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.

Aspirations

"It is when you are able to view the world from all sides and perspectives that you acquire that gentle touch of art, which reflects your deep belonging to humanity in general."

Toufic Araman, photographer

Buried Life

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,

But often, in the din of strife,

There rises an unspeakable desire

After the knowledge of our buried life;

A thirst to spend our fire and restless force

In tracking out our true, original course;                        

A longing to inquire

Into the mystery of this heart which beats

So wild, so deep in us--to know

Whence our lives come and where they go.

From "The Buried Life"

Matthew Arnold

Respect for the Rattlers

“Great love and great achievements involve great risk.” –Dalai Lama

I always intended to write the full story of my summer with the people who handle venomous serpents for their faith. I had great intentions of chronicling each church service with them, of all the media interest and their responses to the camera crews, photojournalists, grad students, and spectators that showed up week after week. I thought I would write as best I could what set them apart from other churches and other Christians; after all, that is the topic of my dissertation and what led me to them in the first place. And though for my dissertation I will have to write the details of my experience, the more I saw strangers rush in to get the pictures, sell the story, or throw in their own two cents on the lives of the people I’ve come to know as friends, the less I felt I had any right to say anything. And the more time I spent with them, the more real, inspiring, and important their beliefs became to me.

You see, if you spend enough time with anyone, what at first seems strange, intimidating, or confusing will cease to be so; it will simply become normal. And when the spectacle is gone and all that’s left are ordinary people, it’s not so hard to relate. The people I met this summer have been called fools and idiots by strangers, are condemned and outcast by fellow Christians, and their beliefs and lifestyles are summarized by the press in five-minute clips and 200 word articles. But then there are also the scholars who have worked with and written of them for decades, the journalists who stayed longer than a day to write books instead of articles, the Christians who send their support and encouragement despite differing beliefs, the traveling evangelists whom they welcome, and the visitors to their churches who keep coming back. This alone should be enough to conclude that there is something about the people and the faith which defines them that touches others. Very few who have heard of the practice of serpent handling have remained indifferent to the idea. The very basis of this practice, the faith required to uphold it, seems to incite a reaction in all of us, be it one of interest, approval, or judgement.  

I have a hunch that what is really so intriguing to each of us is not so much a matter of doctrine or religion, but one of passion and commitment. There are a lot of self-help books, religions, and philosophies telling us we need a purpose in life, a goal to drive us and sustain us. As children we are often asked what we want to be or do with our lives and answers come easily. As a child it is easy to identify our dreams because no one has yet told us our dreams might well be impossible to achieve. As we age, we so often readjust our purpose in life to match what we think is possible, instead of adjusting our lives to match our purpose. We know all too well that living for something bigger than oneself implies that the self must become very small and that sacrifice and suffering always accompany those who take risks. Every now and then, however, you hear stories about people who were brave enough to take on their purpose without making amendments. They are people like Greg Mortenson who, as a broke and unemployed mountaineer, accidentally discovered a village in Pakistan without a school yet pledged that someday he would return to build one. He has since built hundreds. They are people like journalist George Hogg, who in the 1930s set out to cover the Second Sino-Japanese war, and instead lead 60 orphans over 700 miles through the mountains to live in safety. They are people like Kierkegaard who sacrificed his personal happiness for the task of writing what he believed to be necessary to reform Christianity.  But they are also people like my landlady, who recently quit her job to write a book about her own journey. They are people like the serpent handlers, who literally place their lives on the line because they believe it is part of their purpose.

In the introduction to The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho calls an individual’s purpose his or her personal legend. He writes, “Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don’t all have the courage to confront our dream […] But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.”  It is the courage, passion, and commitment which so many of us, myself included, lack that stirs such a response when we hear of people who are taking risks and making sacrifices to fulfil their purpose. Sometimes we are encouraged and inspired, sometimes we are envious. At the root of our reaction, however, is our own purpose. It is not an easy road to travel and quite often it is a lonely one, but I’ve come to believe it is an important one.