The undesirability of heroism

Hearing Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) discuss fungal infections, abscess scars, and which diseases merit treatment was a trip in itself. But it took me a day or so to realize these are far from the hardest part about what they’re doing.

At the end of my last post I casually labelled PCVs “heroes.” But are they? If you ask them, the result in clear and resounding: not remotely. A couple minutes after posting I heard from one of my PCV friends.

I don't have photos of their daily living.
This is Georgetown on our flight back from the jungle.

“I’m uncomfortable with labelling PCVs ‘heroes.’ We’re not.” But was it just modesty, or something more nuanced than that?

“The assumption is that we have a positive impact and that’s just not necessarily true. Good intentions don’t automatically result in positive impact. The effect we have can be really mixed.”

It’s unpleasant to admit, but I see at least two reasons this is true. First, the implicit conflict of trying to help a population become more self sufficient, sustainable, and not reliant on outside aid...via outside aid. How can you convince a population to not look to foreign wealth for help when your very presence shows how helpful (and immense) that wealthy help could be?

Second, a technique that works well in one area may be either useless or downright harmful in another. Culture is complex, powerful, and sometimes dangerously subtle (right up until the moment it eats you). And it’s one of humanity’s great tragedies that the advances we most need (like women’s rights) are often earned through the suffering of exactly the people you’re trying to help. Bring a women’s initiative to a place...then watch the patriarchy clamp down.

Bauxite refining in Linden, considered among
the most luxurious placements in Guyana.

Then there’s a more personal reason PCVs dislike the “hero” label.

“There are actual heroes doing heroic things. We’re just trying to do what we can in 24 months. I just go to work like a regular person. The pressure of the term hero is...overwhelming.”

PCVs have a shadow behind their eyes, if not outright in their words. They call it “Peace Corps Guilt” (click here for a short write-up that is well worth a couple minutes read). If you’ve traveled, physically or mentally, the feeling “Good lord, we throw away more than these people have, how can I be so selfish?” will be familiar. (Don’t worry, the article’s not that bleak!)

Valid concerns, true questions, serious doubts. But in the end, the same way a politician who speaks of “good and evil” is not to be trusted, we have to acknowledge that life is not a matter of dichotomies and dualities. Nearly everything exists in shades of gray. The Peace Corps is no exception.

Going to work for a paycheck is a perfectly acceptable motivation. Doing it for the good of others or society is a wonderful thing (salute to all the teachers, nurses, and social workers out there!) But leaving behind your life of developed privileges in order to hopefully help people who have never had them, even knowing it may well be a giant waste of time?

Seven hours racing down this mudswamp of a road,
two boat rides and a 4x4 had us still nowhere
near as remote as some of the placements.

I apologize to my Peace Corps Volunteer friends...but yes, to me, you are heroes. Imperfect, perhaps useless, maybe even harmful. But you’re trying. So: heroes.

Let me add one more note. The Peace Corps lists three goals in its Mission Statement. The first is the part about helping the people in the foreign country. The third is to fostering a better understanding of poverty and foreign countries among Americans. Nestled in the middle is something important.

“To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.”

At this moment when the US is being defiled by a president whose actions genuinely merit the term “evil” and who is tangibly damaging the standing of the United States on the world stage, your contribution to international harmony (and domestic sanity, at least mine) is crucial.

Thank you for everything you do.

My experience with refugees

(I’ve taught English at the International Rescue Committeehttps://www.rescue.org/ for the last two years, and wrote this for a fundraiser last weekend that raised $2,800 for the ACLU and IRC. I am honored to have been a small part of that fundraiser, and encourage anyone to follow it up with support for these incredible organizations, more important now than ever. And deepest thanks for my friend Jane Bloch who edited and read the piece for me, as I could not attend in person.)

Nasim is in class today. His basic vocabulary and visible pride merge as he tells me about Baghdad before the violence. We agree that when peace comes, and he believes it will, he will show me his city. As always, he presses his hand to his heart in thanks as he leaves.

The family of four from Myanmar sit next to him. The mother and father are improving their English bit by bit, but their two sons, aged 8 and 11, are learning as fast as I can challenge them. They were among the Rohingya “boat people” who fled repeated attacks on Muslims by the Buddhist majority in their country. But as they compete to tell me about the pizza they ate last night, their first, “boat people” is not a concept or a headline, it’s these people. Real people. My neighbors, our community.

Amanuel is a young Eritrean man. He finished a baking certification class this morning and has brought me three fresh pumpkin spice chocolate chip cookies. There is quiet pride in his eyes at having something to give. I think he is slowly-slowly seeing that it’s okay to be gay here. I wish I could express how thankful I am that he’s here. He doesn’t know how much he gives me every day. Or how much he reminds me to be thankful for my own brother’s experience, whose own coming out was accepted with love by our family.

And Shayma is here! She is my best student. Syrian, she started with zero English, not even a shared alphabet, and after just three weeks she’s helping the other Arabic speakers. Today she brought little Zeinah, her two year old daughter who loves escaping from the classroom to toddle down the halls and say hello to everyone. We don’t even chase Zeinah anymore, knowing some IRC staff member will invariably bring her back with a huge smile on their face.

Finally, to my right sit Mutaz and Fatima. Grandparents from Sudan, their dignity and kindness are soothing just to be around. Mutaz just got his first job here. In Khartoum he was a university professor. In Walnut Creek he will change sheets in a hotel. He does not complain. Not a word.

Fatima approaches me after class with a piece of paper in her hand. “On Tuesday I told you how I taught Arabic to an American woman using Sudanese proverbs,” she reminds me. I loved the idea and had asked her about them. Now she unfolds the sheet and shows me lines of graceful Arabic above precise English translations. “I wrote some of them down for you.”

She reads them to me, first in Arabic then in English. “A child is a child of everyone.” Her pronunciation is clean and clear, just a soft underlayer of her homeland below the words. “You who dig a hole for evil, make your space in it.” Her words sound like her ancestors, my ancestors, our ancestors. “Seek the neighbor, before the house.”

In Arabic the proverbs rhyme, but I prefer the English versions, which sound like different cultures meeting in shared humanity. All three speak directly to the understanding and purpose of the IRC.

A child is a child of everyone because we are all neighbors, all one community, whether we’re born in Sudan, Syria, or San Francisco.

You who dig a hole for evil, make your space in it rings painfully true as our leaders make mistakes in the name of power and greed.

And finally, Seek the neighbor, before the house. It’s the person who matters, not the distractions of wealth or status, nationality or creed.

It’s pretty normal for me to feel like I am the student, learning more than I have to teach, when I come to the IRC. I’ve been fortunate to teach English in half a dozen countries and have felt that way before, but I’ve never had classes like these.

Normally in beginner English we talk a lot about about family and background. “Is your brother short, or tall? Is your town big, or small? Is your home clean, or messy?” But here, their home might be rubble, their towns occupied or destroyed, and their brothers….

Early in my days at the IRC, I saw my predecessor make an honest mistake. She asked an Afghani man about his children. He told us he had five. Three sons and two daughters. He told us he didn’t know if he’d ever see them again. He told us he didn’t even know if they were still alive. He sat, and he cried. And there was not a thing we could do to fix it.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, rates of PTSD among refugees range from 39 to 100%. In comparison to 1% for the general population. 39%, to 100%.

All of my students are mourning something, but whereas someone in mourning might want to talk about the sadness in their heart, asking someone with PTSD about it can put them back into that original place of trauma. I wish I knew how to help more, but all I know is a little about teaching. And a little about refugees.

Here’s some of what I know. Refugees don’t come to America for a handout. They don’t come to take anyone’s job. They come because they are like you and me. They want to live, they want to earn an honest day’s wage, and they want to raise their children without fear of bullets or starvation.

When I hear politicians disparage and blame refugees, I feel anger, and I feel fear. But when I hear regular people speak against them, I just want to invite them to class with me. Prejudice and fear, contempt and aggression, none of these would survive ten minutes at a table with my students.

They are good people whose previous lives would have looked a lot like yours and mine. Family and friends. Work and play. Traditions and celebrations. Mourning in the natural course of time. Instead they have endured unimaginable suffering. And now they’re here, learning a whole new...everything. New rules, new society, and a new language, with its inexplicable spellings and baffling vowels. This transition is brutal, unjust, and some days surreal. But every class feels like a victory anyway.

Because they made it. Against all odds and overcoming excruciating obstacles. But they got here. To live. To heal. To feel hope again. That is the true beauty of America. That is what it really means to live in a land of tolerance, a land of opportunity, a land of the free.

God bless America, refugees welcome.

Hogar Para Todos is still going strong, but could use a little help

If I could choose one topic to survive the irrelevance of archival old age that sets in for my blogs within two days of their posting, it would be Hogar Para Todos (AHome for Everyone), the orphanage in Azogues, Ecuador, that K and I visited in 2012. So when Ann Halsig contacted me about posting an update on the house, I was delighted. Here is her update:

For 30 years, Nancy Calle worked in adoption with some of the most vulnerable children in Ecuador. At the age of 63, when most people are preparing for retirement, she applied to register her family home as a “Casa Hogar” for children in transition. Some of the children now living here will be adopted, some will be reunited with their families once the court’s orders have been met, and a few will continue to live here, because their circumstances – or age – render them “unadoptable”.

But this is not a house of sadness.

The children at Hogar Para Todos are thriving with the support of an incredible staff, including a Clinical Psychologist working with a team of 5 interns, an Early Childhood Intervention Specialist, an Educational Psychologist, a team of specialist support workers, a Social Worker, and the “tias” of the house, who prepare meals, clean the house, ensure school uniforms are ready in the morning and much more.

At the age of 76, Nancy generally rises at 6:30 and weaves her way in and out of meetings and children and staff support until well after dinner is served. All of the children are engaged in education and both group and individualized therapy, as well as numerous other activities every week.

This is not a house of sadness.

But it is a house that has fallen on hard times. While the staff’s salaries and the food for the children are paid by social services and the provincial government, all other costs must be covered by donations: electricity, water, gas, general maintenance, toys, clothes, activities and more. The cost of this part of operations was $82,068 in 2013, $72,841 in 2014, and is projected at $63,558 for 2015.

Until this year a large percentage of the funds to cover those costs came from a Belgian partner organization that sponsored the Casa with donations from many individuals. This year, the director has retired and following the closure of this organization, the Casa has effectively lost 23,000€. For the past two years, costs have exceeded donations, and so there is currently a deficit of nearly $30,000, and it will worsen next year.

There are so many reasons to support this Casa – we have seen with our own eyes how differently it functions, how immediately one gets the sense of “home” here. But the biggest reason to support HpT is because it is invaluable to this community, where there are significant socio-economic problems leading to substance misuse, neglect, abuse, and abandonment. Whatever the future holds, in debt or with healthy finances, the existence of this place is absolutely imperative.

Nancy Calle is an extraordinary woman. But she is human, and will eventually need to pass the torch on to the next generation, who will continue the life-changing – and literally life-saving work – she began. But before she goes, she wants this house in order.

For many, $30K doesn’t sound like much, and with a little support from a lot of folks, it really isn’t. But is the world to the future of this organization. And this organization has, is, and will continue to improve the world for countless children.

If you can donate absolutely any amount at all, please go to Ammado, where with a couple of clicks you can donate any amount you wish.

And rest assured that this drive for funds is not an end-all effort. At the moment, several players are working together to ensure that in the years to come HpT’s finances are stronger than ever. The organization’s website will be launched in July, and volunteers from Holland, France, and the US are working together to fundraise in a variety of ways. One of these is developing a network of sponsors who can commit to giving a small sum every month. If this is something that might interest you, please let us know.

Further information is available via email in Spanish, French or English at ann.halsig.hpt@gmail.com, or in German and Dutch at w.croes@planet.nl.

Lumps of love, transmitted by wire.

My headphones endorsed the errand by playing the perfect cycling songs as I pedaled downtown to the bank, Toots Thielemans’ “Bossa Nova” gliding right on into Johnny Cash’s “Hey Porter”. We had account data scribbled on an envelope in my pocket, five hundred of your dollars lurking around the ether somewhere reachable, and the perfect cure for a morning of mental mud washing the blech off my spirit.

A venomous dose of intimidation, and a steaming and stanking dollop of why-bother, were little piles of self doubt scat on my shoulders when I started, but they dried in the sunlight, weakened in the rushing air, and were scoured away by the wash of your generosity. I had money to pass on.

I have yet to master bicycling photography, and banks just
ain't pretty, so here's a couple more from the community
center where Alvaro volunteers.

Byzantine bank protocols were navigated with an easy smile nourished by the kindness of the 13 of you who had donated to help rebuild Alvaro's home, to find the best way to send every cent. No one takes cash anymore, but it turns out the best way is still to physically walk a money order down the block.

Colleagues from my Venezuela delegation and others, family, friends, and names I didn't recognize arrived in my inbox over the last week, all stepping up to help put a roof back over a family. The bank teller may have been bored, but I wasn’t.

(The sense of wellbeing y’all gave me endured, kicking the doors off the hinges of the Oakland Parking Citations Assistance Center, and I was the happiest person ever to wait in line to pay an exorbitant parking ticket. Confused the bejeebus out of the clerk.)

Stub of the most satisfying money order in history tucked into my notebook, I grinned my way around the jetstreams of Oakland, the morning’s sick inefficacy forgotten, feeling the flow, reflecting the rhythm. And no one seemed to mind a good mood, especially the woman who honked and waved while her laughter escaped the cracked window when my stoplight dance included a little traffic direction. (John Legend’s “Stereo” just wanted me to tell the turn lane when it was their turn).

Three of five delegates, dancers, musicians, and a magician

My feet were still drumming the earth when I arrived home just now, and what did I find? Two more donors, another lump of love to send Alvaro’s way. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to go back and do it again tomorrow.

(If you’d like to add to that errand, the fundraising page is still alive and dancing:  http://www.gofundme.com/AHomeForAlvaro)

(And since Tuesday’s blog pushed ahead of this one, I can update that to FIVE more donors, almost doubling our amount raised, bringing us within $50 of halfway. I’m going to need to charge my ipod for this…)

Ample? Fat? Or something more creative?

“What about this one? How does it look?” His girlfriend considered for a moment, head tilted to the side and lips pursed just a little.

“I like it, the color is good on you, but you need another size.” The shirt was stretched over his broad chest, and ample frame. This is Venezuela, the land of thick, doughy arepas for breakfast and afternoon snacks, and the man’s intellectual career has him sitting in board rooms and at conference tables around the country. “You need size…”

She turned to search for a larger shirt, but the man shopping next to them was more...helpful.

“You need size half-a-cow” he offered.

This is Venezuela, one of those countries that does not mince words. Whereas I might be left grasping for politely indicative words like “ample”, in Venezuela? They don’t mess around.

The question of which way is better is one for the sages, bores, and dorm room floors, but one thing is for sure: if you’re going to live in a place that’s this direct, you’d better have a good sense of humor.

Luckily for my Venezuelan friend of the substantive girth, he has no problem laughing at himself, and neither does Alvaro, my friend and the program director of the Witness for Peace Southwest delegation that brought me to the country.

But Alvaro is no half-a-cow. What would they hang a nickname on, then? The bushy eyebrows? I am sensitive about that one, after years of people telling me I look angry, when actually I’m just ⅛ Neanderthal. But no, it’s not the brows that the man on the steps of the Cathedral commented on.

At five foot and a few, Alvaro comes up to my shoulder. I always like people who do that, especially after living near Holland, habitat of the humongous. Indigenous people throughout Latin America are frequently vertically modest, but Venezuela is predominantly mestizo, ie descendants of Europeans, with Amerindians making up only 2% of the population.

So Alvaro is short. And the man on the steps noticed. He also noticed the calm confidence and knowledge with which Alvaro was conducting us around Caracas, and he had a question.

“Oye, bonsai Tarzan, which way to the metro?”

Bonsai Tarzan. That is quite an image. Not one that every altitudinally modest individual might appreciate. Alvaro politely gave the man directions, and off we all went on our days.

Note: Last weekend Alvaro’s house suddenly collapsed. Luckily no one was hurt, but he, his wife, and their five year old daughter are now homeless. I cannot imagine what this would be like. I set up a fundraising page here, and urge you to contribute, even just a few dollars, if you can.

Thank you.

A home for Alvaro

Alvaro and his daughter

“My daughter is a musician,” were Alvaro’s proud words as we shared a taxi into Caracas. He was the program coordinator for the Witness for Peace delegation that I had come to Venezuela to attend.

“Oh?” I asked, “What does she play?”

“Drums, mostly.” I nodded politely, but I confess, my inner cynic was sniping: Yeah, sure. Everyone’s kid is a brilliant drummer, just like everyone’s kid is a young Picasso. But a few days later, during which Alvaro manouvered, facilitated, and orchestrated our Venezuelan experience with virtuoso skill, something happened that made me question my snark.

We were in his hometown of Barquisimeto, so his wife and daughter had joined us for dinner. While we waited for the pollo to become asado, Alvaro thumped out a rhythm on the table top with fingers and palms.

His daughter, a five year old cherub with more than a sliver of impishness in her smile, looked at his hands for a moment. Maybe a moment and a half. Then her tiny hands were thumping the tabletop too, in perfect sync with her father. I was impressed; maybe she was a musician after all.

Sanare, "The Garden of Lara" (province)

The delegation proceeded to the hill town of Sanare, where Alvaro wrangled meetings with women’s co-operatives, community organizers, and the local radio station. One afternoon I rode with him to run a couple errands, and he pointed out the chaotic scribble of thick black wire that hung on the electrical poles.

“People connect their own wires to steal electricity. Then the power company comes by, installs meters on the lines, and starts charging them. It works, because they don’t have to do all the wiring themselves, saving everyone money and time.”

How’s that for a capsule of Venezuela: people doing what they can to get by, using their own wiles and agency, and a pragmatic government that works with things the way they are to bring everyone into the system. I was marveling at that when we stopped so Alvaro could go run a mysterious errand. “Eh...wait here, okay?” was all he said.

Wheelies for Bolivar

The next day was Simon Bolivar’s birthday, and you’d better believe Venezuela takes notice of The Liberator’s cumpleaños. I sat down to dinner after watching the town celebrate in the tidy plaza, and Alvaro’s secret errand was revealed when he carried out a massive birthday cake. It was birthday season, I guess, since in our five person delegation, two of us had birthdays that week as well. Kathy and I shared space among strawberries with Simon. Birthday solidarity; how wonderfully Venezuelan.

Alvaro and company drumming it out

Stuffed with information, experience, and frosting, we made our way back to Barquisimeto the next day, and Alvaro informed us that his community center had prepared “a little presentation” for us.

Every coastal province in Venezuela has its own Afro-Venezuelan traditions and heritage, with particular rhythms, songs, and drums. This community center performed them all. Grinning faces, welcoming words, and flashing hands from throughout the community piled into the room, and the drumbeats, singing, and guitar chords rose to the rafters.

My cheeks were already sore with enthusiasm, and my foot tingled from ceaseless tapping, when Alvaro’s daughter climbed up to sit on a drum far larger than she was. I thought it was sweet that everyone would indulge the five year old, but then she started playing.

Por dios! He wasn’t kidding, she IS a musician! She thumped and thwacked right along with the best of them, pixie grins breaking out only between songs, as the music filled the night, almost as loudly as the welcome.

I am indebted to Alvaro for all his hard work, both with our delegation and with his community center, which also organizes a massive summer camp for local kids every year. And I just genuinely like the man.

That made it that much worse when I heard that Alvaro’s house collapsed a couple days ago. He, his wife, and their daughter are now on the street in Barquisimeto, and need help raising the funds to rebuild their home.

If you can spare anything to help, I urge you to do so. This is a good man, doing good work, and I have seen firsthand how selfless he is, working tirelessly without pay for his community. Please see his fundraising page at: http://www.gofundme.com/AHomeForAlvaro

I'll salute that.

Flags...confound me. To the soldier (so we’re told) they are salvation, home, the reason to put their life at risk. To politicians they are backdrops for photo ops. To fans they’re a way of identifying your tribe (good run this year, US World Cup Team).

That aversion to the flag means I have no pics of my own,
so here's this Bad Boy of Epic Awesomeness of l'web.

But they’re also the war banners of intolerance, selfishness, and a flagrant lack of compassion. Sometimes. Not all that often, but sometimes. I met a fellow who told me that the US, Israel, and brutal dictatorships are the only places you see a lot of flags, and numerous heads in hostels nodded in agreement that when they see people waving their country’s flag, it makes them nervous, suspicious of the waver.

I opted not to follow Cubanas around
photographing their posteriors, but this
gives the general idea, pobrecita flakita
that she is. Needs more ropa vieja.

In Cuba, the US flag is currently in fashion: red and white stripes with a blue and starry patch wrap over curvy Cuban culos on stretch pants that make Lululemon look like burkas.

That was certainly an eye-grabbing example, but the iconic motif shows up on shirts, belts, and backpacks all over the world. Why? I’m not going to try to explain what America means to people (but I guarantee any popularity we enjoy has nothing to do with past presidents or policies, despite how many places overseas are named after Kennedy). But I’ll tell you when I feel patriotic.

When I look out the window of a bus rumbling down some cracked highway overseas, or step down into a squawking market, or walk through a dusty town, and see, down there in the corner of a plywood sign, my country’s flag as a sponsor for a library, school, or medical clinic. That’s when I feel like saluting. It may be less than 1% of the annual US budget, but the $36 billion that we give to foreign aid can do a lot of good. (Statistics from the YouGov survey I filled out yesterday.)

USAID's $300 million power plant in Afghanistan, whose
imported diesel fuel makes the electricity unaffordable.

Of course, there are plenty of problems with US foreign aid. In particular, USAID has been (in my opinion) corrupted/tarnished by “national security” influences and our misguided attempts at nation-building. This has not only wasted massive amounts of money in futile projects, but has exposed workers to violence, and the country as a whole to suspicion and distrust. It is my hope that going forward, we can return US foreign aid to helping alleviate poverty and suffering, without any relation to/with the Department of Defense.

Call me a cynic, but I’d say the Department of Defense has no soul; that’s not what it was created for. Similarly, and tragically, our politicians seem to have misplaced theirs as well, so where is the heart of America? Same as in any country, the heart is the people.

The American People? Reality TV, styrofoam coolers, and 32 ounce sodas? No, we’re much more than that. Here’s how the most recent report from The World Giving Index begins:

“The United States has reclaimed first place in the World Giving Index

In 2012, proportionally more Americans gave in some way than in any other country. The United States has therefore risen again to first place in the rankings, a position it has traded with Australia since the World Giving Index was first published in 2010. The key reason for this rise is that a higher proportion of Americans helped a stranger than any other country in the world in 2012.”

Full report here: https://www.cafonline.org/PDF/WorldGivingIndex2013_1374AWEB.pdf

Now that is something I can stand up and salute. Happy 4th of July, America.

One last off-kilter day in Lima

I couldn't find a child. I've never had that problem before. Of course, I'd never had this particular mission either, but it was an irregular day.

After MPicchu, I had just enough time in Cuzco to marvel at the mess of the girl in the dorm (who leaves a shoe insole, a chopped up water bottle, and a blizzard of shredded paper in a shared space?) before flying back to Lima.

Outside the terminal I stepped in a swirl of taxi drivers, police, questions unanswered and documents unproduced, followed by ejections among exclamations as the officer declared my ride illegal. The next driver had an unmarked car and instructed “If the police ask, just tell them I came to collect you from your hotel.”

Wait, what? Maybe I shouldn't... Too late.

He didn't murder me, which is always appreciated, and the whole ride I kept my window down, eyes searching in vain for street kids.

The hostel wouldn't let me wash my own clothes, and the laundry's minimum charge was for three kilograms, so I dropped off every article of clothing besides the ones I had on, 2.4 kilos, and prayed she'd return it. She did, and with a clean sweatshirt in hand I went looking for a child.

But I couldn't find one.

I'd met and adored a bunch of them on the coast, but those had already gotten some help (details down the road). I was looking for one still in the thick of it. My flip flops flapped for block after block, but apparently street children are not allowed in Miraflores, the tourist/wealthy section of Lima.

A friend in California gave me the sweatshirt to use in Cusco then pass on to one of the street kids who had drawn me to Peru. Maybe in the park. But in Parque Kennedy, since all the world worships the idea of a US president with morals instead of just business acumen, I found the park full of well-off park-goers.

And cats.

Felines in the flowers, paws on the paths, kitties crapping in the hedgerows. Lima had decided that street children are offensive to moneyed individuals and thrown them out. Instead the park was home to fifty cats. Well-fed, healthy, protected cats.

In the end, I left the sweatshirt in the hostel, since perhaps a backpacker is the next best thing to a child in need? Pale consolation.

I would have liked to stay another day, search out the street kids, perhaps save them with my wealthy western concern, paternalistic messiah, but the people I’ll tell you about soon know how to do it better than my bumbling flicks at charity.

Besides, I had an appointment in the next nation, an unclear event of unknown interest, experience, and danger. And a sweatshirt wouldn't protect me.