Culture Shock is...

When I take my headscarf off in the Dubai airport and show my hair in public for the first time in months. When I see men walking around in shorts and women wearing camisoles, and when I get a tan line for the first time this summer. When I feel strangely uncomfortable wearing a T-shirt and flip flops and I see my curls in my peripheral vision and realize how long it's been since I've seen that and can't decide if it's pleasant or just weird.

When we have errands to run on the way home from the airport and we stop at Ross to buy a few bits of clothing. We walk through the front door and I'm hit by the bewildering and frightening display of things-I-don't-really-need. It's not a big store, not compared to some, but when I've done very little shopping in the last year and the places I have shopped were stalls the size of a small restroom, a store with Juniors and Women's and Petite and Shoes and Children's and Men's and Jewelry is... overwhelming. When I think about the street children who were knocking on my window just days ago and their dirty, ragged clothing and bare feet, and I think about all the people in this store who are spending money they don't need to spend, and when I have to bite my tongue from saying all of this and sounding exactly like the holier-than-thou person I'm trying really hard to not let myself be.

When little things make me grateful: the feeling of walking into an air-conditioned house from the 109 degree heat outside, the convenience of drying my clothes in a machine instead of on a clothesline, being able to walk and run outside without fear, having sewage systems that are capable of flushing toilet paper. And yet, when I remember the cost of cherries or apples or medical tests in Kabul and compare them to what I'm now paying, and it reminds me that the US isn't perfect. I spend so much time longing for home whenever I leave, and sometimes, my memory is a bit selective. It takes coming back to remind me of the concerns I have for my country, for its people, for its future even as I am reminded of its good side and feel grateful again for having grown up here.

When little things make me homesick for the place that became my second home: silence during the time of day when I'm used to hearing the call to prayer that I've come to find beautiful and haunting and annoying depending on the hour, not having Fur Elise and the birthday song herald the coming of the ice cream truck, speaking Persian without thinking and having everyone in the vicinity give me blank looks, craving chicken kabobs and hot naan but having no way to satisfy that urge. When I get messages from friends in Kabul and think about the amazing people I know there, and when I picture Afghanistan's future, and realize it's not so directly tied to mine anymore, and realize also that I still want it to be.

When I go to church for the first time in weeks, to a Catholic church for the first time in months, to a Catholic church service in English for the first time in ten months, and when I lose myself in the music and the prayer and think how much I've missed this. When I, at the same time, remember my church community(s) in Kabul and remember the way they made me feel so at home from the very first time I met them. When I realize that a year ago, I had very little understanding of the meaning of freedom of religion, or courage, or faith, and when it makes me even more passionate about the necessity of a world where everyone has the right to say what they want to, write what they want to, worship how they want to.

When those moments of awareness hit that have nothing to do with politics or money or even what clothing I'm wearing and everything to do with the people I love. When I sing with my dad or laugh with my sisters or eat homegrown currants and realize how glad I am to be home, but also when I see posts on Facebook or get emails from friends I may never see again and remember how hard it was to leave them. Culture shock is a lot of things, but I think the root of it is unrelated to culture. The shock of coming home is more the realization that I have multiple homes now, and I love both of them, all of them, dearly. It's seeing how much I've changed, and trying to fit the changed me back into a community that doesn't know all the parts of who I am now. It's the understanding that going to one place means leaving another, and that's especially hard when you don't know if you'll ever be back there again, and when you feel guilty for liking either place too much when you have people you love in the other. Culture shock is knowing I'm home...but also feeling like it won't be possible for me to ever be one hundred percent "home" again.

Danger is Relative

Friends, meet jui. (ju-ee)

It is one of the many gutters that line the streets in Kabul. Those located alongside main streets flow high and fast in the winter, while their cousins on the quiet side streets fill with snow. In the summer, they ooze along, filled with trash and mud and and excrement and who knows what else. Every so often, workers shovel out all the accumulated muck and they set it on the streets to dry. The streets smell, far worse than the pigpens we had on the farm when I was a kid, and then, as the products of the jui dry, they get blown away as dust and inhaled all summer long.

I became intimately acquainted with a jui on my way home from work a few days ago. One minute, I was walking, and the next minute, I was up to my thighs in jui juice. Brown, smelly, mucky, jui juice.

I managed to pull my feet out, along with the five pounds worth of muck lining my pants, tunic, and shoes. It took some doing, and I almost lost a shoe and dropped my computer. Once I got my feet out, I propped them on the opposite side and just sat for a minute; it's been a long few weeks.

A jui is by no means the biggest danger here, but it's one of the small annoyances and concerns that I sometimes wonder about. Between the health issue and the falling in issue and the smell issue, I can imagine the outcry that would be raised if there were juis in most places I've lived. And yet, here, no one thinks twice about it.

That's true of other things as well. Medicine is often given intravenously, where the doctor puts a needle in the back of your hand and gives you the medicine to inject yourself for the next few days. When I first saw that, I was horrified. They keep a needle in their hand, for days. Does that not seem dangerous to anyone else?

Open ended wires sticking out right at face level. Sparks flying from the welders who set up in the middle of the sidewalk. Not wearing seatbelts/letting kids ride in the car standing up. Riding carnival rides with not only no seatbelt but also while standing up and sometimes not even holding on. When I mention these, others give me funny looks. What's wrong with adding gas to the car while the motor is running?

I've realized, though, that I don't think about or worry about these things as much as I did when I first came. After I stepped in the jui, it was disgusting, but it mostly made me laugh. Rather hysterical laughter, but laughter nonetheless. The next day, I was going to post something on Facebook about the jui, but just then, a bomb went off down the street from our office. The walls shook, we dropped to the floor. Gunshots fired, smoke went up in a cloud, and phones started ringing as relatives and friends checked in to make sure everyone is still alive.


It was the I've been to a bomb, and it hit home a bit because it went off on a road I walk down, where friends of mine live nearby. It shook us, emotionally as well as physically. How could I post a whine about juis after something like that?

Danger is relative. When you grow up as sheltered as I did and when you like rules as much as I do, little dangers sometimes seem important. They can be dangerous, yes, but I can see now how so many others here don't notice them or worry about them. It's Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs; when you are accustomed to explosions shaking your windows, you don't worry so much about seatbelts. It's understandable that planning for the future, personal finance, etc are not very commonly practiced; if you might die tomorrow, why not spend your money and go on a thrilling, if dangerous, carnival ride? It's hard to worry about little things when basic survival is such a concern.


That said, definitely have no desire to get acquainted with my friend jui again, no matter how minor that concern may be!

Hills and Valleys and Remembering to feel blessed

There are days in Kabul where I get very tired of life here. The days where no matter how hard you try to be positive, you just feel down. It's easy to feel that way sometimes, when upset stomachs are so common that we hand out Cipro like children's vitamins and when giardia is appropriate lunch conversation. When the heat makes everyone irritable, and the open stares and little comments of men on the street make me long for home. When the electricity keeps going out, and the Internet keeps going out, and it seems like every truck in the city has to drive by my window fifteen minutes after I've finally fallen asleep and then every ten minutes thereafter.

All of these are minor irritations, usually chased easily away by the taste of a juicy Kabul watermelon, carefully washed, or a barbecue in the garden, ignoring the barbed wire on the compound walls. But sometimes, the seriousness of life hits, and those concerns aren't so quickly dismissed.

I just heard that a friend was badly injured in a recent attack. She was in the shower when an RPG hit her building, part of a coordinated attack that threatened the lives of several people I know. There were armed men who broke into the compound, guards who fought back, a gurka who died a hero as others fled to safety. My friend escaped with her life but with 3^rd degree burns on 99% of her body.

I heard all of these details as I sat on the sidelines of our weekly Frisbee game, beside a guy who is a tough and talented Frisbee player but who broke down a little as we talked. Because Barbara was his friend, because he had other friends in that compound, because he'd been at that compound just before the attack. But also because that attack violated something that we take for granted- the safety of our homes. It was a reminder that the danger here isn't confined to Helmand or Kandahar, isn't avoided simply by using common sense and not driving in the bad areas. Sometimes danger comes to you even when you do nothing wrong. Sometimes even the most heavily guarded compounds come under attack, and although Frisbee games and garden barbecues help us stay sane, sometimes those bits of self care just feel frivolous. It feels wrong to play when Barbara is in critical condition, and it feels wrong to laugh and joke like everything is okay when so many of us are as shaken as my fellow Frisbee player on the sidelines.

Between all of that, and feeling really sick for the last four days, and saying final goodbyes to some very close friends, it's been not such a good weekend. And since I'm so close to going home, there's a part of me that wants to cling to that departure date, to dream of the day when the frustrations of life here will be gone.

I was at a meeting yesterday, though, where someone told us to feel blessed in being allowed to live in Afghanistan. Not to act like a martyr and struggle through, but to wake every morning and thank God for sending me here. It reminds me of all those times I've been told to live in the moment and to not worry about tomorrow and to just rejoice in today... and how I'm I'm better at feeling like a martyr, even when it's rarely justified.

So I'm working on that. There's a part of me that remembers all the rougher days throughout this year, but also remembers the fact that they passed, as these days will too. I remember that the next few weeks are my last ones in Afghanistan, and if I wish them away, I don't get them back. There are so many things I love about being here, so many things I will incredibly miss about this country. Yes, there's dangers, and annoyances, and frustrations, but on the whole, it's been a wonderful year. During the rough times, we have to cling to the good times, remember the beautiful moments that give us strength. It's the rough times that make good times that much better, because without the valleys, there would be no peaks. And even within the rough times, there are blessings and reasons to be thankful. It just takes the right attitude to find them.

The beauty of little dancers

I laugh when I tell people that Afghanistan is beautiful and their response is a confused, "Huh?"

In the international media, perhaps, it's not a place you would describe as beautiful. There's nothing beautiful about explosions and attacks on governmental and NGO compounds or in photos of sobbing mothers holding their dying children. Yes, it's hot and dusty in the summer, and yes, our roof leaked all winter even as the pipes froze and the electricity left for two weeks at a time.

But Afghanistan has a beauty all its own, a beauty that the media seldom shows you. It isn't just the beauty of the landscape, a beauty that is different but equally incredible during all four seasons.

It isn't just the sunsets that leave nothing to be desired

 or the feeling of timelessness that you get at its historical sites

or the colorful fruits and even more colorful voices at the bazaar.

It's this.

And this.

And these.

Last week, the Kabul Dance Studio (http://kabuldancestudio.blogspot.com/) held its annual spring recital, and I was privileged to be a part of it. About 100 little girls waited anxiously backstage for their turn to dance, to show off the moves they've spent a year learning and the dance they've been practicing nonstop for the last month. Despite security and rain and costume troubles and everything else that Murphy's Law could produce, it was five o'clock on a gorgeous Sunday evening, and they were about to show the world just how beautiful Afghanistan is.

The beauty in this recital was in the sun reflecting off the outdoor stage as the school principal requested that the audience not take pictures, so as to adhere to the wishes of families who don't want their daughters' honor spoiled.

It was in the tiny dancers representing Mexico, who shook maracas to the music, and in the little one whose maraca broke and who paused in the middle of the dance and spent a good thirty seconds staring at it to try and put it back together. It was in the audience who laughed and clapped for her when she finally succeeded and rejoined the dance with a joyful smile.



 The beauty was in the girls from the local orphanage and from a domestic violence shelter who use dance as an escape from life. In the orphans who whirled across the stage to Indian music but never grew dizzy enough to fall, and in the four sisters from the shelter who wore pristine white dresses and said they felt like the King's daughters as they gently touched their reflection in the mirror before the show.

It was in the Mommy and Me dancers, who wore kangaroo suits and hopped around a circle as the song declared, "Aus-tralia, Aus-tralia. Land of sun and sea!" It was in the little blond kangaroo with the infectious smile, the little black-haired kangaroos who grinned delightedly at the audience, in the little boy in a kangaroo suit who didn't hop even once. Not because he had stage fright, but because he just doesn't do that.

There was beauty in every single one of the faces on that stage last week, from the tap class who dressed as cowgirls and line-danced across the stage, to the dancers in the traditional Afghan attan dance, who flourished their scarves and jingled as they danced on bare feet. The confident dancers who led their fellows with smiles from the front of the stage, the scared ones who hid behind a partner and focused far more on steps than on crowd appeal, the aloof ones who did the very least they could and just looked bored all the time. The little blond who broke her ankle a few weeks before the show, was heartbroken about not being able to dance but stood onstage in her costume and smiled along with the music anyway.

And it was even more than that. It was in the fathers who watched with pride in their eyes as their scarf-less daughters skipped across the stage, and in the costumed dancers who had to stay backstage but who crouched as close as they could to the backdrop in order to the watch the other dancers. In the myriad people who gave their time to help, in the busy high schoolers who put in extra hours to learn their dances in the midst of sickness and exams and everything else. It was in the little ones whose eyes shone as they watched the older ones dance, who came up to me after the show and told me they want to dance en pointe someday too. It was in that moment onstage when I was balancing on toe shoes with my arms lifted to the sky and the sun shining down and it seemed like even God was glorying in the beauty of this place.

Yes, Afghanistan is beautiful.

Declining the Peace Corps, and trusting God

I declined an invitation from the Peace Corps last week, and it was one of the scariest things I've ever done.

Ever since my great-uncle told me about his time in the Peace Corps, it's been something I've wanted to pursue. I like the PC's mission, its emphasis on serving the community and doing what the community needs, its desire to educate both Americans and those in our host countries in order to increase understanding and mutual respect. I know those are a lot of big words that could come right out of an advertisement, but these are things I've seen play out in my last few years working in the nonprofit sector. Projects don't last unless the community wants them to. Communication and shared experience are some of our best tools in creating peace; think how many conflicts could be avoided if ordinary people on both ends knew and understood one another. These are ideals that the Peace Corps works toward, ideals I admire and believe in.

Despite my long-lasting interest in the Peace Corps, though, when I got my assignment, I think I knew that it wasn't right for me. I was assigned as a health volunteer in Peru, which seemed to mean working with child development and HIV/AIDS prevention. The first interested me. In principle, I agree with the second, but I don't agree with the methods that are commonly used. Primarily, promoting condom use, even in students as young as fourth and fifth grade.

On both a practical and on a religious level, I have trouble supporting that practice. Condoms don't always work, and they aren't very accessible in many countries. They are poorly made, and the high levels of contracts being passed around leads to high levels of corruption, and more poorly made condoms.

Yes, all of that was really general. No, I haven't intensely studied the pros and cons or theory of HIV prevention. Yes, I know some people are going to attack me for that, but the simple fact is that outside of the practicals, this assignment just didn't feel right for me. When we teach young people to use condoms, to have safe sex, the underlying message is that sex is okay as long as it's safe. I don't agree with that. I don't think that's the message we should be passing on to children at home, and I don't think I'd be comfortable moving abroad and promoting that message for two years. There's a lot more to the Peace Corps than that, but if the community asked me to teach sex education, I would have to do so, and I didn't think I could do that.

The PC is really selective, and it's hard to get a first invitation. Getting a second invitation used to happen sometimes, but since there are so many applicants now, it's extremely rare. I knew that saying no to my first invitation meant saying goodbye to my dream, and that was really frightening.

The logical part of me fought it. I argued with myself for a full week. It was possible I'd never even have to touch this part of it, would spend the whole time on child development and other health aspects. Peru is a beautiful country, one I'd love to see. But do I want to live there? I already speak the language, could work on really becoming fluent in Spanish. But do I want to spend two more years learning a language I already speak, instead of mastering a new one? The Peace Corps is one of the few organizations I know of (and I've done quite a lot of research on this) that offers paid (sort of) international work while integrating volunteers into the community instead of creating a little expat community. I would leave in September, which was more than enough time to get over the burnout that's been hitting the last few weeks here and prepare for a new adventure... right? I'd be living with a host family, which would provide challenges, but I'd learn a lot about the culture and the language; I was ready for that...right? Sure, I was uncomfortable with bits of my job description, but that was just part of working for a non-religious organization, right?

One night, just before my decision was due, I decided it was time for some quiet time with God. I'm not very good at that, because I tend to fall asleep (six years of sleep deprivation catching up with me), so I went outside this time. It was a quiet night in Kabul, without a lot of passing cars or barking dogs. I sat in the swing in the garden, surrounded by high concrete walls, alone and yet able to hear the voices of every pedestrian who walked past our gate. I sang and re-sang “The Summons,” which is a song that's been on my mind lately (if you look at the lyrics below, I'm sure you'll see why.) I laid in the grass and read my Bible, tried to get inspiration from Jeremiah and Isaiah and Paul's many journeys.

And then, when the sun had set and I couldn't make out the words anymore, I laid in the grass and watched the stars come out. For the first time, I laid it all before God. I told Him that I'd go if He wanted me to, that my brain was saying I should go, but that it didn't feel right. If He had other plans for me, I prayed that He would make it clear to me. Maybe not what those plans were, although that'd be preferable, but at least that He'd make me feel without a doubt that this wasn't the plan. I prayed for certainty, after a week of battles between heart and head.

Lying there, looking at the stars, my uncertainty melted away. I knew that I was going to decline. I realized that I can't call myself Catholic unless I act what I believe, and how could I spend two years teaching something I'm against and my faith is against? How can I stick to my values on the small things and then turn my back on them on the big things? No matter what others believe, my values are my own, and they aren't much good if I abandon them in the very moment when I should be relying on them to guide my path.

So I said no.

As soon as I did, the most amazing feeling of peace came over me. It was like nothing I've experinced before. My job here is ending in just over a month, and after that, I have no plan. Nothing. No clue what to do next. Normally, that would scare me to death, because I ALWAYS have a plan for what's coming next. And yet, this time, I wasn't worried. For the first time in a long time, I trusted in God and followed what my heart knew to be right, and it felt wonderful.

The story could end there, because that's a pretty amazing ending. The equally amazing part is that that's not the end.

When I sent my email to decline, I told my placement officer that I'd like to be considered for a second invitation. He'd basically told me that I probably wouldn't get one, but that a panel of placement officers would review my application and my reason for declining if I asked them to, and then we'd see. So I asked.

I never expected to get another email the next day. “Peace Corps- invitation!”

This time I was invited to go to Morocco. Working with youth development at a community center, which meant I'd have options to teach everything from English to computers, soccer to debate, writing to dance. All the things I love to teach anyway, and chances to teach many classes on topics that give important skills to modern youth. Leaving in January, which would give me time (including Christmas) at home with my family, enough time to get tired of living in the US and be ready for an adventure, time to watch my sister's senior soccer season and another sister's dance recital and be a part of their lives for the first time in ages. Learning Arabic, which Dari has both spoken and written roots in. In a country that is Islamic but appears to have more diversity and more varied influences than Kabul- a chance for cultural learning without having to wear a headscarf!

In so many ways, this position felt right. It felt like something I'd be good at, something I find important, and something I feel comfortable teaching. It felt like a good fit for me, and I was so incredibly amazed to be given the opportunity.

Tonight, I responded to my second Peace Corps invitation very differently. I said yes. Fully confident that this is where I belong, where God wants me to go. I've had that surety so few times in my life, and it feels amazing. What an incredible ending to an up-and-down week and a half, and what a lot I've learned along the way!

I wish you could...

I wish you could taste warm naan on a cool spring evening. When you are walking home from work and the guys at your favorite naan shop call out to you to say hi, because you had a thirty-second conversation the first time you bought naan there and now they think you are best friends. When you see that the shop has your favorite type of naan, the thick kind with an almost-hollow center and little spices baked in the top. You buy one for only ten Afs and you can't picture anywhere in the States where you can buy bread like this for only 20 cents. When you take your naan and wave goodbye to your shopkeeper friend, heading down the street with the naan warming your hand. You tear off a piece and let it melt in your mouth, and it's a little piece of God's gift to man.

I wish you could watch as graceful hands swoop and swirl across the page, making strokes that mean words that you can't understand. You try to puzzle them out, try to force yourself to concentrate on possible meanings, but you are mesmerized by the way the pen dances from right to left, right to left. Loops and lines, dots and dashes. It feels like a Morse code that you haven't yet been taught, but you are content to watch magic be made.

I wish you could hear the cacophony of a Kabul street as the officer workers and fruit vendors and traffic police start their day. You hear the vendors hawking their wares- bedrang! Bedrang! Yak kilo da rupya! (Cucumbers, cucumbers, 10 Afghanis per kilo!)- from the back of a cart pulled by a tired donkey, and the ice cream man pushing his cart down the street as his horn blares the thousandth rendition of Happy Birthday. Big police trucks go past honking, armed guards sitting in their bed, and Indian music floats out the windows of little white Corollas decorated with flowers and on their way to pick up a bride and groom. Little red motorcarts, with carpets draped over over the backs to make miniature taxis, splutter their way to movement, and gangs of schoolboys in matching blue uniforms push down the street in a clump, their rapid Dari interrupted by farts and whistles and laughter- boy noises that are the same in any language. You see blue burqas with bright purple pants sticking out below and hinting at the person beneath the veil, hear the swish swish of colorful chadars bustling down the street, admire the music made by the stomping feet of a two-year-old with bright white shoes. It's a smorgasbord of sounds and colors, a world that seems straight out of Aladdin but is real, daily life.

I wish you could sit in the circle with us in the grass at the family park. When the sun has set and the stars are twinkling, but the bright lights around you twinkle more forcefully, decorating practically every stationary surface within the park. You sit on a blanket and eat a picnic with your host family for the week, as little children run around with delighted screams and the Ferris wheel across the park whirs to life. It feels like a Fourth of July celebration from childhood, like you are back with your family as you eat and laugh and chatter with one another. Families here are just like families from home, who just want the peace to sit in the grass and eat buloni and ride the mini amusement park rides.

I wish you could walk down a Kabul street with us and see the kids playing with sticks and rocks and bits of dirty rope. They play jump rope with a muddy piece of twine strung across the unpaved road, tied to a dumpster on one side and held in someone's grimy hand on the other. But the dirt and the mud and the grime matters so little to them, for their grins are a mile wide and their delighted shouts echo off down the street. They grin wider when they see you coming, for you've become fast friends in the months you've been walking past during playtime, and they scamper over to say hi. They hold out their grimy hands to shake yours, and you bend down to give them the customary air kisses- one, two, three. They grin even wider; there is nothing quite so cool as being kissed by a foreigner.

I wish you could be here to experience all of this with me.

They show it better than me...

I'm not very nice about asking other people to guest blog for me, because that requires telling other people that I blog, and it requires sharing, which I'm not very good at. But there are so many others sharing the amazing things going on in this country, and I wanted to pass them on to you.

My coworker, Josh, writes a blog purely about debate in Afghanistan. His articles are much more informative than mine, since he sticks to the facts and I take advantage of a blog's ability to let you rant. He's a good writer, though, and his site does really good work to spread the knowledge of what we do here. I encourage you to check it out here.

Pax Populi is another organization dedicated to peacebuilding. We partner with them to give our students chances to have a native English speaker as a tutor through classes over Skype. They do a lot more than that, though, and their work is really impressive. I especially like their interview with our Executive Director- found here.

If you couldn't tell, I really like the organization I work for and truly believe in what they are doing. But there are a lot more groups doing great work here. One organization that really impresses me is Morning Star Development, which puts on leadership classes, among other things. They also provide medical services through clinics and traveling doctors. Check out their site here.

I've done some work with the Kabul Dance Studio while I've been here, and although I plan to write a whole post about it later, let me just say that this is a labor of love I never expected to find in Kabul. In a place where girls have so few outlets, dance gives them a place to express themselves. It's really beautiful to watch. They have a blog here. We are preparing for a recital in about a month, so I'm sure you'll be hearing more about this group!

There are a few other nonprofits I like a lot. PAD offers classes and other tools to support education. When I was here in 2011, I got to visit one of the schools they run (used to run? I'm not sure), which was a really neat experience. Omega International is another organization that works with education, with a focus on training teachers- a service that is very needed here. There are groups opening soy factories to help introduce more protein into the carb-heavy diets here, groups offering badly needed services for the deaf and for the disabled, groups working with street kids to teach both trade skills (sewing, etc) and academic skills, groups working to lower unemployment rates by donating the tools that young men need to become apprentices and then to open their own shops- carpentry, welding, etc. So many fascinating projects!

Colgate University and Linfield University both competed in our Debate Without Borders Skype Tournament, and they posted really nice articles about it. 

      

The organization I work for, APT, participated in a radio program designed to introduce various members of the United Network of Young Peacebuilders to the world. We created a radio program that introduces APT and shares our vision for Afghanistan's future. You can listen to it here- it's pretty cool.

I don't want to make it look like the only ones creating change in this country are foreigners, because there are lot of really cool articles about Afghanistan and its people and the incredible things they are doing. From the women's soccer team to the bowling alley that an Afghan woman opened to the first female Afghan rapper- there are so many things here that I just love hearing about. I hope that they fill you with hope just as they've done for me!