the park. The tickets are meant for mostly employee related business, but with 3 a day, everyday... c'mon! My sister has a big heart and not a lot of time to spare so after a few months she had to make some rules. I backed off from asking her any Disneyland favors, not wanting to be another secret headache she said yes to.
But listening to Rozelyn speak, and holding the power to make something happen, I had to give her a call.
When I finally got back to my office I wrote her a brief email explaining their situation and asking for her magic. She wrote back and said of course. I called Rozelyn to ask if this was something she thought Isa would want to do and she gasped and said she wanted it more, but that "Of course Miss Kacie, for Isa too."
We set a date 3 months in advance, to give her time to save a little extra money (I informed her of Disneyland prices!) and frankly I thought 3 months of excited anticipation could be a healthy medicine. The night before we left I called her and asked if she was prepared. I was worried they wouldn't have enough money to buy food and she wouldn't know how to pack food to-go.
"If anyone is a professional at preparing for a day it is me." She said. "You know, when I was applying to become a refugee, do you know what I had to do? I had to travel 12 hours on a bus once a week and get in line at the UN by 4:00 in the morning. Then I would stand in line ALL day until they shut their doors. I would pack food, but once you were inside the building you could not bring your food in. Sometimes you were inside the building all day. So believe me Miss Kacie, I am very skilled at this. I will bring food tomorrow, I am finished preparing it. But even if I don't eat I am fine."
I told her to wear comfortable shoes and bring a hat and that I'd see them at 7:30 am. She hung up with power and enthusiasm.
The next morning I had a slight premonition that I should buy them a disposable camera. I wasn't planning on spoiling them, the trip up to Anaheim was as much for me as it was for them. I hadn't seen my sister in awhile. I wasn't giving them extra money or buying them souvenirs. I was just a vessel transporting them into a dream. But I wanted them to be able to capture this dream in an image, or multiple images, that would last forever. I stopped by a Rite-Aid and bought a cheap camera and some sunscreen.
When I pulled up to their complex Nabeed was waiting in the grimy parking lot smoking a cigarette. Isa came bounding from around the corner and Rozelyn scuffled after him with bags hanging from every inch of her arm. Nabeed walked over and gave me his sweet smile, along with a handshake.
"Good Morning." He said, making serious eye contact as if to thank me already.
I hurried around to the back of my car and pulled the surprise out from a plastic bag in the trunk. "I was thinking you didn't have one of these..." I held it up "...so here you go!"
Both Rozelyn and Nabeed caved in to one another and looked up at me. "OH! How wonderful, how wonderful. Oh wonderful! I sent Nabeed to every house last night asking to borrow a camera, but no one here owns a camera. Even this morning he woke up and went around looking for someones camera, just for a day. Oh you do not know how great this is, oh! Look Nabeed, look, a camera!"
He grinned and I saw where his son got the sparkly eyes.
Despite all the beauty of that morning, and when the memory of Nabeed dashing to the Chevron counter to fill up my gas tank faded, I found that I was tired and amazingly... a little bit grumpy. Rozelyn pointed out that the rolling hills north of San Diego looked very similar to the mountains in Iraq. "It snows there you know." She wanted to chat, she was excited.
As much as I've tried, I've reverted. The mornings are not my time, so I smiled and rolled down the window and tried to wake myself up. I looked back at Isa who was clueless about the day. He didn't understand the power behind the word Disneyland, I could tell because he didn't perk up or recognize it at all. The car became humid with food smells so I had to ask. "What food did you bring?"
"I cooked chicken and potatoes."
I smiled at the thought, a sit-down meal on the go.
I learned once we arrived that from my house in San Diego I take less than 3 turns to get to Disneyland and I felt foolish for not having visited sooner.
My sister met us in the employee parking lot, where she walked us through Disneyland's Downtown- an area to eat and shop before you get in to the park. She filled them up on Jamba Juice smoothies and watched Isa as his eyes illuminated each time he saw a person wearing something with Mickey Mouse embedded on it. I watched him as the contagious thrill of Disney began to infect.
She looked at me and said "He has no idea what he's in for, does he?"
I laughed and said no.
"Kace, I'm here everyday and I can't stand walking through Disneyland, but look at his face! We might have to hang out."
I didn't take my eyes off of Isa, because his joy was so pure and overspilling it filled me up. My sister was doing the same thing. We could barely talk because we were smiling so much, and laughing at the mere idea that Isa's world was about to turn 3 dimensional and begin talking back to him.
Each time we passed through a line, whether it be bag check or getting our hands stamped, I noticed Nabeed became flustered and panicked. After having spent the last few years in lines at border crossings and getting stopped by Iraqi police, in United States immigration, in airports, at the United Nations- being questioned, scrutinized, and carefully interrogated and considered, I tried to explain that there are no interviews to get in to Disneyland, you just walk through the line and go.
The day was cloudy with a slight breeze, so my sister and I decided we had enough energy to deal with it for a few hours before retreating to her house to catch-up and relax. Isa's gait had turned in to a full-blown bounce, and he suddenly perked up with a confidence I hadn't witnessed before.
I'm glad we stayed, mostly because I now have a new perspective of Disneyland. Even though many consider it to be the happiest place on earth- including Rozelyn, Nabeed, and Isa- I'm sure we could all now agree that there seems to be an awful lot of bombs.
The first ride the parents laid their eyes on were shooting rockets that peacefully glided around in a circle. Similar to the Dumbo affair, but park goers nestle themselves into a rocket instead of an elephant. I was holding Isa's hand when I looked back and saw the two of them bent over in hysterics, pointing at the "amusement".
My sister asked what was so funny and Rozelyn blurted out "In Iraq we have the real thing flying through the air!" Then Nabeed wrapped his arms around his stomach as if to hug himself to stop the laughing. I saw my sisters mind shift, a subtle awareness of a world different than what she knows. We laughed, because it was funny, even though it wasn't.
As a child I always loved Mr. Toad's wild ride so I convinced our pack to wait in the short 15 minute line and take a spin. The three of them crammed in to a cart in front of us and flew off in to the darkness of make-believe. Tess and I loaded up and just as we were going in to a dark cave-like room a fake bomb exploded and shot us around. Lights began to flash and dry ice filled up the area. I never remembered Mr. Toad's Wild Ride reenacting a war scene? Our cart sped through into another room where explosions were occurring on every side of us. I grabbed her arm and screamed out a few cuss words, dodging the figures of the exhibit stole my thoughts. What had I done? I tried to catch a glimpse of their faces as they sped by on the opposite side of the track, but all I saw was darkness. More bombs, more rattling, more disarray.
When the ride finished I jumped out and ran over to Rozelyn. She looked a bit shaken, but her husband and Isa appeared just fine. "How was that?" I asked, embarrassed at having claimed that as one of my favorite rides.
"Ahhh- it was..."
"Scary?" I asked.
"Uhh...?"
"Stupid?"
"I would like to go somewhere happier than that."
My sister had ideas that ToonTown would relieve our last experience, so we trudged across the park and immediately Isa was in heaven. We walked over to all the fake cars, the bright blue cars and bright orange cars and he climbed inside and drove like a madman. ToonTown literally looks as if you just flew into your children's Saturday morning cartoon set and decided to spend the day. Isa was obsessed with the cars and Nabeed had to gently remind him that other kids were waiting. We turned the corner and laying in front of us was a fake TNT handle which supposedly linked up to the second story of the ToonTown home in front of us, where a pile of explosives is activated which causes ANOTHER explosion and the entire house to light up, shake ferociously and spit thick clouds of smoke out from up above. It came as a complete surprise, just as our nerves were settling and we all were feeling easy again. I looked at Tessa and shook my head, while Nabeed and Rozelyn ducked for cover. Isa was oblivious. I ushered them out of the area as if a true attack had just taken place and asked them if they were alright. Rozelyn laughed a true laugh and shrugged her shoulders. "I guess I was not lying when I told people Iraq is as nice as Disneyland. From all that I have seen I think they are taking their ideas from my country!"
Her husband looked fine, he was enjoying himself by watching his son's delight.
"Yes, Nabeed is not scared because we are familiar with this Miss Kacie. But here, it is not real, so it is funny. Why Americans do this for fun I do not understand, that is what is funny! Actually I am happy Miss Kacie. Did you see how Isa did not notice a thing? There are bombs all around here and he is just fine. He is doing well. I don't think his life in Iraq has done the same thing for him as it has for us. I am very happy for this, I am very glad to be here."
After this my sister and I forced them to follow us on a manic search to find the real Mickey. He was our only safe bet, unless he now stored ammo in his pockets or carried an AK47. As if a divine force had carved out the way, we quickly found Mickey's house where all visitors are welcome, there were no lines, and hugs were given freely. When Isa nuzzled his face into Mickey Mouse's stomach and stretched his arms as wide as they could go without ever making them around and wanted to refuse to let go after a few minutes of intense gripping (but has been raised with better manners than that so he didn't) I knew the trip was worth it. I never thought watching a kid hug a big fake rat could restore such peace, but it did.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
A journey from Iraq: Part I
Rozelyn and Nabeed are both refugees from Iraq who recently were resettled into a crowded apartment complex in one of the poorer neighborhoods of South Central San Diego. They share a son, a life-filled jubilant 4 year old who literally has twinkles in each of his eyes. Rozelyn, fluent in English, shared with me a few months ago that she and her husband Nabeed were looking for work. They desperately needed jobs. I verbally informed her of a few job leads, one of which had great promise in landing in employment, however she rejected each one. Initially I was frustrated. When a person says they desperately need work, when they call me and leave messages of "Please help, help me, help me we need work" I expect them to compromise.
I wasn't sending her to a strip club, or a Port-a-Potty cleaning crew, it was a nice solid full-time position as a caregiver.
"Miss Kacie, I can't do that. I am sorry."
I spoke with her a few more times all of which held the exact same result. I decided she was not ready for a job developer, that any help I could give her she was not willing to receive, so I crossed her name off my list, never input her in to the system, and moved on.
Rozelyn happens to live next door to one of my clients, a man from Sierra Leone who was in need of work boots. Just as I was dropping off the goods, leaving his house I noticed her son Isa leaned in their doorway smiling at me. I walked over to him and ruffled his hair while he grabbed my leg and hugged it tight.
"Hey you." I said, tickling his sides.
He ran in to the apartment.
Rozelyn was inside cooking lunch, and on their small round dining room table lay a spread of food that looked as if it had taken quite a lot of time to prepare.
"Oh hello Miss Kacie. It is so nice to see you." She smoothed her coarse hair and extended her hand offering me a seat on their couch. Isa ran over and pounced on my lap.
"Isa!"
"It's okay. I don't mind."
"Oh I am so sorry Miss Kacie, he has so much energy you know! I am sorry. Please make yourself comfortable. Can I offer you some tea?"
"Sure."
"Or will you stay for lunch? It is almost ready. Oh I hope you will stay for lunch."
She opened the stove and hot air escaped past her face and above. It smelled of meat and onions and it was lunchtime and I was hungry.
"Yes I'd love to have lunch with you."
"Oh wonderful Miss Kacie wonderful. Nabeed he is not home but anytime now he will come back. Isa!" She spoke rapidly to Isa in Arabic and then turned to me, batting her eyelashes and smiling. After each reprimand he would creep off my lap but slowly return while his mother tended to the big boiling pot.
"Your apartment looks great." I said, exaggerating slightly but considering relativity.
"Oh do you like it? Everything is other peoples trash!" She clasped her hands together and moved through the room pointing out everything she had salvaged from the dumpster outside. "That is how it is here. Our monthly check is very small, we get about $750, rent is $550, and gas, and groceries, and laundry detergent- you see? Life is very difficult so I cannot go and buy things to make my house look beautiful. But I love decorations. In Iraq, I had a lot of money Miss Kacie. And here I do what I can."
Nabeed walked in smoking a cigarette and gently bowed his head to my presence. His thick black feather eyelashes glanced in Rozelyn's direction and he gave her a loving smile. Isa ran to him and jumped around his legs, while Nabeed flicked his ears and tried to hide from his son's constant swivel.
"Lunch is ready!" They didn't have enough chairs to accommodate my dropping in, so Isa regrettably had to sit at the couch and eat his meal. He kept peering over and asking questions that his father finally gave in and made a makeshift seat so he was able to dine with the grown-ups.
So much trust can be built over something as simple as a meal. I sometimes feel guilty when I accept an offer to eat with my client's. I have so much fun doing it, and it usually lasts longer than my mandated 1 hour lunch. But the information, the stories, the understanding I receive far surpasses anything I could get in my office. Therefore, I have unofficially written "family meals" in to my job description.
On this day, I was reminded that what you see is usually not what you get. What had first appeared to me as laziness or pickiness, neither of them accepting my job leads, was actually something much more.
I wanted to know how they met, so I asked between bites and she put down her fork and told me the story.
Rozelyn and Nabeed were family friends and had known each other their entire lives. Both had a strong attraction towards one another, and decided to marry despite the fact they believed in different religions. "Nabeed is the sweetest, most gentle man I know. He knows my heart. We are okay that we have different religions because we trust one another with everything."
Christians are heavily persecuted in Iraq. Nabeed, driven by love and sustained by his Muslim faith, had risked quite a lot in asking her to marry him. Rozelyn, a Christian woman having married a Muslim man, was now like a wife with a bulls eye tattooed on her forehead.
"We would go to the grocery store and men would walk by me and whisper that they were going to kill me, all because they knew I was a Christian."
She shared that she lived in constant fear, but in Nabeed she found rest. They continued to live under verbal threats or dodging bullets shot through their house. The war in Iraq was devastating everything. "My people, they have black hearts. There is something wrong in Baghdad and it is in their hearts." She continued to live, and work, and love. And soon enough, she found she was pregnant.
4 months after Isa was born the front part of their house was destroyed by gunshots. She was asleep with her baby when it happened. She and Nabeed were so terrified they did not leave their house, and the fear sat in their stomachs and leaked in to their bones. Rozelyn found she could no longer produce milk but could not leave her house, so she fed her baby water mixed with sugar for over a week.
"The doctor told me I had become too fearful to make breastmilk, so we wanted to move to go someplace safe. But then that is when they kidnapped Isa."
Her son was taken from her for over two weeks, while messages relayed from a murderous tag team only solidified that her future remain very uncertain. "He was very young and he needed to be fed. The kidnappers called me and asked if I wanted him to live. They said they weren't feeding him anything, and if I wanted Isa to eat I should send some money."
Isa was returned, and on the night they had planned their escape, Nabeed was dragged from inside his house and beaten outside.
I looked at him eating the french fries, smiling at his son, stiffly turning his body and reaching for a second helping. He held the scars from that day, not in his face- or his eyes- or his soft easy smile, but his body was unnaturally erect as if someone had slipped a wood board down his shirt. His neck and spine were damaged, he moved in small calculated doses.
"The bad men told Nabeed that if he did not divorce me the very next day they were going to kill me and kill Isa."
They packed up their things that night and left while it was still black out. "We had money, and before the war we were very comfortable, but now it is very different. Can you imagine Miss Kacie?"
After safely arriving in Syria, and spending 8 months trying to gain status as refugees and begin a new life in a new land, they landed in San Diego. I asked them how they like it here. "It is a nice place. It is safe. But I am sorry, I cannot talk to these other Iraqi's who are here. I cannot look at them. I cannot make friends with them. I do not trust them." I did not feel it was my place to remind her many of them had been through similar traumas.
She went on to tell me that she never leaves Isa alone, there is always one pair of protective eyes on him. "When Isa is sleeping, I stay up and watch him. After 4 hours, Nabeed will wake up and I will sleep. That is how we live." I realized the job I referred her to required overnights.
The dark circles under her eyes now held a reason, and the general nervousness that leaped off her every pore was rooted in an awful reality. Despite it all, despite their battered bodies and their wearied souls, their love for each other and for their son was easily felt. "Isa is our hope. We are tired Miss Kacie, very tired. This life has been very difficult and terrible but we look at Isa and we know it is good."
Each time I cleared my plate of food a large spoon dangled above it and dropped another load of salad, french fries, or a weird portion of that meatloaf looking dish. Nabeed would laugh and point at my stomach, motioning for me to fill it up. I wondered if he knew the story his wife was telling, as he doesn't have any English speaking skills. I sensed he did, that it was now as much of a part of them as anything else.
There was a long silence and some chewing noises and I decided to ask Isa if he had made any friends in the complex. He gave a little nod.
"Oh really? A best friend?"
Another nod.
"What's your best friends name?"
He smiled, looked at his mom and dad, and through the gap in his front tooth, his little pink tongue spun around in circles and said "Thu-thu-thuthu-thu!"
I thought he was speaking Arabic, so I asked his mom to translate. She said she had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked again.
"Who is your best friend?"
He kicked his legs under the table excitedly and tried to convince me of his best friends name: "Ha-thu-thuthu-thal!"
Small sounds began to emerge and resemble something Mexican.
"One more time?" I asked, and he repeated. After a group effort of trying to figure it out, we asked "Is it Jose Salazar!"
He jumped from his chair and danced around the table. "Yes! Huh-thu-thuthu-thal!"
His mother explained to his father, in Arabic, about the confusion that just took place, and we all broke out in infectious laughter as we watched the space between the teeth fill up with Isa's wild twirling tongue.
We didn't return to the story she had been telling before, instead we moved on and let the refreshing antics of an inspiring 4 year old cheer us on into another chapter of the day, if not into another chapter of the future.
I wasn't sending her to a strip club, or a Port-a-Potty cleaning crew, it was a nice solid full-time position as a caregiver.
"Miss Kacie, I can't do that. I am sorry."
I spoke with her a few more times all of which held the exact same result. I decided she was not ready for a job developer, that any help I could give her she was not willing to receive, so I crossed her name off my list, never input her in to the system, and moved on.
Rozelyn happens to live next door to one of my clients, a man from Sierra Leone who was in need of work boots. Just as I was dropping off the goods, leaving his house I noticed her son Isa leaned in their doorway smiling at me. I walked over to him and ruffled his hair while he grabbed my leg and hugged it tight.
"Hey you." I said, tickling his sides.
He ran in to the apartment.
Rozelyn was inside cooking lunch, and on their small round dining room table lay a spread of food that looked as if it had taken quite a lot of time to prepare.
"Oh hello Miss Kacie. It is so nice to see you." She smoothed her coarse hair and extended her hand offering me a seat on their couch. Isa ran over and pounced on my lap.
"Isa!"
"It's okay. I don't mind."
"Oh I am so sorry Miss Kacie, he has so much energy you know! I am sorry. Please make yourself comfortable. Can I offer you some tea?"
"Sure."
"Or will you stay for lunch? It is almost ready. Oh I hope you will stay for lunch."
She opened the stove and hot air escaped past her face and above. It smelled of meat and onions and it was lunchtime and I was hungry.
"Yes I'd love to have lunch with you."
"Oh wonderful Miss Kacie wonderful. Nabeed he is not home but anytime now he will come back. Isa!" She spoke rapidly to Isa in Arabic and then turned to me, batting her eyelashes and smiling. After each reprimand he would creep off my lap but slowly return while his mother tended to the big boiling pot.
"Your apartment looks great." I said, exaggerating slightly but considering relativity.
"Oh do you like it? Everything is other peoples trash!" She clasped her hands together and moved through the room pointing out everything she had salvaged from the dumpster outside. "That is how it is here. Our monthly check is very small, we get about $750, rent is $550, and gas, and groceries, and laundry detergent- you see? Life is very difficult so I cannot go and buy things to make my house look beautiful. But I love decorations. In Iraq, I had a lot of money Miss Kacie. And here I do what I can."
Nabeed walked in smoking a cigarette and gently bowed his head to my presence. His thick black feather eyelashes glanced in Rozelyn's direction and he gave her a loving smile. Isa ran to him and jumped around his legs, while Nabeed flicked his ears and tried to hide from his son's constant swivel.
"Lunch is ready!" They didn't have enough chairs to accommodate my dropping in, so Isa regrettably had to sit at the couch and eat his meal. He kept peering over and asking questions that his father finally gave in and made a makeshift seat so he was able to dine with the grown-ups.
So much trust can be built over something as simple as a meal. I sometimes feel guilty when I accept an offer to eat with my client's. I have so much fun doing it, and it usually lasts longer than my mandated 1 hour lunch. But the information, the stories, the understanding I receive far surpasses anything I could get in my office. Therefore, I have unofficially written "family meals" in to my job description.
On this day, I was reminded that what you see is usually not what you get. What had first appeared to me as laziness or pickiness, neither of them accepting my job leads, was actually something much more.
I wanted to know how they met, so I asked between bites and she put down her fork and told me the story.
Rozelyn and Nabeed were family friends and had known each other their entire lives. Both had a strong attraction towards one another, and decided to marry despite the fact they believed in different religions. "Nabeed is the sweetest, most gentle man I know. He knows my heart. We are okay that we have different religions because we trust one another with everything."
Christians are heavily persecuted in Iraq. Nabeed, driven by love and sustained by his Muslim faith, had risked quite a lot in asking her to marry him. Rozelyn, a Christian woman having married a Muslim man, was now like a wife with a bulls eye tattooed on her forehead.
"We would go to the grocery store and men would walk by me and whisper that they were going to kill me, all because they knew I was a Christian."
She shared that she lived in constant fear, but in Nabeed she found rest. They continued to live under verbal threats or dodging bullets shot through their house. The war in Iraq was devastating everything. "My people, they have black hearts. There is something wrong in Baghdad and it is in their hearts." She continued to live, and work, and love. And soon enough, she found she was pregnant.
4 months after Isa was born the front part of their house was destroyed by gunshots. She was asleep with her baby when it happened. She and Nabeed were so terrified they did not leave their house, and the fear sat in their stomachs and leaked in to their bones. Rozelyn found she could no longer produce milk but could not leave her house, so she fed her baby water mixed with sugar for over a week.
"The doctor told me I had become too fearful to make breastmilk, so we wanted to move to go someplace safe. But then that is when they kidnapped Isa."
Her son was taken from her for over two weeks, while messages relayed from a murderous tag team only solidified that her future remain very uncertain. "He was very young and he needed to be fed. The kidnappers called me and asked if I wanted him to live. They said they weren't feeding him anything, and if I wanted Isa to eat I should send some money."
Isa was returned, and on the night they had planned their escape, Nabeed was dragged from inside his house and beaten outside.
I looked at him eating the french fries, smiling at his son, stiffly turning his body and reaching for a second helping. He held the scars from that day, not in his face- or his eyes- or his soft easy smile, but his body was unnaturally erect as if someone had slipped a wood board down his shirt. His neck and spine were damaged, he moved in small calculated doses.
"The bad men told Nabeed that if he did not divorce me the very next day they were going to kill me and kill Isa."
They packed up their things that night and left while it was still black out. "We had money, and before the war we were very comfortable, but now it is very different. Can you imagine Miss Kacie?"
After safely arriving in Syria, and spending 8 months trying to gain status as refugees and begin a new life in a new land, they landed in San Diego. I asked them how they like it here. "It is a nice place. It is safe. But I am sorry, I cannot talk to these other Iraqi's who are here. I cannot look at them. I cannot make friends with them. I do not trust them." I did not feel it was my place to remind her many of them had been through similar traumas.
She went on to tell me that she never leaves Isa alone, there is always one pair of protective eyes on him. "When Isa is sleeping, I stay up and watch him. After 4 hours, Nabeed will wake up and I will sleep. That is how we live." I realized the job I referred her to required overnights.
The dark circles under her eyes now held a reason, and the general nervousness that leaped off her every pore was rooted in an awful reality. Despite it all, despite their battered bodies and their wearied souls, their love for each other and for their son was easily felt. "Isa is our hope. We are tired Miss Kacie, very tired. This life has been very difficult and terrible but we look at Isa and we know it is good."
Each time I cleared my plate of food a large spoon dangled above it and dropped another load of salad, french fries, or a weird portion of that meatloaf looking dish. Nabeed would laugh and point at my stomach, motioning for me to fill it up. I wondered if he knew the story his wife was telling, as he doesn't have any English speaking skills. I sensed he did, that it was now as much of a part of them as anything else.
There was a long silence and some chewing noises and I decided to ask Isa if he had made any friends in the complex. He gave a little nod.
"Oh really? A best friend?"
Another nod.
"What's your best friends name?"
He smiled, looked at his mom and dad, and through the gap in his front tooth, his little pink tongue spun around in circles and said "Thu-thu-thuthu-thu!"
I thought he was speaking Arabic, so I asked his mom to translate. She said she had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked again.
"Who is your best friend?"
He kicked his legs under the table excitedly and tried to convince me of his best friends name: "Ha-thu-thuthu-thal!"
Small sounds began to emerge and resemble something Mexican.
"One more time?" I asked, and he repeated. After a group effort of trying to figure it out, we asked "Is it Jose Salazar!"
He jumped from his chair and danced around the table. "Yes! Huh-thu-thuthu-thal!"
His mother explained to his father, in Arabic, about the confusion that just took place, and we all broke out in infectious laughter as we watched the space between the teeth fill up with Isa's wild twirling tongue.
We didn't return to the story she had been telling before, instead we moved on and let the refreshing antics of an inspiring 4 year old cheer us on into another chapter of the day, if not into another chapter of the future.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Unpredictable Days
Recently in one of my psychology classes a woman came in as a guest speaker and talked to us about Death. It was a fascinating night, in that we approached a subject I rarely talk about or hear talked about in big groups. It got me thinking about midwifery and how I plan to devote my life to the opposite side of the spectrum- yet how closely birth straddles that invisible line, and how, unfortunately the other side occasionally wins. I began to think that in order to become a comprehensive midwife, I must understand, or know death on a more intimate level.
This is not a prayer I intend on praying, but I was well aware of an opportunity which had presented itself of which I had initially ignored.
One of our volunteers at AAA dropped by my office two weeks ago to let me know my client was in the hospital. It didn't surprise me, this client was incredibly unpredictable. I had weekly updates of other places she had been spotted; on the street corner at 2 a.m. or sleeping in a ditch on the side of a busy intersection midday. She would visit me at work and ask me why I wasn't finding her a job. I explained that we had some serious barriers to tear down before she would be considered employable. She accused me of playing favorites with the other African women in her apartment complex, that I spent all my time working with them, bringing them to interviews and job fairs. I told her I would be in her area the next Thursday, if she could put together some of the clothes I gave her in to an acceptable looking outfit and could be ready on time WEARING THEM, she was welcome.
I didn't need to knock on her door the day of the job fair, it was wide open and i could see her lounging on her couch waiting for me. I poked my head in. "Hey Dorris."
She sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Kacie, I'm coming." I waited outside while she gathered a purse and slipped on some shoes. But I could already tell this was a bad idea. Somehow between the time we had talked and this day she had lost the majority of her hair and developed a severe rash all over her face. The rash was raised and unsightly, millions of wart-like projections freckling it's entirety.
When she walked out she put her hand flat against her cheek. "My face is troubling me." She said, cringing at what lay beneath.
"Your outfit looks nice." I said, trying to stress a positive.
"Yes, thank you, but my face." She covered her patchy tufts of hair with a flimsy white ball cap which had fluorescent pink writing scrawled across its perimeter. I couldn't tell what it said because it was tagged and undecipherable.
Needless to say the job fair did not go over well. I made connections with employers of hotels, security agencies, and restaurants. Each time I shook a hand Dorris came up from behind in her gangster hat and ruined any impression I may have made. At every booth she claimed to the Human Resources staff she had 15 years or more experience in that field, so that by the time we had left I calculated her age as 215.
I was caught off-guard, completely unsure of what to do. I wanted to tell her to wait outside, that the fate of so many worthy qualified refugees hung delicately in the impressions made during this hour. The other women I had brought were ideal; they networked, asked relevant questions, smiled, and handed out their resumes. They looked professional.
But Dorris. I wanted to love her but it was just hard.
I had determined by the end of that day that Dorris had definite mental issues which needed attending to before any other step in the job search arena would take place. I told her this and she disagreed. She said her mental issues were arising because of being unemployed. Being unemployed was driving her crazy.
In less than a month she flooded her apartment, got kicked out, lost her sons to the system, and went to the streets. Pastor Dan (AAA volunteer) kept a watch on her, offering assistance in needed areas, but she refused.
I called him to see if he had visited her in the hospital yet, and to find out why exactly she was there.
"Yeah, I saw her. She's not doing well. Have you gone? It looks like she might have a few days left."
"In the hospital?"
"No. A few days until she dies. She's dying."
I was well aware of her health status, of her testing positive for HIV. I didn't know how serious it had progressed. I was also well aware that she had no support system in San Diego, besides her two beautiful teenage boys who were now in foster homes. This was her fault, her utter aloneness. Many people had reached out to Dorris, attempting to include her and incorporate her back in to a healthy lifestyle through groups, friendships, church. She walked away from it all, rather bluntly and ungraciously- telling people, including myself, that we were useless.
But the thought of dying alone in a hospital bed in a foreign city haunted me, and I felt drawn to visit her. "This is the result of the life she chose to live." I'd snap back to the part that wanted to go. Time was ticking, and a dying person only needs comfort for so long. "She's only a few blocks away from your house." The comforter would say. "Go. She needs someone."
One of the most moving and influential lines my pastor has ever preached often echoes in my decision-making process, and reminds me of what it means to live a life that is truly counterculture, a life that resembles the heart of God.
"Grace" he reminded us "does not ask how you got yourself in to this. Grace always chooses love."
So I went. And when I asked for her at the front desk, I found out she had given either me or them an alias. She wasn't the name I had been calling her.
I took the elevator to the 7th floor and checked in with the nurse. "Go down to room 704 she's in there." The lack of enthusiasm streaming from this woman's voice made me hope we'd never become future coworkers.
I noticed a huge sign strung across Dorris's entryway that said "STOP. ANY PERSON ENTERING THIS ROOM MUST WEAR PROTECTIVE GEAR. GOGGLES AND FACE MASK ARE MANDATORY."
I thought it odd the nurse didn't mention anything. "Um!" I yelled to her down the hall, pointing at the sign.
"Oh ya. Gotta do it." She replied, staring at her computer.
I walked back over to her and in a low voice asked "Can you please tell me why I am doing this?"
"Cause the sign says. I don't know honey. You can find another nurse somewhere around here and ask. I think the patient spits or something? I don't really know."
Dorris spitting on people did not surprise me. For half a second I had a romantic vision of her appreciating my visit and not spitting on me, but that quickly dissolved in to an image of a loogie dripping down my face. "Okay, I'll put it on."
By the time a nice helpful young man had finished tying all my stray ties and got my face mask put on securely, the only part of my body that was visible were my eyes. I felt like I was about to handle kryptonite.
The t.v. was set to a talk show, and she was staring blankly in to the screen registering nothing. I walked in and she turned her head slowly in my direction. I pulled up a stool on wheels and sat next to her side. When I spoke, my voice reverberated in my face mask and filled the pocket with heat and humidity. I wasn't sure she could recognize me with no smile. "It's me, Kacie." I said, reaching out my gloved hand and touching her arm.
"Kelsey. I remember."
I turned towards the television and took turns alternating my attention to daytime drama and real life drama. Dorris was not talkative, which I had expected. I was told her sons had visited her once and she refused to say a word to them. They left without a sentence exchanged.
"Please put that Ensure in to the waste basket for me." She motioned her arm towards the tray filled with bottles of Ensure. I knew she was probably expected to finish some, and being monitored by the nurses of any progress. I told her I couldn't, I was just there to visit, to say hello. "Please put it in the waste basket."
"Later. I'll do it later."
"Okay."
I wanted to address my get-up, I felt so awkward. "So the nurses say you spit, so I had to put all this on."
She moved a thick wad of phlegm between her cheeks and nodded.
"How are you?" I asked, suddenly realizing and wondering if this is a stupid question to ask somebody dying.
"Terrible." She mumbled, through her full cheeks.
"Yeah. I'm sorry."
"This place is terrible. Hand me that towel."
I passed her a white hospital towel, the same I use to wipe down a laboring mothers sweaty brow. She struggled to bring it to her mouth, so I helped while she spit the contents of saliva she had accumulated in to the rag. It was a dark yellow.
"This place is terrible. Really terrible."
I know how to be around a woman in labor. You must slow yourself down. You must become the ultimate listener and be okay with silence. Silence is crucial. I began to pretend Dorris was birthing. It made the room more comfortable when I did this, I was able to hear her and not worry about offering a solution.
"Why is it so terrible?" I asked.
"The nurses. This hospital. All of it is ruining me."
"Has anybody visited you?" I asked.
"Nobody."
I looked over at a balloon that was floating halfway between life and death as well. It said, I Love You.
"Nobody?"
"How is everybody, all of the people, Dan and Kristen and everyone?"
"They are doing well. Everyone is very busy. A lot of refugees coming in still, but we haven't gotten any from Nigeria. How are your people? Your sons?"
She swiveled her head to the side. "This place... my sons came last week to visit me and the hospital stole my voice. I couldn't speak when they were here but when they left I was fine. I could talk again. I couldn't talk to my boys. I am telling you Kacie this place is horrible."
"Hm."
We sat silently again, for awhile, and then she ordered me to hand her the Ensure. I didn't move so she reached her body over, grabbed it and threw it across the room in to the trashcan missing completely and spilling the chocolate liquid on my shoes and over the floor.
I pretended nothing happened.
I wanted to say nice things to her, to change the feeling of the room and lift her state. I told her about a beautiful song I had stuck in my head that morning, I taught her the words and we sung it together. It sounded awful, but we smiled and sang and she opened up for a moment.
"Kacie. I am not a monster."
I grabbed her hand, and said "I know Dorris, nobody thinks you are a monster."
"I am not a monster, Kacie."
When I looked down and saw my glove and my body suit and felt the mask on my face I couldn't repeat the reassuring words. I was dressed as if she was a monster. I wanted to take it all off, to remove my face mask and let us share smiles, but I couldn't. I didn't trust her.
"I AM NOT A MONSTER!"
I squeezed her hand and said something I always feel but that usually does not come out of my mouth. "You are a beautiful child of God."
The next few minutes I watched as a spiritual war began to ravage her. Quietly and softly she would remind herself "I am a beautiful child of God. I am a beautiful child of God." But momentary peace would give way to angst, and little crys, and uncertainty as she forcefully stated that she was not a monster. I sat by her bed and watched and prayed and then I started crying. My eye shield fogged up and splashed with tears and she grabbed my hand and asked why I was crying.
"I don't know. I just need to cry." I said.
"I need to cry too."
My tears quickly dried and hers never came, but we sat together while the Ensure began to puddle around the feet of my stool. She tried to spit another mouthful in to the same towel but it missed and dropped on to the breast of her hospital gown. While she wiped herself up I told her my garden was blooming with sweatpeas and that I would pick some and bring her a bouquet. I wanted her to remember beauty. She said she would like that, and would also like it if I could bring her a Bible so she could read during the time she was there. I said of course.
A week has passed and I have trimmed 3 bouquets of sweatpeas from my garden. My mother took one, I gave one to my sister-in-law, and my neighbor got the last one. I haven't been able to put any in my house where I usually keep them because a bouquet now carries just as much aesthetic appeal as it does of the nagging reminder of a promise I made.
Time is going. Death is uncomfortable. A deteriorating body and a spirit like hers are difficult to face, but the sweatpeas are prolific and I do intend to keep this promise.
This is not a prayer I intend on praying, but I was well aware of an opportunity which had presented itself of which I had initially ignored.
One of our volunteers at AAA dropped by my office two weeks ago to let me know my client was in the hospital. It didn't surprise me, this client was incredibly unpredictable. I had weekly updates of other places she had been spotted; on the street corner at 2 a.m. or sleeping in a ditch on the side of a busy intersection midday. She would visit me at work and ask me why I wasn't finding her a job. I explained that we had some serious barriers to tear down before she would be considered employable. She accused me of playing favorites with the other African women in her apartment complex, that I spent all my time working with them, bringing them to interviews and job fairs. I told her I would be in her area the next Thursday, if she could put together some of the clothes I gave her in to an acceptable looking outfit and could be ready on time WEARING THEM, she was welcome.
I didn't need to knock on her door the day of the job fair, it was wide open and i could see her lounging on her couch waiting for me. I poked my head in. "Hey Dorris."
She sat up and rubbed her eyes. "Kacie, I'm coming." I waited outside while she gathered a purse and slipped on some shoes. But I could already tell this was a bad idea. Somehow between the time we had talked and this day she had lost the majority of her hair and developed a severe rash all over her face. The rash was raised and unsightly, millions of wart-like projections freckling it's entirety.
When she walked out she put her hand flat against her cheek. "My face is troubling me." She said, cringing at what lay beneath.
"Your outfit looks nice." I said, trying to stress a positive.
"Yes, thank you, but my face." She covered her patchy tufts of hair with a flimsy white ball cap which had fluorescent pink writing scrawled across its perimeter. I couldn't tell what it said because it was tagged and undecipherable.
Needless to say the job fair did not go over well. I made connections with employers of hotels, security agencies, and restaurants. Each time I shook a hand Dorris came up from behind in her gangster hat and ruined any impression I may have made. At every booth she claimed to the Human Resources staff she had 15 years or more experience in that field, so that by the time we had left I calculated her age as 215.
I was caught off-guard, completely unsure of what to do. I wanted to tell her to wait outside, that the fate of so many worthy qualified refugees hung delicately in the impressions made during this hour. The other women I had brought were ideal; they networked, asked relevant questions, smiled, and handed out their resumes. They looked professional.
But Dorris. I wanted to love her but it was just hard.
I had determined by the end of that day that Dorris had definite mental issues which needed attending to before any other step in the job search arena would take place. I told her this and she disagreed. She said her mental issues were arising because of being unemployed. Being unemployed was driving her crazy.
In less than a month she flooded her apartment, got kicked out, lost her sons to the system, and went to the streets. Pastor Dan (AAA volunteer) kept a watch on her, offering assistance in needed areas, but she refused.
I called him to see if he had visited her in the hospital yet, and to find out why exactly she was there.
"Yeah, I saw her. She's not doing well. Have you gone? It looks like she might have a few days left."
"In the hospital?"
"No. A few days until she dies. She's dying."
I was well aware of her health status, of her testing positive for HIV. I didn't know how serious it had progressed. I was also well aware that she had no support system in San Diego, besides her two beautiful teenage boys who were now in foster homes. This was her fault, her utter aloneness. Many people had reached out to Dorris, attempting to include her and incorporate her back in to a healthy lifestyle through groups, friendships, church. She walked away from it all, rather bluntly and ungraciously- telling people, including myself, that we were useless.
But the thought of dying alone in a hospital bed in a foreign city haunted me, and I felt drawn to visit her. "This is the result of the life she chose to live." I'd snap back to the part that wanted to go. Time was ticking, and a dying person only needs comfort for so long. "She's only a few blocks away from your house." The comforter would say. "Go. She needs someone."
One of the most moving and influential lines my pastor has ever preached often echoes in my decision-making process, and reminds me of what it means to live a life that is truly counterculture, a life that resembles the heart of God.
"Grace" he reminded us "does not ask how you got yourself in to this. Grace always chooses love."
So I went. And when I asked for her at the front desk, I found out she had given either me or them an alias. She wasn't the name I had been calling her.
I took the elevator to the 7th floor and checked in with the nurse. "Go down to room 704 she's in there." The lack of enthusiasm streaming from this woman's voice made me hope we'd never become future coworkers.
I noticed a huge sign strung across Dorris's entryway that said "STOP. ANY PERSON ENTERING THIS ROOM MUST WEAR PROTECTIVE GEAR. GOGGLES AND FACE MASK ARE MANDATORY."
I thought it odd the nurse didn't mention anything. "Um!" I yelled to her down the hall, pointing at the sign.
"Oh ya. Gotta do it." She replied, staring at her computer.
I walked back over to her and in a low voice asked "Can you please tell me why I am doing this?"
"Cause the sign says. I don't know honey. You can find another nurse somewhere around here and ask. I think the patient spits or something? I don't really know."
Dorris spitting on people did not surprise me. For half a second I had a romantic vision of her appreciating my visit and not spitting on me, but that quickly dissolved in to an image of a loogie dripping down my face. "Okay, I'll put it on."
By the time a nice helpful young man had finished tying all my stray ties and got my face mask put on securely, the only part of my body that was visible were my eyes. I felt like I was about to handle kryptonite.
The t.v. was set to a talk show, and she was staring blankly in to the screen registering nothing. I walked in and she turned her head slowly in my direction. I pulled up a stool on wheels and sat next to her side. When I spoke, my voice reverberated in my face mask and filled the pocket with heat and humidity. I wasn't sure she could recognize me with no smile. "It's me, Kacie." I said, reaching out my gloved hand and touching her arm.
"Kelsey. I remember."
I turned towards the television and took turns alternating my attention to daytime drama and real life drama. Dorris was not talkative, which I had expected. I was told her sons had visited her once and she refused to say a word to them. They left without a sentence exchanged.
"Please put that Ensure in to the waste basket for me." She motioned her arm towards the tray filled with bottles of Ensure. I knew she was probably expected to finish some, and being monitored by the nurses of any progress. I told her I couldn't, I was just there to visit, to say hello. "Please put it in the waste basket."
"Later. I'll do it later."
"Okay."
I wanted to address my get-up, I felt so awkward. "So the nurses say you spit, so I had to put all this on."
She moved a thick wad of phlegm between her cheeks and nodded.
"How are you?" I asked, suddenly realizing and wondering if this is a stupid question to ask somebody dying.
"Terrible." She mumbled, through her full cheeks.
"Yeah. I'm sorry."
"This place is terrible. Hand me that towel."
I passed her a white hospital towel, the same I use to wipe down a laboring mothers sweaty brow. She struggled to bring it to her mouth, so I helped while she spit the contents of saliva she had accumulated in to the rag. It was a dark yellow.
"This place is terrible. Really terrible."
I know how to be around a woman in labor. You must slow yourself down. You must become the ultimate listener and be okay with silence. Silence is crucial. I began to pretend Dorris was birthing. It made the room more comfortable when I did this, I was able to hear her and not worry about offering a solution.
"Why is it so terrible?" I asked.
"The nurses. This hospital. All of it is ruining me."
"Has anybody visited you?" I asked.
"Nobody."
I looked over at a balloon that was floating halfway between life and death as well. It said, I Love You.
"Nobody?"
"How is everybody, all of the people, Dan and Kristen and everyone?"
"They are doing well. Everyone is very busy. A lot of refugees coming in still, but we haven't gotten any from Nigeria. How are your people? Your sons?"
She swiveled her head to the side. "This place... my sons came last week to visit me and the hospital stole my voice. I couldn't speak when they were here but when they left I was fine. I could talk again. I couldn't talk to my boys. I am telling you Kacie this place is horrible."
"Hm."
We sat silently again, for awhile, and then she ordered me to hand her the Ensure. I didn't move so she reached her body over, grabbed it and threw it across the room in to the trashcan missing completely and spilling the chocolate liquid on my shoes and over the floor.
I pretended nothing happened.
I wanted to say nice things to her, to change the feeling of the room and lift her state. I told her about a beautiful song I had stuck in my head that morning, I taught her the words and we sung it together. It sounded awful, but we smiled and sang and she opened up for a moment.
"Kacie. I am not a monster."
I grabbed her hand, and said "I know Dorris, nobody thinks you are a monster."
"I am not a monster, Kacie."
When I looked down and saw my glove and my body suit and felt the mask on my face I couldn't repeat the reassuring words. I was dressed as if she was a monster. I wanted to take it all off, to remove my face mask and let us share smiles, but I couldn't. I didn't trust her.
"I AM NOT A MONSTER!"
I squeezed her hand and said something I always feel but that usually does not come out of my mouth. "You are a beautiful child of God."
The next few minutes I watched as a spiritual war began to ravage her. Quietly and softly she would remind herself "I am a beautiful child of God. I am a beautiful child of God." But momentary peace would give way to angst, and little crys, and uncertainty as she forcefully stated that she was not a monster. I sat by her bed and watched and prayed and then I started crying. My eye shield fogged up and splashed with tears and she grabbed my hand and asked why I was crying.
"I don't know. I just need to cry." I said.
"I need to cry too."
My tears quickly dried and hers never came, but we sat together while the Ensure began to puddle around the feet of my stool. She tried to spit another mouthful in to the same towel but it missed and dropped on to the breast of her hospital gown. While she wiped herself up I told her my garden was blooming with sweatpeas and that I would pick some and bring her a bouquet. I wanted her to remember beauty. She said she would like that, and would also like it if I could bring her a Bible so she could read during the time she was there. I said of course.
A week has passed and I have trimmed 3 bouquets of sweatpeas from my garden. My mother took one, I gave one to my sister-in-law, and my neighbor got the last one. I haven't been able to put any in my house where I usually keep them because a bouquet now carries just as much aesthetic appeal as it does of the nagging reminder of a promise I made.
Time is going. Death is uncomfortable. A deteriorating body and a spirit like hers are difficult to face, but the sweatpeas are prolific and I do intend to keep this promise.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Encounters with Grace in Taiwan: When God Surprises
It's Sunday, I'm a Christian, and usually I go to church. But today I decided to stay at home, sit on my couch, and eat dark chocolate instead. I don't see this as a better alternative, because I love the church, but for this day it was what I decided to do.
And while I've been sitting here I've been having flashes, of times and places in my life where God has shone through in truly extraordinary ways. And as a person who believes that God is readily available to each and every one of us at any moment, this should be the case. God is extraordinary so His ways must be also. I am moved to document the grace that has been shown to me.
Taiwan: Teaching English: Love the kids: Hate lesson planning so I wing it every day in class by telling stories: 23 years old: Living in a big congested city: Having fun with all my girlfriends but homesick and confused and on an emotional roller coaster:
My boyfriend at the time flies across the world to ask if I'll marry him. I say yes. He has 5 days to spend in Taiwan. I put him on the back of my scooter and try to show off- driving haphazardly and paying attention to very little. I haven't learned what the road signs mean and I don't really care. I'm unlicensed and a bit too cocky. We get hit by a car and it is entirely my fault. After slamming into the car's windshield I fly through the air and my body smacks in to the asphalt. His does too. Very intense surges of adrenaline are releasing and it numbs my pain. I worry about our engagement when the first thing I think is NOT "i hope he's alive" but... "how am I going to get back to Africa if I'm in a wheelchair?" An ambulance rushes us to hospital. We are both relatively OK. A few days later he leaves and I get an unexpected phone local from a Taiwanese woman.
"Hello, is this the girl who was hit last week?"
"Yes. It is."
"Oh okay. We are very sorry about that! Are you okay now?"
"I'm fine, thanks. Who is this?"
"I am calling on behalf of Mrs. Yin. I am her interpreter. She doesn't speak English. Mrs. Yin is the woman who hit you."
"Ohhhh." I covered the phone and mouthed to my girlfriend 'it's-the-lady-who-hit-me!' and she cringes. Accidents with foreigners in Taiwan are far too common. At each potluck, or party, or gathering, there was always somebody wrapped up in some cast showing off their road rash. Everyone knew it was not a matter of if, but when. And tales had been told of accidents gone bad, both physically and financially. Some ex-pats advise to play the dumb foreigner card and hang up when they try to contact you. They would never find you in the sea of city life, and to them all white people look the same.
I went to Taiwan for a few reasons, and one was to make money. But somehow that was not happening. I had $5 in my bank account. But I didn't hang up.
"Yes, Mrs. Yin would like to meet with you, regarding the accident."
"Okay." I responded.
"When is a good time for you?"
I was unprepared and being lured in to uncomfortable territory.
I offered up an answer while looking at my girlfriend. "Nights?"
"We will come and meet you because I can assume that you are not driving your scooter right now."
"Correct."
"Are you able to walk?"
"Yes."
"Okay. The police report said you live close to Wuchuan. There is a restaurant across the street. Would you like to meet outside of the restaurant tomorrow at 7?"
"Sure."
"Then we will be there at 7. It will be me, Mrs. Yin, and a lawyer. See you then. Goodbye."
When I heard the dial tone my stomach twisted. The conversation was like a hammer pounding in my recent feelings of complete lack of control and anxiety, about everything in my life. I looked at my girlfriend and she offered up two words of advice. "Don't go."
I opened the front door of the 8th floor apartment and walked the staircase to the roof of the building. I looked out over the city. I looked up at the stars. I thought about my $5.
"Don't go." The words echoed, but they didn't resonate.
I stared back out over the city. There is something incredibly calming about rooftops. Calming, and also lonely. I didn't like the lonely part, so i prayed "God. Help. I don't know what to do."
and I waited. and then i prayed some more.
the city faded away and a simple awareness abounded, it said;
it is all going to be just fine, just do your job.
at that point my job was very clear. i needed to show up at 7 the next night, and i needed to take responsibility.
I was on the bench, outside the restaurant, waiting nervously like i was on a blind date. I stared expectantly at each group of passerby's, and waited for some mutual hint of recognition. i sat, then i stood, trying to look friendly and composed. if at that moment i had a magic power i would have used it to be back at home- in California- far away from where i was and far away from how i was feeling. i was awaiting my fate amidst the interrogative glow of Asian street life.
and then, i saw them. Mrs. Yin and the interpreter, clinking down the pavement with shiny hair, lips, and purses. Even their pants glowed with wealth. They were polished women on a mission, and they were aiming for me. I suddenly became aware of my messy hair and ripped up jeans.
I walked up to them and extended my hand. They nodded and smiled and shook it, but Mrs. Yin held an expression of reservation that reminded me of our purpose.
A beefy man in a business suit walked out from inside of the restaurant and came straight over to us. He had a briefcase and slicked hair and motioned for us to all sit down on the bench and so that is what we did.
The interpreter stood up and began to talk. "The reason we are here tonight is to discuss the accident. I am here to listen and to help you two come to an agreement for compensation. If there is anything you need to say please feel free to say it and I will tell Mrs. Yin, and she will do the same."
"Okay."
There was a smattering of words, between the lawyer, the interpreter, and Mrs. Yin, and they passed a clipboard back and forth between each other pointing at numbers and phrases. The caricatures meant nothing to me so I waited until the clipboard eventually made it into my lap.
The interpreter pointed to the number circled. "This here is the cost of repairs from the damage you caused her car."
The figure meant nothing to me. It wasn't in dollars and I had yet to convert that high of a sum in any encounter since I had entered the country. I had no emotional response, just a perplexed expression and the memory that it was a Mercedes-Benz that hit me.
"In Taiwan, when a person causes an accident it is up to them to take care of the costs incurred by the accident."
I nodded.
"And do you agree that the accident was your fault?"
Take responsibility. "Yes, I agree."
"Okay, then do you agree that you will pay for this? What we have listed here is the list of the repairs she had to have done to her bumper, her hood, and her windshield."
"Yes. I agree."
The lawyer handed over a document.
"Can you please sign this?"
"I can't read what it says. And if we can just step back a moment and if you can tell me how much money this is that I owe... in dollars..."
The group was having difficulty in the conversion, as we rustled through our bags and pulled out calculators and cell phones and scribbled mathematical equations on backs of papers. After a few minutes, when we all reached the same amount, the reality of the situation began to settle in heavy. My poverty, my stupidity, this massive amount of money that felt like a big noose around my neck and an anchor tied to my ankles. It was over $4,000. I had $5, and she needed a lot more than that.
I crumpled under the demand. Until this point I was holding it all together. My stress was contained, making continuous restricted u-turns inside my head, inside my abdomen, through my limbs. But the impossibility of what this $4,000 meant unraveled me and I began to cry. The emotion escaped out of me in a giant exhale, but the inhale was a sob as well. I stood up and walked away as expressing emotion is considered a sign of weakness, and the extent of my tears in public was a social disgrace upon all of us. Not only had I caused all of us to grovel in these unpleasentries but i was bringing us into another level of humiliation by my inability to stop crying.
The harder I tried to pull myself together, the more I plunged into a well of despair. I was planning on leaving Taiwan, returning home to resume the life that was waiting for me. But I made an agreement to hold up my end and i wanted them to know that.
The interpreter walked over to me and put her hand on my shoulder, then ushered me over to a pathway which wound itself through a small intercity park. She reached up and rubbed my back with her tiny hand. She suggested we take a little walk. Mrs. Yin would wait.
By this point, I was snotty and full of post-crying hiccups. She tried to entice me in to small-talk, about how I like Taiwan and how she had spent some time in Los Angeles. She asked me how my boyfriend was and how he was liking Taiwan. I broke down again and told her he was back at home, waiting for me.
"You mean he doesn't live here?"
I shook my head No.
"Oh." She said, wondering.
"I'm trying to go home, as soon as possible." and then I launched in to my drama, which was propelled by a true desire to pay back the money. "I want to let you know, that I will pay back the debt I owe to Mrs. Yin." With five measly dollars, it seemed insurmountable. "But i have to be honest. I don't have much. Right now."
"Well I am sure something can be worked out. Maybe you can pay half of it now and half of it later?"
She really didn't understand.
"When I say I don't have much, I mean, I have very little to give back right now." I could feel my lip quivering and her hand went back on my shoulder.
"I know, these accidents. They can be expensive. I got in one last month and I owe A LOT of money."
I saw her lament on her unfortunate situation and forget me for a moment.
"I will give her every last penny, but as of today, I am going to have to get some money to do that." I started to scramble for ideas of how to pay back this debt. "I can sell my scooter. That is $600. And I'll be getting some paychecks soon, I can give that to her. But this is going to take awhile."
She listened as I became more and more pathetic with each step we took. She realized that I had truly NOTHING to give and I was scrambling to dig up something of value to offer back. "Lets go back and you can work something out with Mrs. Yin."
I didn't make eye contact with anyone as the interpreter explained my current situation. I could smell Mrs. Yin's perfume wafting through the cool breeze, past my hot sweaty face and my sticky body. I felt slovenly, also big and exposed and unable to hide, like a grotesque wart. I wanted so badly to NOT feel this way, to be able to give back something, anything.
She mmmm'ed while the interpreter and the lawyer talked. She held a quiet power.
I was adding up how many months worth of work it would take to get her the money but my thoughts were interrupted by silence.
The interpreter waited for me to look up and began. "Having an accident is very common and very costly here which is why people must be very careful when they drive scooter. Like I told you, I had an accident which has cost me a lot, and my friends have all had accidents and they weren't so lucky either. I have never heard of a situation ending like this, but Mrs. Yin would like me to tell you that you owe her nothing."
I was dumbfounded, then ashamed, then painfully aware of how unworthy I felt. I didn't have a response, because I was taken completely off-guard. I wanted to pay her back. I couldn't understand this gift. This woman didn't know me. I had caused considerable damage to her very functional and good-looking expensive car. I had taken time out of her life, made her hire an interpreter and a lawyer, and embarrassed her in public with my melt-down.
"Nothing?"
"Nothing. She says your debt is erased."
I went home that night and ascended the stairs back to the rooftop, where I spent more time in prayer and a lot of time crying. Only this time, my burden had lifted and had been replaced with gratitude. Gratitude floated me up to the spot where just a day earlier dread had kept me bound.
I have never connected to the reality of God's grace as I did that night; of his free abounding love, of his desire for us to seek him first so he can lead us in his way, of his deep empathy and forgiveness. I have never known what it feels like, experientially, to have your debt erased. This was money and it affected me profoundly. Some of us live our entire lives, amidst God but with our back turned towards Him and our eyes and minds focused on titillating fruitless endeavors, like trying to wade through this mess on our own. When God says that he can free us from sin, this is what he means. He can free us from the times when we get ourselves stuck. He can free us from the life that we have stuck ourselves in. He is a practical God, a God who delivers, a God who turns rocks of despair into seeds of life.
We must show up and do our part. Our part, is believing God will show up. It is having faith. We must have faith. God will work wonders with the impossibilities that lie before you.
And while I've been sitting here I've been having flashes, of times and places in my life where God has shone through in truly extraordinary ways. And as a person who believes that God is readily available to each and every one of us at any moment, this should be the case. God is extraordinary so His ways must be also. I am moved to document the grace that has been shown to me.
Taiwan: Teaching English: Love the kids: Hate lesson planning so I wing it every day in class by telling stories: 23 years old: Living in a big congested city: Having fun with all my girlfriends but homesick and confused and on an emotional roller coaster:
My boyfriend at the time flies across the world to ask if I'll marry him. I say yes. He has 5 days to spend in Taiwan. I put him on the back of my scooter and try to show off- driving haphazardly and paying attention to very little. I haven't learned what the road signs mean and I don't really care. I'm unlicensed and a bit too cocky. We get hit by a car and it is entirely my fault. After slamming into the car's windshield I fly through the air and my body smacks in to the asphalt. His does too. Very intense surges of adrenaline are releasing and it numbs my pain. I worry about our engagement when the first thing I think is NOT "i hope he's alive" but... "how am I going to get back to Africa if I'm in a wheelchair?" An ambulance rushes us to hospital. We are both relatively OK. A few days later he leaves and I get an unexpected phone local from a Taiwanese woman.
"Hello, is this the girl who was hit last week?"
"Yes. It is."
"Oh okay. We are very sorry about that! Are you okay now?"
"I'm fine, thanks. Who is this?"
"I am calling on behalf of Mrs. Yin. I am her interpreter. She doesn't speak English. Mrs. Yin is the woman who hit you."
"Ohhhh." I covered the phone and mouthed to my girlfriend 'it's-the-lady-who-hit-me!' and she cringes. Accidents with foreigners in Taiwan are far too common. At each potluck, or party, or gathering, there was always somebody wrapped up in some cast showing off their road rash. Everyone knew it was not a matter of if, but when. And tales had been told of accidents gone bad, both physically and financially. Some ex-pats advise to play the dumb foreigner card and hang up when they try to contact you. They would never find you in the sea of city life, and to them all white people look the same.
I went to Taiwan for a few reasons, and one was to make money. But somehow that was not happening. I had $5 in my bank account. But I didn't hang up.
"Yes, Mrs. Yin would like to meet with you, regarding the accident."
"Okay." I responded.
"When is a good time for you?"
I was unprepared and being lured in to uncomfortable territory.
I offered up an answer while looking at my girlfriend. "Nights?"
"We will come and meet you because I can assume that you are not driving your scooter right now."
"Correct."
"Are you able to walk?"
"Yes."
"Okay. The police report said you live close to Wuchuan. There is a restaurant across the street. Would you like to meet outside of the restaurant tomorrow at 7?"
"Sure."
"Then we will be there at 7. It will be me, Mrs. Yin, and a lawyer. See you then. Goodbye."
When I heard the dial tone my stomach twisted. The conversation was like a hammer pounding in my recent feelings of complete lack of control and anxiety, about everything in my life. I looked at my girlfriend and she offered up two words of advice. "Don't go."
I opened the front door of the 8th floor apartment and walked the staircase to the roof of the building. I looked out over the city. I looked up at the stars. I thought about my $5.
"Don't go." The words echoed, but they didn't resonate.
I stared back out over the city. There is something incredibly calming about rooftops. Calming, and also lonely. I didn't like the lonely part, so i prayed "God. Help. I don't know what to do."
and I waited. and then i prayed some more.
the city faded away and a simple awareness abounded, it said;
it is all going to be just fine, just do your job.
at that point my job was very clear. i needed to show up at 7 the next night, and i needed to take responsibility.
I was on the bench, outside the restaurant, waiting nervously like i was on a blind date. I stared expectantly at each group of passerby's, and waited for some mutual hint of recognition. i sat, then i stood, trying to look friendly and composed. if at that moment i had a magic power i would have used it to be back at home- in California- far away from where i was and far away from how i was feeling. i was awaiting my fate amidst the interrogative glow of Asian street life.
and then, i saw them. Mrs. Yin and the interpreter, clinking down the pavement with shiny hair, lips, and purses. Even their pants glowed with wealth. They were polished women on a mission, and they were aiming for me. I suddenly became aware of my messy hair and ripped up jeans.
I walked up to them and extended my hand. They nodded and smiled and shook it, but Mrs. Yin held an expression of reservation that reminded me of our purpose.
A beefy man in a business suit walked out from inside of the restaurant and came straight over to us. He had a briefcase and slicked hair and motioned for us to all sit down on the bench and so that is what we did.
The interpreter stood up and began to talk. "The reason we are here tonight is to discuss the accident. I am here to listen and to help you two come to an agreement for compensation. If there is anything you need to say please feel free to say it and I will tell Mrs. Yin, and she will do the same."
"Okay."
There was a smattering of words, between the lawyer, the interpreter, and Mrs. Yin, and they passed a clipboard back and forth between each other pointing at numbers and phrases. The caricatures meant nothing to me so I waited until the clipboard eventually made it into my lap.
The interpreter pointed to the number circled. "This here is the cost of repairs from the damage you caused her car."
The figure meant nothing to me. It wasn't in dollars and I had yet to convert that high of a sum in any encounter since I had entered the country. I had no emotional response, just a perplexed expression and the memory that it was a Mercedes-Benz that hit me.
"In Taiwan, when a person causes an accident it is up to them to take care of the costs incurred by the accident."
I nodded.
"And do you agree that the accident was your fault?"
Take responsibility. "Yes, I agree."
"Okay, then do you agree that you will pay for this? What we have listed here is the list of the repairs she had to have done to her bumper, her hood, and her windshield."
"Yes. I agree."
The lawyer handed over a document.
"Can you please sign this?"
"I can't read what it says. And if we can just step back a moment and if you can tell me how much money this is that I owe... in dollars..."
The group was having difficulty in the conversion, as we rustled through our bags and pulled out calculators and cell phones and scribbled mathematical equations on backs of papers. After a few minutes, when we all reached the same amount, the reality of the situation began to settle in heavy. My poverty, my stupidity, this massive amount of money that felt like a big noose around my neck and an anchor tied to my ankles. It was over $4,000. I had $5, and she needed a lot more than that.
I crumpled under the demand. Until this point I was holding it all together. My stress was contained, making continuous restricted u-turns inside my head, inside my abdomen, through my limbs. But the impossibility of what this $4,000 meant unraveled me and I began to cry. The emotion escaped out of me in a giant exhale, but the inhale was a sob as well. I stood up and walked away as expressing emotion is considered a sign of weakness, and the extent of my tears in public was a social disgrace upon all of us. Not only had I caused all of us to grovel in these unpleasentries but i was bringing us into another level of humiliation by my inability to stop crying.
The harder I tried to pull myself together, the more I plunged into a well of despair. I was planning on leaving Taiwan, returning home to resume the life that was waiting for me. But I made an agreement to hold up my end and i wanted them to know that.
The interpreter walked over to me and put her hand on my shoulder, then ushered me over to a pathway which wound itself through a small intercity park. She reached up and rubbed my back with her tiny hand. She suggested we take a little walk. Mrs. Yin would wait.
By this point, I was snotty and full of post-crying hiccups. She tried to entice me in to small-talk, about how I like Taiwan and how she had spent some time in Los Angeles. She asked me how my boyfriend was and how he was liking Taiwan. I broke down again and told her he was back at home, waiting for me.
"You mean he doesn't live here?"
I shook my head No.
"Oh." She said, wondering.
"I'm trying to go home, as soon as possible." and then I launched in to my drama, which was propelled by a true desire to pay back the money. "I want to let you know, that I will pay back the debt I owe to Mrs. Yin." With five measly dollars, it seemed insurmountable. "But i have to be honest. I don't have much. Right now."
"Well I am sure something can be worked out. Maybe you can pay half of it now and half of it later?"
She really didn't understand.
"When I say I don't have much, I mean, I have very little to give back right now." I could feel my lip quivering and her hand went back on my shoulder.
"I know, these accidents. They can be expensive. I got in one last month and I owe A LOT of money."
I saw her lament on her unfortunate situation and forget me for a moment.
"I will give her every last penny, but as of today, I am going to have to get some money to do that." I started to scramble for ideas of how to pay back this debt. "I can sell my scooter. That is $600. And I'll be getting some paychecks soon, I can give that to her. But this is going to take awhile."
She listened as I became more and more pathetic with each step we took. She realized that I had truly NOTHING to give and I was scrambling to dig up something of value to offer back. "Lets go back and you can work something out with Mrs. Yin."
I didn't make eye contact with anyone as the interpreter explained my current situation. I could smell Mrs. Yin's perfume wafting through the cool breeze, past my hot sweaty face and my sticky body. I felt slovenly, also big and exposed and unable to hide, like a grotesque wart. I wanted so badly to NOT feel this way, to be able to give back something, anything.
She mmmm'ed while the interpreter and the lawyer talked. She held a quiet power.
I was adding up how many months worth of work it would take to get her the money but my thoughts were interrupted by silence.
The interpreter waited for me to look up and began. "Having an accident is very common and very costly here which is why people must be very careful when they drive scooter. Like I told you, I had an accident which has cost me a lot, and my friends have all had accidents and they weren't so lucky either. I have never heard of a situation ending like this, but Mrs. Yin would like me to tell you that you owe her nothing."
I was dumbfounded, then ashamed, then painfully aware of how unworthy I felt. I didn't have a response, because I was taken completely off-guard. I wanted to pay her back. I couldn't understand this gift. This woman didn't know me. I had caused considerable damage to her very functional and good-looking expensive car. I had taken time out of her life, made her hire an interpreter and a lawyer, and embarrassed her in public with my melt-down.
"Nothing?"
"Nothing. She says your debt is erased."
I went home that night and ascended the stairs back to the rooftop, where I spent more time in prayer and a lot of time crying. Only this time, my burden had lifted and had been replaced with gratitude. Gratitude floated me up to the spot where just a day earlier dread had kept me bound.
I have never connected to the reality of God's grace as I did that night; of his free abounding love, of his desire for us to seek him first so he can lead us in his way, of his deep empathy and forgiveness. I have never known what it feels like, experientially, to have your debt erased. This was money and it affected me profoundly. Some of us live our entire lives, amidst God but with our back turned towards Him and our eyes and minds focused on titillating fruitless endeavors, like trying to wade through this mess on our own. When God says that he can free us from sin, this is what he means. He can free us from the times when we get ourselves stuck. He can free us from the life that we have stuck ourselves in. He is a practical God, a God who delivers, a God who turns rocks of despair into seeds of life.
We must show up and do our part. Our part, is believing God will show up. It is having faith. We must have faith. God will work wonders with the impossibilities that lie before you.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Davids Mantra
I have a friend in Ghana and his name is David. He is a soft soul, easy to be around, someone who makes life feel fluffy and free. He lives in the village and was hired on as administrative staff at the Huttel Health Center during my second stay. I used to wake up early in the morning (my room was in the birth center), before any patients had arrived, before any of the nurses began work, and spend a peaceful hour in the waiting room doing yoga, looking through the screen walls at the thick crops and mango trees just outside. Mid-session David would ride up on his bike, smiling from ear-to-ear, park, jump off, and mosey over.
"Gooood mooooorning..." He'd whisper, and walk away.
I loved these mornings, mostly, because I was falling in love with a new part of life.
I have never been a morning person, or so that is what I believed. But heat penetrated the village, intensely, by 9:00 a.m. and I had to change my ways. I had to wake up.
Now I must admit. I have always secretly admired morning people, I think all night owls do. I have always felt they held a special exuberance, deeper insight, greater peace, but I figured losing the extra hours of sleep in the morning was just not worth it so I passed it off as an annoying perkiness.
Environmental factors soon forced me to change my ways. Each morning, gentle waves of heat began to layer upon me, coaxing me to leave my sweat soaked sheets and buck up, to try something new.
At first, it was enough to just be upright by 6 a.m.
That, to me, was a major success.
Villagers are morning people. And the type of morning where nature is still quiet and the sun has not risen. Deep morning. What I would argue to be, night.
"You sleep too much!" They'd say.
"What do you mean?"
"I came to your room yesterday, to say hello, and you did not answer. You were sleeping! Ah Akua, by that time, the morning was gone. It was 7 already. Why do you sleep like you are a lazy baby?"
So I began my new habit. I began early rising. And friends started to visit. And I hated it.
I hated having to talk, to think, to form words and sentences and make actual conversation. I found when I did yoga, people would leave me alone, confer with one another that I was doing my "exercise" and should not be bothered, and continue walking home with that mornings enormous harvest balancing on top of their heads. But David was different.
"Goooood mooooooorning..." He would whisper, again, the next day and the one after. A two-word offering, never expecting much in return.
His daily salutation brought me a lot of joy. I would internalize it, the sweet hum of his voice, and repeat it over and over. I would move through my poses, breathing and arching and bending and reflecting: I am awake... and alive... and this IS a good morning. I am awake... and alive... and this is a GOOD morning. I am awake... and alive... and this is a good MORNING?!
The world has a lot to offer at 6 a.m. that can not be had at 9 a.m., bits of passing existence that feed the soul. Like mist, and children running by with buckets to fetch water for their daily bath before school.
David became a conduit, a sage, speaking truth and simplicity in to each of my days through something potentially mundane as a greeting. I usually only offered him a faint smile back, or a little 'hi', or a wave of my fingertips. And he would walk away happily, undoubtedly unaware of the soft impression he had just made.
"Gooood mooooorning..." He'd whisper, and walk away.
I loved these mornings, mostly, because I was falling in love with a new part of life.
I have never been a morning person, or so that is what I believed. But heat penetrated the village, intensely, by 9:00 a.m. and I had to change my ways. I had to wake up.
Now I must admit. I have always secretly admired morning people, I think all night owls do. I have always felt they held a special exuberance, deeper insight, greater peace, but I figured losing the extra hours of sleep in the morning was just not worth it so I passed it off as an annoying perkiness.
Environmental factors soon forced me to change my ways. Each morning, gentle waves of heat began to layer upon me, coaxing me to leave my sweat soaked sheets and buck up, to try something new.
At first, it was enough to just be upright by 6 a.m.
That, to me, was a major success.
Villagers are morning people. And the type of morning where nature is still quiet and the sun has not risen. Deep morning. What I would argue to be, night.
"You sleep too much!" They'd say.
"What do you mean?"
"I came to your room yesterday, to say hello, and you did not answer. You were sleeping! Ah Akua, by that time, the morning was gone. It was 7 already. Why do you sleep like you are a lazy baby?"
So I began my new habit. I began early rising. And friends started to visit. And I hated it.
I hated having to talk, to think, to form words and sentences and make actual conversation. I found when I did yoga, people would leave me alone, confer with one another that I was doing my "exercise" and should not be bothered, and continue walking home with that mornings enormous harvest balancing on top of their heads. But David was different.
"Goooood mooooooorning..." He would whisper, again, the next day and the one after. A two-word offering, never expecting much in return.
His daily salutation brought me a lot of joy. I would internalize it, the sweet hum of his voice, and repeat it over and over. I would move through my poses, breathing and arching and bending and reflecting: I am awake... and alive... and this IS a good morning. I am awake... and alive... and this is a GOOD morning. I am awake... and alive... and this is a good MORNING?!
The world has a lot to offer at 6 a.m. that can not be had at 9 a.m., bits of passing existence that feed the soul. Like mist, and children running by with buckets to fetch water for their daily bath before school.
David became a conduit, a sage, speaking truth and simplicity in to each of my days through something potentially mundane as a greeting. I usually only offered him a faint smile back, or a little 'hi', or a wave of my fingertips. And he would walk away happily, undoubtedly unaware of the soft impression he had just made.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Lessons from a Mockingbird
In the 11 months that I have been working this job, I have had to move my office 4 times. To me, this seems like a lot and I am tired of these transitions. They are starting to make me feel underappreciated, like I am Ms. Mobile who doesn't care where she works. And frankly, I finally got an office with a window (I never thought this would be what I would write about!) and I was quite happy with it.
And then last week, I was told we had just hired a new employee.
"Great!" I said, "Where are they moving me?"
I was being sarcastic, but then my coworker pointed out the door and across the building. To the windowless room that bakes in the summer.
I went home that day angry.
My client's don't even know where to look for me anymore, I am like that hard-to-find easter egg or the lost sock employee. If I wasn't trying to get them jobs they would have probably given up on me. Every time they call I have to give them new directions. "Upstairs, I'm upstairs now. On the other side! In the back!"
They see me and laugh. They're refugees, I'm sure they understand. Impermanence, for some part of their life, is what defined them.
I'm rather talented with the move now. I can do it quickly, and once I'm settled in my chair I look like I've been in that particular office forever. I smile, swivel around, type, have pictures hanging. But I decided, perhaps I am too good and it is working against me.
This time I put up as much of a fight as I know how. I went in to Jimmy's office and told him how extremely unprofessional it is to move around this frequently. He shrugged his shoulders and said "Yeah, well..."
I wanted to be firm and say "I'd prefer for this next move to be my last, thank you very much" But I didn't want to get stuck in the sauna forever.
On my drive home that night I sulked, and when I pulled up to my house I noticed something different. All our plants had been hacked. We had scheduled a "cut-back" of the overgrowth in our yard, but from what I was noticing this was men-gone-crazy-with-chainsaws.
Workers emerged from my backyard pulling huge limbs and trash cans full of our once beautiful flowering pink bushes. When I went back to look at the landscaping, it was stark and depressing. Our lush sky-high bamboo had been trimmed to an inch off the ground. The pink bush was gone. The trees no longer had leaves, or branches, or anything really. For some reason, they weedwacked the remaining bit of the lettuce heads in my garden, as if those needed serious tending to.
A trim job gone awry is an affront to the soul. This yard would take years to grow back.
I went inside pissed off, and moments later deflated. Kicked out of my office again, and now this.
I found my yoga mat and went to my front porch. I unrolled it and sat down. I knew I didn't actually want to do yoga, but for some reason I wanted to be in a bad mood on my mat. Its a great place for a bad mood because subconsciously perhaps I believed my mat was magical, that it wouldn't allow bad moods to sit on it, and would somehow transform me. I stretched a little and noticed a mockingbird. I watched it jump around and cock it's head to the side. It hopped to the base of my steps and looked up at me, then picked up a tiny twig between its beak and jumped away.
I kept stretching.
Another bird emerged and grabbed a stick, then looked at me and flew up in to the only tree that remained untouched and unscathed, a cactus tree.
An array of homeless birds began to encircle, their nests scattered on the ground beneath the thinned out tree. Their springtime homes, once so full and reliable, where now as useful as tumbleweeds. The longer I sat there and the more birds I saw, the sadder I got.
I felt their pain.
All that hard work and all that time they had invested meant nothing. Their place was gone.
A few of them were making new nests already, in the most undesirable spot I could imagine. Nestled between the sharp points protruding from the cactus tree, little corrals of sticks began to be laid down.
These birds were moving on, looking ahead. I didn't see them sulking. Nope.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes and this is when I noticed, they weren't just rebuilding their lives with what they had- but they were singing melodies while they did it.
And then last week, I was told we had just hired a new employee.
"Great!" I said, "Where are they moving me?"
I was being sarcastic, but then my coworker pointed out the door and across the building. To the windowless room that bakes in the summer.
I went home that day angry.
My client's don't even know where to look for me anymore, I am like that hard-to-find easter egg or the lost sock employee. If I wasn't trying to get them jobs they would have probably given up on me. Every time they call I have to give them new directions. "Upstairs, I'm upstairs now. On the other side! In the back!"
They see me and laugh. They're refugees, I'm sure they understand. Impermanence, for some part of their life, is what defined them.
I'm rather talented with the move now. I can do it quickly, and once I'm settled in my chair I look like I've been in that particular office forever. I smile, swivel around, type, have pictures hanging. But I decided, perhaps I am too good and it is working against me.
This time I put up as much of a fight as I know how. I went in to Jimmy's office and told him how extremely unprofessional it is to move around this frequently. He shrugged his shoulders and said "Yeah, well..."
I wanted to be firm and say "I'd prefer for this next move to be my last, thank you very much" But I didn't want to get stuck in the sauna forever.
On my drive home that night I sulked, and when I pulled up to my house I noticed something different. All our plants had been hacked. We had scheduled a "cut-back" of the overgrowth in our yard, but from what I was noticing this was men-gone-crazy-with-chainsaws.
Workers emerged from my backyard pulling huge limbs and trash cans full of our once beautiful flowering pink bushes. When I went back to look at the landscaping, it was stark and depressing. Our lush sky-high bamboo had been trimmed to an inch off the ground. The pink bush was gone. The trees no longer had leaves, or branches, or anything really. For some reason, they weedwacked the remaining bit of the lettuce heads in my garden, as if those needed serious tending to.
A trim job gone awry is an affront to the soul. This yard would take years to grow back.
I went inside pissed off, and moments later deflated. Kicked out of my office again, and now this.
I found my yoga mat and went to my front porch. I unrolled it and sat down. I knew I didn't actually want to do yoga, but for some reason I wanted to be in a bad mood on my mat. Its a great place for a bad mood because subconsciously perhaps I believed my mat was magical, that it wouldn't allow bad moods to sit on it, and would somehow transform me. I stretched a little and noticed a mockingbird. I watched it jump around and cock it's head to the side. It hopped to the base of my steps and looked up at me, then picked up a tiny twig between its beak and jumped away.
I kept stretching.
Another bird emerged and grabbed a stick, then looked at me and flew up in to the only tree that remained untouched and unscathed, a cactus tree.
An array of homeless birds began to encircle, their nests scattered on the ground beneath the thinned out tree. Their springtime homes, once so full and reliable, where now as useful as tumbleweeds. The longer I sat there and the more birds I saw, the sadder I got.
I felt their pain.
All that hard work and all that time they had invested meant nothing. Their place was gone.
A few of them were making new nests already, in the most undesirable spot I could imagine. Nestled between the sharp points protruding from the cactus tree, little corrals of sticks began to be laid down.
These birds were moving on, looking ahead. I didn't see them sulking. Nope.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes and this is when I noticed, they weren't just rebuilding their lives with what they had- but they were singing melodies while they did it.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Sealed with a kiss
I just turned 28 and... this one... it feels good. Birthdays are funny like that. Sometimes you can actually feel them, the year ahead of you is more tangible than elusive, just as real as the texture of the shirt or jacket you put on before you leave the house. Each year has a different sensation, tailor-made and delivered that morning as a complete surprise.
We American's tend to be very overdramatic about our birthdays, myself included. We have golden birthdays, over the hill birthdays, sweet sixteens, our "21st" or "30th" or "60th" or "80th". We get a lot of presents and throw large parties.
When I was living in Boamadumase i asked a few people about their birthdays and they usually responded with their birth months. "The day?" I'd ask, "Don't you know the day?"
They'd shrug and say sometime in June, or maybe July. They just couldn't remember. The people who did remember didn't seem to mention anything about gifts, and when asked, they replied that "Yes, on your birthday, you get gifts." However, my village friends birthdays' passed with no gift openings.
Most of my refugee client's share the same birthday, that is, 01/01/approximate the year. When refugees are granted refugee status and begin to go through the immigration process to move in to the United States, one of the many markers of identity they leave behind is legal recognition of their true day of birth. They usually don't have birth certificates. But many of them don't seem to mind. Like boxed cold milk handed out to hungry kids in the cafeteria, 01/01/fill in the year seems to be the ubiquitous choice as a refugee's birthday, and many of them take it gladly.
This year I wanted my birthday to be simple, but fun. I went to school, and I went to work for a few short hours. Then I met up with a man, a pastor, who volunteers full time at our refugee resettlement agency. His name is Dan. When I called him to see where he was he said, "We're at the beach," referring to himself and his wife and a gaggle of African children. "Well, the bay really. Just take the Coronado bridge, were right at the bottom, there's a park and a long stretch of sand."
"Okay, I'll be there."
When I pulled up it was quite a sight. They had transported, in their church bus, 19 children of all ages, fit them with bathing suits of all sizes, and let them loose into the stagnant chilled water of the Coronado Bay. A bike pathway lined the edges of the grass, and the grassy hill overlooked the water. Bike riders slowed down, swiveling their heads in confusion while trying not to run in to one another. 19 children ran up and down the sandy stretch, burying each other underneath huge white mounds, playing soccer and spraying up sand in all directions, dolphin jumping in the water, or secretly trying to crawl in to people's private canoes.
I stood at the shoreline, experiencing a very strange sensation of forgetting which country I was in. When I looked ahead of me it was Ghana, when I looked behind me, the U.S.
Dan and his wife sat inconspicuously underneath an umbrella, chatting and relaxing.
A few girls yelled my name and ran up to me, and slung their lanky wet bodies on my arm. They were two of the six children of John Opendi, a very tall boisterous Kenyan man I have been trying to help find a job for quite some time now. He and his Sudanese wife live in a 2 bedroom apartment with their entire family. Whenever I do a home visit I never leave hungry. They are true Africans.
The first time I was there I tried to wiggle out of the living room before the food was served. I could smell it cooking, beef and onions and tomatoes simmering from the huge pot on the oven. It changed the humidity of the room- from dry, to delicious. I was hungry but I didn't want to be rude. I didn't want to decrease portion sizes by adding myself in to the equation, so I thanked them for their time and stood up to leave.
John yelled out. "HUH! Ah! Kacie, sit. Sit, please. Don't you want to enjoy the food with us?"
"It's okay." I said, uncertain as to which cultural code I should be operating under. An American visitor "imposing" is a Ghanaian visitor being polite. To drop in and eat a meal (in San Diego) one must first refuse, to show appreciation and to test the authenticity of the invitation. My refusal to John and Mary was offensive.
And the food looked good.
"Sure sure sure- I'll stay! Of course I'll stay. Oh it looks incredible!"
They sat me back down and Mary took care of every detail, as African wives do. She poured our water glasses, handed out napkins, distributed plates with sliced oranges on each. John intercepted to increase his portion size. And I dug in to mine hands first.
"You eat like an African. You know how to eat ugali?"
"Ya. I love ugali."
"Look at this Mary, she is eating like an African. I haven't seen this, you know. I went to a dinner last Saturday. It was a dinner and Mary cooked for some Whites, and they did not eat the ugali. It was the African's who ate the ugali. But look, you are almost finished."
"It's good," i said, between mouthfuls. "What about the children? Aren't they coming?"
Mary rolled her eyes and turned her head away. "Pfh! Since we have come here they have stopped eating this food. I call them to eat and they don't come."
"In Africa" John continued "you do not have to convince people to eat. You call, they come. But here..."
Mary pointed to the boxed cereals on top of her fridge. Puffed processed food. "They prefer that."
"So I can have more?" I asked, selfishly but knowing they would be pleased.
"YES! Oh please, continue."
"And they eat at school. They like that food too." Mary said.
"So when do they eat your food?" I asked.
"When we call, and they come, that is the time they will eat. As for the times they do not come, they do not eat. It is as simple as that."
John yelled out their names and not one emerged from the back room.
I took a third helping.
Now, at the beach, remembering my time and conversation with John and Mary, I looked at their girls in the bathing suits. They looked healthy, and strong. More shivering children began to circle around me. I could only recognize half of them, but I wanted to know them all. So we sat down in the sand and I tried to figure it out.
"You are..." I'd point.
"Happiness." She said.
"And is this your sister?" I asked, motioning to a miniature version of herself. They both tucked their chins and looked up.
"I'm Destiny." the little one whispered.
"Nice to meet you Happiness and Destiny."
Many of their parents were (or are) my clients, however I had yet to meet the children. Generally they are at school during office hours. I was completing my own personal version of a human jigsaw puzzle. It was intensely satisfying.
"So your father is Miguel" I asked the pudgy 10 year old in a tight bikini.
"Yes."
After a lot of hard work from both Miguel and myself, he is now employed at a Casino. "Next time we talk I will tell him what great swimming you did today!"
She smiled.
"And who are your parents?" I put my hand on the shoulder of two girls I had not ever seen, and didn't yet know.
"Our mother is dead." she stated, sweetly, eerily. The control over her response and the peace in her voice made her seem wiser than her years, of which I would guess were about nine.
"Oh."
The group, in a circle, sitting in the sand, stayed quiet. It was up to me to continue. "When did she die?"
"Last year, she died in Nevada."
Subconsciously my mind would not accept that fact.
"In Nevada?"
"Yes, she died last year in Nevada."
The story didn't sit well with me, only because when I asked when they arrived to the States and when their mother died it was roughly around the same time. I didn't want to believe that she had struggled as a refugee only to make it to the U.S. and perish.
"I am really sorry to hear that."
She dug her toes in to the sand.
Later, when Dan's wife had called the children up to the grassy area to congregate and eat lemon cookies I stood with Dan as they all ran past us. We admired the potency of their energy.
"Did you see Selvany's arm?" He asked.
"It's crazy."
"I've never seen anything like it before. I guess it was hurt it in Sierra Leone and they never got it fixed. Now his mom doesn't want to send him to the doctor here. She wants to just keep it as it is."
"Like a big noodle?"
"Yeah. I guess."
Selvany's arm was injured at the elbow. It looks as if there is no joint keeping his forearm and his arm from hyperextending. He can rotate his entire limb in a complete circle at the shoulder and at the elbow. It is actually too bizarre to accurately explain. "Some doctors checked it out and were really excited about it" he said "they were all talking about how they never get to see anything like that here."
I laughed.
We glanced back down at the water and saw two girls running up to join in the cookie fun. We watched them until they ran past us then Dan broke the silence. "They're mom died up in Nevada last year."
"That's what they were telling me."
"Oh really? What did they say?"
"Just that, exactly."
"Huh. Well at least they're talking about it a little. It was really awful. Her uterus was ruptured during an abortion."
"WHAT?"
"Yeah." He shook his head.
An image of a coat hanger flashed in my mind, and of too many familiar stories I witnessed while working at the Huttel Health Clinic.
"She did it herself?"
"No, no, no. She didn't do it herself. We don't think she even wanted one. It's a really sad story. Some abortion doctor, he ruptured her uterus while he was giving her an abortion. Can you believe that? There is a law suit now. I went up there when I heard this story, up to Nevada, this was right when I started volunteering at Alliance. This story was enough to get anyone in to this-" and he waved his hands through the air, meaning, in to the lives of San Diego refugees. "Any way, it was bad. Her family said there was no way she would have wanted an abortion, she was glad to be pregnant. She was going for a check-up and we think he either explained it to her and had her agree to something she didn't understand... or just did it. The details of the story with this doctor are very blurry and nothing seems right. So we started a law suit, that's kinda how I got started with all of this."
My mind raced, I was more than interested to know the truth of the situation. Truth without agenda. If it was as Dan said, a racist abortion doctor abusing the powerless, I was angry and frustrated by how far mankind had failed to progress. If in fact, it was not as Dan said, then I was tired of people manipulating the powerless to rally for their cause, even if in this case the cause was Life.
I know Dan is a very strong Christian and his mission field is the refugee families of San Diego. He is a constant reminder to me that I need not travel far to be of big help. I see his love for the refugee community spring forth in the million ways he dies to himself and serves other people, daily. Moment by moment. He strolls through our offices and sweeps up little messes of unglamourous work, like a true silent hero.
"Dan, I have this client and he really needs help filling out his 10 year work history for an online application. I can't do it this morning, do you have the time?"
"Sure, I can do that."
"Thank you so much! Oh, and watch out, his breath is, let me just call it... powerful today. Stand back."
If i began a list of all that Dan and his wife contribute I may never be able to stop. They are a blessing.
I walked over to the group of cookie monsters and told them good-bye. I had to leave early to meet up with my mother. As I walked to my car Esther shouted my name and came bouncing my way. "Kacie why didn't you tell us today is your birthday?"
I laughed. "Oh, I don't know."
"You should have told us today was your birthday!"
I didn't want to fish for happy birthdays from a bunch of kids whom I assumed didn't even celebrate their own.
"Come here!" she ordered.
I walked over the prickly grass and stood in front of her. She jumped up and swung her arms around my head and hung from my neck. "Happy Birthday. I love you so much." Then she let go and ran away.
I turned back towards my car and couldn't help but giggle and then I heard another "KACIE!!!"
This time another one of my client's children came bounding in my direction. "You didn't tell us it was your Happy Birthday?!"
She wrapped her arms around my waist and squeezed tight. Then she motioned for me to bend down and gave me a big kiss on my nose. "We love you! Happy Birthday!" And she sprinted back to her friends.
As I drove over the bridge I looked down at the beach, at the water, and smiled. Maybe I was wrong, I thought. Maybe birthday's are a big deal. And perhaps, the birthday girl never opens gifts, she only receives them.
We American's tend to be very overdramatic about our birthdays, myself included. We have golden birthdays, over the hill birthdays, sweet sixteens, our "21st" or "30th" or "60th" or "80th". We get a lot of presents and throw large parties.
When I was living in Boamadumase i asked a few people about their birthdays and they usually responded with their birth months. "The day?" I'd ask, "Don't you know the day?"
They'd shrug and say sometime in June, or maybe July. They just couldn't remember. The people who did remember didn't seem to mention anything about gifts, and when asked, they replied that "Yes, on your birthday, you get gifts." However, my village friends birthdays' passed with no gift openings.
Most of my refugee client's share the same birthday, that is, 01/01/approximate the year. When refugees are granted refugee status and begin to go through the immigration process to move in to the United States, one of the many markers of identity they leave behind is legal recognition of their true day of birth. They usually don't have birth certificates. But many of them don't seem to mind. Like boxed cold milk handed out to hungry kids in the cafeteria, 01/01/fill in the year seems to be the ubiquitous choice as a refugee's birthday, and many of them take it gladly.
This year I wanted my birthday to be simple, but fun. I went to school, and I went to work for a few short hours. Then I met up with a man, a pastor, who volunteers full time at our refugee resettlement agency. His name is Dan. When I called him to see where he was he said, "We're at the beach," referring to himself and his wife and a gaggle of African children. "Well, the bay really. Just take the Coronado bridge, were right at the bottom, there's a park and a long stretch of sand."
"Okay, I'll be there."
When I pulled up it was quite a sight. They had transported, in their church bus, 19 children of all ages, fit them with bathing suits of all sizes, and let them loose into the stagnant chilled water of the Coronado Bay. A bike pathway lined the edges of the grass, and the grassy hill overlooked the water. Bike riders slowed down, swiveling their heads in confusion while trying not to run in to one another. 19 children ran up and down the sandy stretch, burying each other underneath huge white mounds, playing soccer and spraying up sand in all directions, dolphin jumping in the water, or secretly trying to crawl in to people's private canoes.
I stood at the shoreline, experiencing a very strange sensation of forgetting which country I was in. When I looked ahead of me it was Ghana, when I looked behind me, the U.S.
Dan and his wife sat inconspicuously underneath an umbrella, chatting and relaxing.
A few girls yelled my name and ran up to me, and slung their lanky wet bodies on my arm. They were two of the six children of John Opendi, a very tall boisterous Kenyan man I have been trying to help find a job for quite some time now. He and his Sudanese wife live in a 2 bedroom apartment with their entire family. Whenever I do a home visit I never leave hungry. They are true Africans.
The first time I was there I tried to wiggle out of the living room before the food was served. I could smell it cooking, beef and onions and tomatoes simmering from the huge pot on the oven. It changed the humidity of the room- from dry, to delicious. I was hungry but I didn't want to be rude. I didn't want to decrease portion sizes by adding myself in to the equation, so I thanked them for their time and stood up to leave.
John yelled out. "HUH! Ah! Kacie, sit. Sit, please. Don't you want to enjoy the food with us?"
"It's okay." I said, uncertain as to which cultural code I should be operating under. An American visitor "imposing" is a Ghanaian visitor being polite. To drop in and eat a meal (in San Diego) one must first refuse, to show appreciation and to test the authenticity of the invitation. My refusal to John and Mary was offensive.
And the food looked good.
"Sure sure sure- I'll stay! Of course I'll stay. Oh it looks incredible!"
They sat me back down and Mary took care of every detail, as African wives do. She poured our water glasses, handed out napkins, distributed plates with sliced oranges on each. John intercepted to increase his portion size. And I dug in to mine hands first.
"You eat like an African. You know how to eat ugali?"
"Ya. I love ugali."
"Look at this Mary, she is eating like an African. I haven't seen this, you know. I went to a dinner last Saturday. It was a dinner and Mary cooked for some Whites, and they did not eat the ugali. It was the African's who ate the ugali. But look, you are almost finished."
"It's good," i said, between mouthfuls. "What about the children? Aren't they coming?"
Mary rolled her eyes and turned her head away. "Pfh! Since we have come here they have stopped eating this food. I call them to eat and they don't come."
"In Africa" John continued "you do not have to convince people to eat. You call, they come. But here..."
Mary pointed to the boxed cereals on top of her fridge. Puffed processed food. "They prefer that."
"So I can have more?" I asked, selfishly but knowing they would be pleased.
"YES! Oh please, continue."
"And they eat at school. They like that food too." Mary said.
"So when do they eat your food?" I asked.
"When we call, and they come, that is the time they will eat. As for the times they do not come, they do not eat. It is as simple as that."
John yelled out their names and not one emerged from the back room.
I took a third helping.
Now, at the beach, remembering my time and conversation with John and Mary, I looked at their girls in the bathing suits. They looked healthy, and strong. More shivering children began to circle around me. I could only recognize half of them, but I wanted to know them all. So we sat down in the sand and I tried to figure it out.
"You are..." I'd point.
"Happiness." She said.
"And is this your sister?" I asked, motioning to a miniature version of herself. They both tucked their chins and looked up.
"I'm Destiny." the little one whispered.
"Nice to meet you Happiness and Destiny."
Many of their parents were (or are) my clients, however I had yet to meet the children. Generally they are at school during office hours. I was completing my own personal version of a human jigsaw puzzle. It was intensely satisfying.
"So your father is Miguel" I asked the pudgy 10 year old in a tight bikini.
"Yes."
After a lot of hard work from both Miguel and myself, he is now employed at a Casino. "Next time we talk I will tell him what great swimming you did today!"
She smiled.
"And who are your parents?" I put my hand on the shoulder of two girls I had not ever seen, and didn't yet know.
"Our mother is dead." she stated, sweetly, eerily. The control over her response and the peace in her voice made her seem wiser than her years, of which I would guess were about nine.
"Oh."
The group, in a circle, sitting in the sand, stayed quiet. It was up to me to continue. "When did she die?"
"Last year, she died in Nevada."
Subconsciously my mind would not accept that fact.
"In Nevada?"
"Yes, she died last year in Nevada."
The story didn't sit well with me, only because when I asked when they arrived to the States and when their mother died it was roughly around the same time. I didn't want to believe that she had struggled as a refugee only to make it to the U.S. and perish.
"I am really sorry to hear that."
She dug her toes in to the sand.
Later, when Dan's wife had called the children up to the grassy area to congregate and eat lemon cookies I stood with Dan as they all ran past us. We admired the potency of their energy.
"Did you see Selvany's arm?" He asked.
"It's crazy."
"I've never seen anything like it before. I guess it was hurt it in Sierra Leone and they never got it fixed. Now his mom doesn't want to send him to the doctor here. She wants to just keep it as it is."
"Like a big noodle?"
"Yeah. I guess."
Selvany's arm was injured at the elbow. It looks as if there is no joint keeping his forearm and his arm from hyperextending. He can rotate his entire limb in a complete circle at the shoulder and at the elbow. It is actually too bizarre to accurately explain. "Some doctors checked it out and were really excited about it" he said "they were all talking about how they never get to see anything like that here."
I laughed.
We glanced back down at the water and saw two girls running up to join in the cookie fun. We watched them until they ran past us then Dan broke the silence. "They're mom died up in Nevada last year."
"That's what they were telling me."
"Oh really? What did they say?"
"Just that, exactly."
"Huh. Well at least they're talking about it a little. It was really awful. Her uterus was ruptured during an abortion."
"WHAT?"
"Yeah." He shook his head.
An image of a coat hanger flashed in my mind, and of too many familiar stories I witnessed while working at the Huttel Health Clinic.
"She did it herself?"
"No, no, no. She didn't do it herself. We don't think she even wanted one. It's a really sad story. Some abortion doctor, he ruptured her uterus while he was giving her an abortion. Can you believe that? There is a law suit now. I went up there when I heard this story, up to Nevada, this was right when I started volunteering at Alliance. This story was enough to get anyone in to this-" and he waved his hands through the air, meaning, in to the lives of San Diego refugees. "Any way, it was bad. Her family said there was no way she would have wanted an abortion, she was glad to be pregnant. She was going for a check-up and we think he either explained it to her and had her agree to something she didn't understand... or just did it. The details of the story with this doctor are very blurry and nothing seems right. So we started a law suit, that's kinda how I got started with all of this."
My mind raced, I was more than interested to know the truth of the situation. Truth without agenda. If it was as Dan said, a racist abortion doctor abusing the powerless, I was angry and frustrated by how far mankind had failed to progress. If in fact, it was not as Dan said, then I was tired of people manipulating the powerless to rally for their cause, even if in this case the cause was Life.
I know Dan is a very strong Christian and his mission field is the refugee families of San Diego. He is a constant reminder to me that I need not travel far to be of big help. I see his love for the refugee community spring forth in the million ways he dies to himself and serves other people, daily. Moment by moment. He strolls through our offices and sweeps up little messes of unglamourous work, like a true silent hero.
"Dan, I have this client and he really needs help filling out his 10 year work history for an online application. I can't do it this morning, do you have the time?"
"Sure, I can do that."
"Thank you so much! Oh, and watch out, his breath is, let me just call it... powerful today. Stand back."
If i began a list of all that Dan and his wife contribute I may never be able to stop. They are a blessing.
I walked over to the group of cookie monsters and told them good-bye. I had to leave early to meet up with my mother. As I walked to my car Esther shouted my name and came bouncing my way. "Kacie why didn't you tell us today is your birthday?"
I laughed. "Oh, I don't know."
"You should have told us today was your birthday!"
I didn't want to fish for happy birthdays from a bunch of kids whom I assumed didn't even celebrate their own.
"Come here!" she ordered.
I walked over the prickly grass and stood in front of her. She jumped up and swung her arms around my head and hung from my neck. "Happy Birthday. I love you so much." Then she let go and ran away.
I turned back towards my car and couldn't help but giggle and then I heard another "KACIE!!!"
This time another one of my client's children came bounding in my direction. "You didn't tell us it was your Happy Birthday?!"
She wrapped her arms around my waist and squeezed tight. Then she motioned for me to bend down and gave me a big kiss on my nose. "We love you! Happy Birthday!" And she sprinted back to her friends.
As I drove over the bridge I looked down at the beach, at the water, and smiled. Maybe I was wrong, I thought. Maybe birthday's are a big deal. And perhaps, the birthday girl never opens gifts, she only receives them.
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