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.

Happy New Year! From a crotchety and grateful old man.

Holiday decorations in Portland

I don’t automatically care all that much about New Year’s Eve. I’m not much of a drinker, and I get queasy if I’m not in bed by about 3:00 AM, so not a “proper” partier either. But this crotchety old man does respect the notion and beauty of marking the end of one year and beginning of another, even if the calendar is basically arbitrary (the solstice is a much more significant turning point, but I can handle two).

Also, NYE’s have an odd way of coming to represent the year, or at least mark the stage. There was the one way-back-when in Santa Cruz that I spent tortured by jealousy, followed a solar loop later by a party in Switzerland where the sense of freedom and possibilities was as tall as the Matterhorn. (But much warmer.) Then there was the year K and I spent in a beautiful place, and tried our fledgling best to talk about the problems we feared and felt...but failed. A calendar later came a New Year’s of loss, confusion, guilt and pain.

New Year's Day in Strasbourg

Last year I went to a club with friends. I’m as happy in a club as a leech in the desert, and I spent the evening wrestling dickish temptations to shout-talk to someone “How about we go someplace where impressions and experiences are more than single-dimensional celebrations of snap judgments and superficiality?” Or “This is to proper socializing as twitter is to a book.” Or the most succinct, the gutteral growl of the cranky. “Grrrrrrumble!” But I was there for my friends, and appreciated the chance to be near them, even if I could only hear their smiles.

This year I’ll miss those friends, unable to hug and/or high-five them (ever tried to do both at once?) but in a much more satisfying environment: the world. The one that feels real, and comes with more dimensions than I can perceive.

Haven't been to Cambodia yet, but Myanmar's close, right?

New Year’s Eve 2014 will find me somewhere in Cambodia. Not sure where, yet. Maybe I’ll have new road-friends, I hope so. But I’ll have my lady by my side, audible and tangible, and though I won’t be able to touch the loves and friendships I cherish in other countries, they will be there too, audible and tangible in my heart.

That feels like a pretty good way to start 2015.

6 Ways to be Better at my Secret Aspiration

Want to know a secret? I’d love to try being a tour guide. Sssh! Don’t tell!

My prior experience with tour guides was when they would glower at me, suspecting me of eavesdropping on their spiel about the Coliseum/temple/painting, or of being poised to purloin the pockets, purses, and possessions of their flock. As fun as it is to play Spy, I’d politely move away.

But that role, stockpiling information about a place, managing the distracted peregrinations of a population, and hopefully, somehow enhancing their travel experience? That looked...worthwhile. Challenging. Fun.

Had to dig deep into the files for this one.

I’ve fallen into something similar a couple times in the past, most memorably in Morocco, when I made travel arrangements for a dozen British university students who wanted to come with me into the Sahara, but didn’t know how to go about it.

Maybe it’s my WASPy, Victorian English-American upbringing, that yearns for connection but doesn’t always know how to get there, but I enjoy the finite closeness of a group of people bonded to me by some external factor. When I was a property manager, I felt I was just the right level of friends with most of my tenants, and in that accidental guide position, I felt a similar ease; these people needed me for something, which I was able to provide, and if they happened to like me..? .That’s what I call job satisfaction

Mint tea within sight of
the Algerian border

As the sun set into the Saharan dunes where laughing Liverpudlians sand-boarded, I took satisfaction in their shouts, and the words of thanks when we parted ways in Marrakech were even sweeter than the mint tea.

Cuba was the first time I've been in a formal flock, and our shepherd was an encyclopedia with legs and a fedora named Joel. I periodically pulled my attention from the sights, tastes, culture and culos of Cuba to watch how he did it.

For example, when we found ourselves with an extra hour, Jeff, Joel’s US counterpart, suggested an old cemetery on the edge of town. “No problem” said Joel, “I know the place, let's go.”

Inside the grand arch

Moments after walking under the grand arch, Jeff got a dubious look on his face. “This isn't the place I meant.” With no time to head to the other cemetery, what do we do? Get back on the bus in defeat?

“This cemetery is veerrry important” Joel assured us, and started the tour. Cuban leaders, businessmen, and landowners occupied places of honor near the entrance...and when Joel saw our eyes glazing over at the unfamiliar names, he moved right along.

“That big monument there, those are troops who died in South Africa fighting against....how do you say 'apartheid' in English?” We all nodded, murmuring “I had no idea Cubans fought against apartheid” and soberly read the names.

“Joel, what's the deal with these tiny tombstones?”

“In Cuba, people are usually buried, but after a couple years, when most of the body is gone, the bones are removed and cremated, and these are placed on the family tomb. Why? Because there is just not enough space for everybody.”

Direct sun turned markers into pizza stones, but under the pines and palms the air had the dry warmth that feels like falling asleep on an old book on an August afternoon. It's a comfortable feeling...a sleepy feeling...

“Did I ever tell you about the two lifelong friends?” Joel asked as our steps started to slog. “They were friends from childhood, playing baseball in the street of their barrio. As they got older, they made a deal: whoever died first would come back to tell the other one what heaven was like.

“So one day, one of them, he died. The other was very sad, he missed his friend, but that night, you know what? His friend came back to tell him about heaven. 'What is it like?' he asked him.

“'Well, I have good news, and bad news. The good news is we have baseball!' The living friend was very happy to hear this, because being Cuban, he loved baseball. 'And the bad news?'

'You're the starting pitcher in tomorrow's game.'”

We all groaned (as you do with jokes) and shook our heads, conveniently knocking some of the sleep out, and Joel’s tour moved on.

That hour Joel demonstrated six only slightly demanding rules:

1. Know every possible destination for every possible city, and how to get there.

2. Be able to talk up a location's importance.

3. Adapt instantly and effectively.

4. If using another language, have 99.9% of your lexicon listo, only words like “apartheid” get a pass.

5. Have the answer to every question.

6. Keep an awful joke on hand to make people groan themselves awake.

That's six, anything else I need to know before you'd take my tour?

What good or bad guides have you had?

(For a great story of the latter, check out this story from Iran on the wonderful Where To Next? blog.)

Miles, my friend.

Miles was the first one I met when I came to look at my prospective US residence. Drenched in August sun, his eyes closed in feline pleasure, he welcomed me to the neighborhood with a purr and a stretch. I liked him immediately.

Thirteen years ago, my roommate’s neighbors in Santa Barbara asked him if he’d like a kitten. “Sorry, I’m allergic, and not really a cat person anyway” he answered.

But they knew him well, apparently, and added “We found him in a dumpster, but our pitbull keeps trying to eat him. He can’t stay here.”

So Miles came home for a day or two while they looked for something else. But Miles had found his home, and moved with it to Nevada, then here to Oakland. He acquired two canine family members along the way, and welcomed them magnanimously. My roommate’s nephews and nieces would come over, too young to realize they’d gotten his name wrong, and immediately ask “Where’s Smiles?”

Roommates brought their own animals over the years, the last of which was a dinosaur of a dog who was entirely too interested in Miles, in his inestimable feline opinion. So Miles basically lived on the porch.

He enjoyed his outdoor life. He’d curl up on a sunny rock, stalk the block, and greet me with a squawk when I came up the walk. (Sorry that got a little out of hand.) His little blue food bowl sat just outside the door, with a water dish on the other side. Across was a scratch post which he’d use to graciously provide us the chance to rub his magnificent feline belly, where the fur was a bit nappy. At first I thought him a grungy little dude, but over time I noticed just how elegant he was.

Once it was clear the behemoth had moved on to other pastures, Miles made his way back inside. He’d kick the dogs off their bed and plop right in the middle with a satisfied smirk while they looked on morosely from the hardwood. Often I’d be at my desk and hear the tinkle of his collar as he’d rouse himself from sleeping on my old backpack in the closet. He’d emerge into the light, squint up with feline affection, stretch, and wander out to find the day.

If I got home late, or got up early, we’d hang out on the porch together, watching the quiet neighborhood go about its modest business. When I ate lunch in the front yard with the dogs, he’d cruise up and take a place on the warm stone walkway. Passing the dogs, he’d usually pause to give them a little sniff-kiss on the nose.

When I found myself alone on Christmas Eve, Miles was here. He nestled in my lap to watch a movie. He kept me company.

.

I’ve been using the past tense for Miles.

On my last trip I got a message from my roommate. Miles, after years of peaceful coexistence with everything on Earth, had gotten caught on the side of the house by raccoons. I still don’t understand what happened. Why now?

They hurt him too badly, and we had to put him to sleep. There was nothing else to do.

One day to the next, no warning, and he was gone. I hate the thought that his last moments were so full of pain, fear. I loved that cat.

In his text, my normally understated roommate could only say “I wasn’t a cat person. He made me one. I miss him.”

I miss him too.

Sam has issues

“I’m not sure if Sammy did something really bad in a previous life, which is why he is the way he is, or if he did something really good, which is why he has the owner he does.”

So pondered Charly, my friend and the previous occupant of my room, as we walked the dogs around Oakland prior to the tenancy transfer. Her massive donkey of a dog was smiling at the world, Lucy was monitoring the shadows, and Sam? Sam was nervous and happy and adorable and disgusting and oh-so-concerned.

This is Sam.

Sam has issues.

The first thing I noticed about Sam was his grin, then his brown eyes, followed by his enthusiasm, earnestness, and charm. Then I noted the big bleeding patches of oozing flesh on his paws.

Sam has allergies. Specifically, he’s off-the-charts allergic to dust mites. His owner bought a big air-purifier that runs in the hallway 24/7, and we clean the hardwood floors at least once a week, no carpet here, but there is no escaping dust mites.

It probably doesn’t help that Sam’s kind of nuts. He’s an anxious pup and a determined one. Bandages last a few minutes, and that bitter spray that’s supposed to keep animals from chewing? He puts that stuff on his breakfast. And the sores go bleeding on.

So Samwise wears the cone when his spots get bad. As good natured as he is, he seems to actually kind of like it. Sometimes when we take it off, he’ll go over and lay by, or even on it, as if asking to have it back on. The bad news is that after years of doggy yoga, he can get his knee inside the cone, and soon the skin there is raw and dripping. It gives his paws a chance to heal, but just relocates the problem to his knee. And after a while, even with daily removals and frequent washing, he gets a yeast infection on his neck from it. Poor little guy.

The cone doesn’t solve the problem, so Gamgee is also one medicated little pup. He gets allergy medicine twice daily, plus a steroid. These help with the wounds, but allergies and anxiety are as close in dear Sammy as they are in the dictionary, and the pill that makes the biggest difference is his serotonin reuptake inhibitor.

Yes, when his sores get really bad, Samster pops puppy Prozac, and the mellow blossoms.

That stuff ain’t cheap, and we want as naturally happy a Sampler as possible, so his wardrobe includes a Thunder Shirt. Have you seen these things? A compression vest, you put it on, and the constant hug mellows the animal out considerably. When you first put it on him, he’ll stand in the middle of the room, Zen and peaceful. Just kind of stares at the wall, in love with the world, observing the flow of the universe. But one can grow accustomed to all things, and the effect diminishes over time.

So to alternate, Samwise’s current attire is a soft cone, made of fabric instead of the familiar hard white plastic. It’s supposed to restrict less and breathe more than the plastic one, though I’m not sure if the Emperor Palpatine vibe is an asset or not. It also limits his peripheral vision more, giving him a habit of running into people (he knows where the walls are, but your location is anybody’s guess) and pushing doors closed when he tries to squeeze through them.

Walk Sam past a bus stop, and he’ll try to get on the bus. No one knows where he’s trying to go.

Samson loves Animal Planet, watching intently while the show is on, getting bored during commercials, and perking up again when the animals come back. His favorites are dogs (of course), cats, and meerkats.

When you get home he'll bring you a shoe, but that day
he chose a sock, for some reason.

I got home yesterday and Samwise was nowhere to be found. Just as I was starting to freak out, I noticed the bathroom door was closed. I opened it to find a very relieved Sammypants, chilling in the bathtub.

There’s one other advantage to the soft cone over the hard one. Sam’s not one for fetch, but take him outside in the sun, and you will be treated to one of my favorite things on Earth. The Sammysault. This is a ninja dog, who takes a few loping steps, lowers his head, rolls over a shoulder, then breakdances his exultation on his back before jumping up and grinning at you. Repeat.

Good boy, Samwise.

From balls to buckets. Inca Jungle Trip (Part 3 of 3)

What do you do when you’re thirsty and footsore after ten hours of walking, relaxed after watching the sunset in the hot springs, and surrounded by new and brilliant friends?

You drink chicha!

Taken from a google search, because it's awesome

Chicha is a family of corn-based drinks found throughout Central America, as alcoholic as you want them to be, that date back at least a thousand years, brewed in ancient Machu Picchu. In Peru families make it, marking its presence with a bamboo pole jutting out the front door, wrapped with red ribbons, a red plastic bag, or in the case of the gap-toothed old woman Abi knew in Santa Teresa, half a red plastic jug.

“Hola mami, tiene chicha?” Abi asked. The woman didn't look away from her telenovela as she nodded the affirmative. Abi asked how old it was, “Not very old” the distracted reply. Abi ordered a round. When the novela went to commercials, the woman put a chalice-sized glass of murky liquid on the table. An Austrian asked “Is that for everyone to share?” Abi found that funny.

“No, boludo! We each get that!” When a cityscape of giant glasses had been assembled, we toasted Pachamama, the Inca Earth Mother, blew our offering to her into the wind, and drank. Given the size of the glass, it's a good thing the stuff is generally only 1-3% alcohol (hence the question as to its age). Abi told us of her grandmother, drinking several glasses of chicha every day until she died at age 100.

As I may have mentioned, I don't love bars or clubs, but that night, with those people, the dive bar with a stripper pole and loud music was just where I wanted to be. I talked with the Austrians, peripherally relearning empathy for cute girls as I watched the chain of dudes hit on the Argentinas. I can imagine that would be fun...for the first hour.

The first other American I'd met on the trip was a guy from the Marina in San Francisco, who I couldn't help but mentally dub The Flea, as he hopped parasitically around the girls. I admit to a certain schadenfreude when he smashed his ahuacatls while showing off on the pole.

The Urubamba Gorge

(Did you research ahuacatl and discover that it comes from the Nahuatl word for testicles? How do you feel about the fact that you will never again heft, inspect, squeeze and generally fondle an avocado in the supermarket without remembering that factoid? You’re welcome.)

The next morning brought flight, nothing but wind and the whirring sound of metal wheels on the zip-line cables across the Urubamba River gorge. Cables half a kilometer long, 80 kilometers an hour, and face-down into 290 meters of pure Andean air until the ferocious water far below. God, Pachamama, Shiva, whatever, THAT is a sensation worth having, and whatever divinities were nearby heard my amazed laughter every time.

At the end of each ride I welcomed conversation with whoever was nearby, whatever their nation, language, or body odor, and was terribly proud of my Argentinians when they tried the face-down method for the last cable. As they flew past overhead I was sharing a mango just harvested with some Australians, and if there were mango strings in my teeth when I smiled upwards, the Aussies didn't seem to care.

From there it was the iconic last stretch along the railroad tracks to Aguas Calientes, at the base of Machu Picchu mountain. Sand fleas lurked below avocado trees for resting ankles, but that didn't matter as we went for one more swim in the river, crossed rusting railroad trestles above the chicha-colored water that always has something to talk about, and in among the striated faces of the godly peaks surrounding the hidden city of the Inca.

That place is rife with divinity.

The Austrians and I shared a room with more sand fleas, who were delighted to crawl into bed with us, and we all woke up scratching our calves. That still didn't matter though, as we walked through the 4:00 AM murk to the stairs to Machu Picchu, other backpackers emerging from alleys in silence like the most polite zombie apocalypse ever.

What do you say about Machu Picchu? You don't say anything I guess, you go there. I've been blessed to see many historic sites, a sprawl of tourist destinations, and several ancient holy places, and Machu Picchu will forever occupy a place of honor on those lists.

A couple hundred backpackers with sore feet boarded the train that night, boisterous as a discoteca until the train started, then slumberous as the sandman's station wagon. The end of the line was Ollantaytambo, and everyone piled out into the name-shouting chaos of bus drivers, as tours fulfilled the last step of their bargains, each backpacker looking for their name in erasable marker on a laminated page held in a driver’s fist. My cadre found our driver.

Except my name wasn't on the list.

I’d switched to an earlier train, but my name hadn’t made the logistical transfer. This meant an abrupt goodbye to my new Argentinian and Austrian friends, a disappointment I could handle, armored in gratitude.

But negotiations around the back of the van and a hurried payment of 20 soles secured me a spot on an overturned bucket in the aisle, just wide enough that when I nodded off, my shoulders could curl forward and I would wedge in the gap between benches like the van had swallowed its own tongue.

We arrived back in Cuzco, where the dogs browsing the night's garbage in the Plaza de San Francisco didn't pay our parting much mind, the intimacy of travel companions evolving on schedule to the irresistible anonymity of forward progress. They see it every night.

I've seen more than my share of it too, but I still mean it when I say “Of course we'll keep in touch.” Hell, maybe it'll even be true this time. But whether the facebook “likes” peter out in a week or not, I will still blow a grateful offering to Pachamama for my four days on the Inca Jungle Trek, which I'd signed up for under the impression that it was the Incallungula, or some such romantic thing, but which surpassed my expectations anyway.

You should go, I'm glad I did.