When I go

"Spring, spirit dancer, nimble and thin,
I will leap like coyote when I go.
Tireless entrancer, lend me your skin,
I will run like the gray wolf when I go.

I will climb the rise at daybreak, I will kiss the sky at noon,
Raise my yearning voice at midnight to my mother in the moon.
I will make the lay of long defeat and draw the chorus slow;
I'll send this message down the wire and hope that someone wise is listening when I go."

-Dave Carter, When I Go

Fish Soup

Recently, I was grading my students’ responses to a book review I had assigned. In my assignment, I had thrown in a few questions pulled from the study guide at the back of the book, without giving much thought to the answers to the pre-made questions. As I read over the responses, however, I found my students beautifully describing a concept that seemed to impact them as much as their responses impacted me. It was the idea of fish soup.

The book I assigned is called The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman. It is a classic ethnographic tale of two cultures clashing when a Hmong family brings their epileptic daughter to a California hospital for treatment. Throughout the book, language barriers and cultural misunderstandings threaten to overwhelm any chance the toddler has of avoiding seizures and receiving care. Woven simultaneously into the stories of American doctors and the Hmong family, is the history of the entire Hmong culture. Wars and migrations, oppressions, empires, entire centuries slip into chapters about a single doctor’s visit in California.

Early in the book, there is an anecdote about a Hmong student who is asked to give a five-minute report as part of a language class;

“His chosen topic was a recipe for la soupe de poisson: Fish Soup. To prepare Fish Soup, he said, you must have a fish, and in order to have a fish, you have to go fishing. In order to go fishing you need a hook, and in order to choose the right hook, you need to know whether the fish you are fishing for lives in fresh or salt water, how big it is, and what shape its mouth is [Fadiman 1997: 12].”

The book goes on to explain:

“…that Hmong have a phrase hais cuaj txub kaum txub, which means ‘to speak of all kinds of things.’ It is often used at the beginning of an oral narrative as a way of reminding listeners that the world is full of things that may not seem to be connected but actually are; that no event occurs in isolation; that you can miss a lot by sticking to the point [Fadiman 1997:13].”

Lately, perhaps because of the cold weather that drives me inside to my books and my bed where my thoughts can wander freely, I’ve been stewing my own sort of fish soup.  I’ve been reminded lately of the all the stories of people I’ve encountered in my own journey; people I’ve grown up with, people I’ve met while travelling, people I know only through letters and family stories. So many times in life, we encounter another soul for even a brief moment, yet part of his or her story stays with us over the years. And though in isolation, these moments seem disparate and unrelated, they are stewing together within us our own fish soup.

In a film I watched recently set during the Holocaust, a young German girl runs out into the line of Jews being marched out of the city. She looks desperately for her friend while whispering to each man that passes by, I won’t forget you. I won’t forget you.

At times, I wish I could tell the same to the people whose stories have stuck with me. I won’t forget you. You are part of my fish soup. I would tell it to the woman in a Thai prison who hadn’t seen her daughter in years and in her place gave me a mother’s hug. I would tell it to the hardened and stoic fireman who broke down into tears while telling me of the first time he saw death on the job. I would tell it to the family in Cairo who tried to give my friend and I a ride home after we got lost in the market. I would tell it to the family in Chile that I’ve never met, but who call me their gringa niece and tell me stories of my mother. I would tell it to the children I worked with in India years ago, Shivam, Afshar Ali, Rishi. They are all grown up now, who knows where they are. I would tell it to the boy who sat across from me on a balcony in Bangkok one night when I was 17, who in many ways started it all by telling me everyone had a story to tell, even me. I won’t forget you.

There are so many moments we experience so briefly, so many different chapters in our lives that sometimes, they can seem incredibly disconnected. Where I am now looks nothing like where I was two years ago, or five years ago, or ten. Sometimes I’m not quite sure what to make of all the people I’ve met, the stories I’ve heard, and the places I’ve been. But one thing is certain, they are all connected. We are all connected. And to me, that is a beautiful thing and a thought worth sharing.

Letter to a friend

Be kind, be strong. Take action but do not rush. There is beauty in patience. Be mature, be the bigger person. There is no need for their approval, only your own. Listen to the silence and learn what you want. Fight for it, but don't take anyone down with you if you fall. Stand up and move on down the road without regret. Appreciate the good, but don't be afraid to let it go, as all moments turn to memories and all memories fade with enough sunsets. Breathe and take heart, child. Have faith in people and in yourself. Never stop taking risks. Never stop seeking the good. 

Awaken

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken.” 

― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

After seeing Les Mis

Me: Daddy, you're my Jean Valjean.

Dad: Yes, now I just need to marry you off so I can die. 

Snippets

Oh to be a waiter and overhear my family's dinner conversations out of context:

“Yeah he was supposed to lead me around customs but he forgot. Guess my career smuggling alcohol into Muslim countries ended early.” (For the record, wasn't me).

“There was a momma bear and her two cubs walking up the river. I don’t remember where you kids were.” 

          “Wearing bear suits and playing in the river."

“So how did you attach the detector to the robotic arm?”  

"When you're watching glacier videos on youtube, you've got to be prepared to wait. I started one three years ago and still haven't seen it move."

“I bet that trucker was glad to get us out of his cab after a couple miles. Lucky for him that mom didn’t drive off while she could."    

          "You didn't all get in the truck. I still had one." 

“I had long hair and a big red beard so I at least looked sympathetic.” 

“Remember that slime mold you had growing in the kitchen? You used to feed it oatmeal every day.”

"And this coming from the woman who smacked a black bear in the nose with a copy of the Knoxville News Sentinal."

• "All I want is to pack up my truck and drive the trailer into the middle of the Yukon and watch TV." 

•           "You'll need satellite." 

•           "I'm coming with you and I'm packin' a pistol."

Welcome in Egypt!

Two months ago, I had no clue that I’d be planning a Thanksgiving meal for 50 Egyptians, eating frozen yogurt from Pinkberry while the call to prayer rings out over the largest mall in Egypt, or cruising Cairo in a taxi blaring songs from the Black Eyed Peas and Backstreet Boys. Two months ago, all I knew was that I had to finish my dissertation and move out of my London flat. Beyond those moments, I had no plan. Then one day, while skyping a friend from undergrad who has been living and working in Cairo for the last six months, my stress-fried brain latched onto one sentence she said, “I’m bored, I need roommates.” Roommates? She needed roommates? I needed a room. How perfect! That was that, I was moving to Cairo. And so I did. And here I am. At least until Christmas.

It’s a funny thing, being out of grad school and once again facing the ever present questions posed to all twenty-somethings of what to do with yourself, your career, your life. When my graduate programme finished, I found myself in London, not ready to head back to the States but unsure of where I wanted to be or what I wanted to be doing. Fed up with feeling like a useless academic (as I’m not quite up to par with the type of academics that prove useful) and perhaps secretly bored with polite queues, I was drawn to the idea of somewhere where cars race and jumble into traffic regardless of lanes, men and women linger in the constant and reliable sunshine to drink tea, and buildings follow no blueprint but jut and jab corner after corner. I also felt a deep need to be useful in the world in a simple and immediate sense. I needed to be reminded of how much I enjoy working with individuals and grass-roots organizations to just make a single day better, even if the system is too large or too broken for any one person to understand, much less change.

So here I am, having spent my first week exploring Egypt as a tourist, taking overpriced camel rides around the pyramids, admiring the beauty of cavernous mosques, getting lost in endless lanes of the market, and eating, yes eating, to my heart’s content. For anyone who hasn’t tried Egyptian food, you have no idea how much you’re missing. Give me a lemon and mint juice and koshary any day and I’m a happy camper. I've cobbled together a vocabulary of taxi directions and numbers, and have come to love the daily shouts of "Welcome in Egypt! Where from?" I even spent a day relaxing on the shore of the Red Sea and watched the sunset from a tiny fishing boat with good friends and a really adorable puppy. My second week was mainly spent meeting new people and setting the foundations for the rest of my time here, time I mean to be used productively, time which I hope will impact me and maybe if I’m lucky be useful to others as well.

This past week, I began volunteering with a refugee school that provides education and a meal to students from Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, the Congo, Nigeria, and other countries from across Northern Africa. The school is open to grades one through five in the mornings and grades six to ten in the afternoons. The teachers and most of the administration are refugees themselves. Foreigners spend a month or two or six filling in any gaps that might have occurred in the curriculum or helping teachers manage crowded classrooms. All classes, other than Arabic lessons, are taught in English. 

After a day of visiting the school and sitting in on each grade level, I realized I’d fallen in love with the fourth years. Each morning, I sit down with one or two of them for a tutoring lesson and can’t help but be amazed at how happy and eager they are to learn, how ambitious their dreams are, and how much they’ve already survived. Nine-year old Nancy looks up at me with the sweetest eyes and tells me she wants to be a lawyer. Emmanuel laughs as he explains that he wants to be an accountant and that his friend, Mousta, wants to be a doctor, but only for fat people. Hannah wants to be a dancer. Gutama wants to be a lawyer. While practicing nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs with Grace, I ask her to finish the sentence using a word to describe Africa. Africa is… Hope, she answers. Africa is hope. And Africa is home. She smiles at me asking if she’s correct. And she is, more than she knows. Though I’ve hardly been here long enough to begin to understand this country, I’ve been told about the tension between Egyptians and Africans, especially refugees. Egypt has an open refugee policy that requires it to host refugees and asylum seekers, though the country struggles to provide for its own marginalized poor, leaving some Egyptians bitter and angry over the influx of African refugees that strains an already tight economy. The government, in response, excludes refugees from basic institutions, such as formal education. I’ve been told that each day after school, the refugees run home to lock the doors, hoping they aren’t tormented, beaten, or robbed by local street kids.

I suppose I’ll find out just how deep these tensions run as I’m not only volunteering with the refugees, but with those same local street kids that they fear. A few blocks away in a small building above a shop, there is a newly formed organization that teaches and trains Egyptian street kids in sustainable and practical life skills, simultaneously instilling in them self-worth and determination in improving their situation. The staff of this organization are stretched to the limit, trying desperately to provide students with ways out of poverty, ways to gain agency in their own society.  On Fridays, I’m hoping to begin working with young girls, teaching them crafts made from recycled material that they can then sell. If I can get my hands on some disposable cameras, I’d like to teach composition and critique of photography (like Zana Briski did in her incredible documentary, Born into Brothels).

The problem I’m finding, however, is that my time here is quickly running out before it’s even begun. I have slightly more than a month left, certainly not enough to follow through to a lasting impact with any of these projects. And my weekends will most likely be spent exploring and adventuring. From sandboarding on the dunes and horseback riding through the desert, to diving in the Red Sea on the Sinai and touring Luxor and Aswan, I have far more to do than I have time for. Like India, Cairo has struck a chord with me and a few months here is more like a taste than anything else. But it’s the kind of place that sticks with you long after your gone, quietly calling you back again. So we’ll see where this month takes me, and later, how long I stay back home in the States before answering that call once again.