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.

The Wizard of Oz and I

(This will make much more sense after part one, here.)

Outside Il Mago's shop, in Orvieto

An eruption of sound, light, and motion, as the world below my eyes kicked into life, overlapping music box jangles and blinking lights. I’d come to see the Wizard of Oz, tucked away in a side street of hilltop Orvieto, Italy, and now that same gruff wizard was standing beside me, lights reflected in his glasses and smile.

“This carousel is in the Jardin du Luxembourg, in Paris. The oldest in the city, from 1879.” Looking at his tiny faithful reproduction, I could imagine the generations of children that have sat and shrieked on the original Parisian horses.

“Here is a ride from Coney Island, in your country.” The little roller coaster car rose to the top and slid down the track, tiny wooden figures throwing their arms up in an unaging joyous thrill. His artisan finger worked down the row. “This is the ice skating rink from Toronto. The ferris wheel of London. The tea cups of Disney.” We moved among the world’s remembrances, sharing each one whether we’d ever seen it or not. Each tiny world, handmade by this artisan.

“When I was a boy, I knew what I wanted to be.” My assumption was beginning when he filled in the answer. “A cowboy!” He watched my grins over his bifocals for a moment before continuing. “I wanted to so much, that I did it, I ran away! I left my home and started towards Texas." Let that moment linger. "My mother caught me ten seconds down the road, gave me two big slaps, and brought me home. So instead of running away to be a Texas cowboy, I began to make things."

Orvieto is the sort of town where doing
things the old way makes sense.

Together we looked out over the delicate wooden toyscape of figures and memories. On the corner of his desk, beside the antique cash register, I noticed a familiar book. Seeing my glance, he picked it up. “Yes, Rick Steves. I am in his book. He came here and liked my work. Other companies want me in their books too, but they want money. It’s a commercial. Advertising. I am in Rick’s book because he liked what I do, so he put me in. That’s it. But I haven’t seen him in years.”

I told him Rick was my boss, that I was a guide, and that I’d learned of the toy shop in the current edition of the book. There was a hint of melancholy in the Wizard’s voice when he repeated “I haven’t seen him in years.” I assured him that even if Rick doesn’t have time, someone from the company comes around at least once a year to make sure we still believe in our recommendations, so we still appreciate his work. But there was something else.

Rick Steves and the Mago di Oz have something in common. Both are among the rare few who have created exactly the career they wanted. My eyes returned to one of the Wizard’s handpainted signs. Make your reality like your dreams, and your dreams into your reality. These two men have done that, and I can only imagine they recognized something in each other.

Nothing against minions, but compared
to the 12th century Moor's Tower,
they seem a tad chintsy

I was feeling a peaceful sense of satisfaction and happiness in the presence of this gentle man when the door opened to admit a woman and her son, from one of the bigger bus tours that feed people through Europe’s Express Lane. Her hand held the cheap plastic Pixar balloon he’d wanted for a moment, and neither greeted Il Mago as they entered his space. I watched him monitor them with the same tolerant caution he’d initially shown me, and was thinking how nerve wracking it must be to have unknown entities always lumbering among your treasures, cheap balloons bonking into handmade zeppelins, when the woman took out her phone and lifted its little factory eye.

“No photo!” The Wizard’s snarl was instantaneous and sharp. Blunt force reminder at an Italian volume. “No photo!”

How does one bring the fragile lightness of childhood into the tenacious heaviness of adulthood? Not easily, I thought, as I watched mother and son endure that awkward pause to save face before fleeing the shop. But it’s only appropriate for a wizard to be a little scary. Booming voices and flaring flames of castigation, and pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, with his gentle love of a gentler life.

No, the Wizard of Oz doesn’t let you take photos. But when a reminder of the texture of childhood is on offer, photos are not what you want anyway.

The Wizard did allow me one photo.
(Photo credit: some woman who did not take out her phone.)

Would you go to Europe with me?

My previous experience with tour guides was to turn and run the other way, snug and smug in my snobbish superiority as a solo traveler. No spoon feeding for moi! No comfy tour buses to take me from place to place without suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous chicanery from touts and hucksters, salesmen and dope dealers.

Or in those cases when I couldn't escape them, like at Ephesus,
I could just slap a neutral density filter on,
and blur them into ghosts.

But after a while, the sinking selfishness of doing things only for and with myself dragged me down. What was the point? I took the normal countermeasures, visiting orphanages, co-operatives, and chasing social justice the way I’d sought bargain dorm rooms and all-you-can-eat buffets. That path is a good one, and I'm sure I'll return to it, but it's still a solitary string, holding together pearls of connection and purpose, and if I keep moving, I’m going to keep leaving. I want continuity, to go with my novelty.

So I went back to the classroom. Teaching English to refugees would save me from the privileged malaise of my birth circumstances and demographic lottery win. And every time I see someone learn a new word, laugh in the midst of their incomprehensibly difficult transition, or even just show up with a smile, I do feel a popcorn pop of satisfaction at perhaps paying back a tiny piece of my debt.

It's a bit ironic that my first attempt at
on-tour training will be in Turkey.

I love to teach. I love to travel. I love to meet new people, share something of myself and welcome a piece of them. Is there a job for this? Indeed there is. So no longer will I turn and run from tour guides, because now, a tour guide am I.

Somehow I conned the good people at Rick Steves Europe into thinking I could be of service, so this June and July I'll be roaming Europe as an assistant guide, frantically scribbling notes in a cheap notebook rapidly becoming invaluable, hoping to learn the skills to lead my own tours. In that top notch company I found a philosophy that mirrors my own, where guides are not salesmen but teachers, travel not a means for profit but an avenue for growth and progress, both individual and pan-social. And they're damn friendly too. I couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity.

So in a bid to escape the tyranny of my incomprehensible blessings...I’ve found another one. But hopefully, if I can learn the skills, I can start to pay it forward, one contagious case of travel-lust at a time.

Does altruism exist?

Is there such a thing as altruism? It’s an old question, with a contact high from so many dorm room debates and jittery after too much time in coffee shops, but I’m wondering if you can help me with it.

All of the earnest high schoolers writing “Volunteer work in Costa Rica” on their college applications, remembering the joy of going to that beautiful country, having so much fun with their friends, and helping those people build that library. Are they inspiring examples of how the precious few lucky enough to be born into sufficient affluence and power can help share the gifts of their birth? Are they ambassadors towards a better tomorrow? Are they exploitative colonists using the Third World for their own gain?

The kids were doing just fine at smiling before we ever
showed up... But hopefully we helped with a few more?

I remember an Australian I met a couple weeks before K and I went to Africa to lend a hand. With that beloved Australian gift for plain talk, he said with no malice or scorn “You’re not going there to help those kids. You’re going there because it makes you feel good to do it.” He leaned back to wait for my response.

I wasn’t sure what to say. “For starters, I don’t know how much help we’ll really be, but I hope we can do a little something useful. And yes, I do expect it will feel good. But I don’t think that invalidates anything. I think it’s okay for someone to feel good about helping others.”

Me, in dire need of a haircut, trying to be helpful by
rewiring the toaster oven.

He nodded and bought me a coffee the next morning, but the issue of exactly who was benefitting the most never did sit easily in me, and it feels extravagant and uncomfortable to use the word “altruism” when talking about myself.

Tomorrow I have an interview about a position teaching English to refugees. I’m not going to lie, a big part of why I want the job is to feel like I’m doing something useful, and to get out of my stale routine. I will benefit from the classes. Will they? I’m not sure; it remains to be seen if I can be an effective teacher in those circumstances. What if they don’t learn much? Does it matter if I feel good about helping? Are we all just using each other? (I look forward to your comments.)

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.)

Joaquin Media Barba

The buses all had places to go, and gas to burn to get there. The expressionless faces of passengers (some things are universal) turned towards me through rattling window panes as I waited to cross one of San Salvador's many busy roads, looking for something to find.

A few blocks and a half dozen clusters of well-armed guards behind me, some of the people I'd met (and wrote about on the Ethical Traveler website) were meeting in an FMLN headquarters, but since I'm unaffiliated with the party, my presence was politely unwelcome. I've had people accuse me of being CIA before, and it's not a comfortable experience, so I went looking for something to find.

That makes sense to a traveler.

The stoplight went red, and the cadre of windshield washers went to work, on my side a leathery older man in a black apron, and a younger woman in a white shirt that stretched across her heavily pregnant belly. I wondered how much they earn per wash, and per day. I wondered what life awaits that child. I wondered at a world where some have luxury sedans, and some hope to clean their glass.

Both workers returned my “buenas tardes” with smiles, his wide and hers shy.

The sun was strong, but not abusive, and I was considering a mango-something jugo when I heard the clash of metal. Again, and a third time, rhythmic. Through the intersection, hazy with dust and exhaust, I could see a man in camouflage shorts and a black vest juggling before the stopped cars. His hands flicked behind him, the clash of metal, and the sun glinted off three machetes as they escaped and returned to his hands.

One should not distract a man who is juggling large knives, so I waited until he was between performances to talk to him. Joaquin Media-Barba (Half-beard) had an easy smile, though a weight never left his eyes. He started practicing with machetes a few months ago, and now spends several days a week moving between a few favorable intersections, no more than two hours at each.

We talked through the green and yellow, I watched another performance through a red, then we picked up where we'd left off for another green and yellow. The currents of conversation, the percussion of slapping steel, the implacability of a stoplight, the surges of traffic, the breathing of a city; everything was rhythm and cycles, and the sun watched it all with amused patience.

Twice through the cycle on a dry traffic island was enough for me. I went back to my wander, quickly lost in the sulky anger of bus engines and the expressive honks of Central American traffic, but for a couple blocks I would catch the clash of metal, flitting past me like birds in the canyons of street sound, as Joaquin went back to work.

Soothing scraping on a Peruvian morning

The party people from Lima were still sleeping it off, or maybe they had just gone to bed, so I was alone at breakfast in San Bartolo, on the coast of Peru. A steady stream of staff brought bags of fresh produce to the kitchen from the market across the street, and a 16 year old delivered two propane tanks on the back of his 125 cc Honda motorbike, improvised straps tenuous on the dented tanks.

I couldn't hear for sure, but I think the music in the kitchen was Wyclef and/or Beyonce.

A trill on a little wood pan pipe announced the arrival of the sinewy man with a wheeled contraption, a cross between a unicycle and a wheelbarrow. He paused, and when two cooks came out of the kitchen with large knives in their hands, he flipped the thing over and quickly set up shop.

A pump on the foot pedal set the main wheel turning, a leather strap scraped the road crap off then connected it to the smaller wheel. Taking the first knife, he eyed the edge, tested it with a thumb, then set to sharpening it on the spinning grindstone, the sound of scraping metal oddly soothing in the morning air.

I wanted to know this man. To take his picture. It was Day 2 of the trip though, so my nerves were still a bit shaky. “How do you sharpen knives in the US?” He might ask me.

“There's either a sharpener in the knife block, we do it ourselves (usually poorly) or we just kinda...you know...but a new one?” I didn't want to admit that. And what if he thought I was a jackass tourist? What if I was?

But there's no space for missed opportunities anymore, so before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed my bag and approached him. I used the absence of mosquitoes as smalltalk, saying I wanted to move here. Tangential compliments are always a good way to go, no?

With careful use of formal verb forms, I asked if I could take a picture. He was not an emotive man, but in his minimalism I sensed that the idea was not brand new to him, but still unfamiliar, and utterly incomprehensible. “Que raros, los turistas, no?”

He focused on his task while I snapped a couple quick shots, his leg, which must be harder than the steel he sharpens, never slowing as it pumped the foot pedal that earns him a living. We talked a little while he finished, and once his hands were free, I handed him a few soles, which he accepted with a slight nod.

He went on his way, and I returned to my table, where my breakfast was waiting, a dry bread roll with a thin slice of cheese. The radio was playing Rihanna, you can stand under my umbrella.

Steadily going insane...or not.

How can a house be so quiet? It’s not just that there is no one else here to make noise, it’s like the house absorbs any sound I make. Days here alone and I wonder if I’ve lost my hearing entirely, but for the relentless ticking of the clock. A countdown to madness.

I search for reasons to get out, places to go. Yesterday I decided to take my crappy little netbook to a coffeeshop to work there. The sounds of coffee being prepared, conversations held by others, anything to avoid the ticking silence.

The air was misting, heavy enough that most people would have called it rain. And suddenly I didn’t want to be in the coffeeshop, I needed to be outside. I wanted to walk by the sea, see her rolling ocean breakers smashing into the helplessly stubborn shore.

So I turned back to home, switched the computer for the camera and the mp3 player, and started walking.

The air was like that moment you turn off the shower, water coating you but no tangible falling. It felt good, but the mood, the music, the prospects for everything were not. Grey steps on grey pavement under a grey sky beside grey waves, the future…grey.

I’d tried to work on my writing project that morning, and after an hour it hit me: it sucks. The first few pages…if I picked up a book like that, I would put it back down unread. Why would anyone read my scribbling when there are so many better books out there? The competition unnerved me. No point in trying.

I kept walking, sweatshirt slowly soaking through. Passersby passing by, apparently not seeing me. Did I even exist anymore? Shoes squelching, eyelids dripping, vision clenched in wet eyelashes.

Steamer's Lane, Santa Cruz, CA (on another day)

I got to the end of the road, where it turns to lose its memory of oceanic greatness in the mundane ambling of city streets. That’s the famous Steamer’s Lane in Santa Cruz, California, where the surfers do their thing.

And there was a competition going.

The waves were speckled with a surfer horde doing their best to distinguish themselves for the judges, but indistinguishable in their uniform black wetsuits, the judges hidden in a black tarp booth so no one knew if they were paying attention anyway.

And there in front of me, just off the edge, a sea otter floated on its back, eating a sea urchin, totally uncaring of the surfing competition going on around him.

I laughed out loud.

Dedication on one of the benches along the way

And I realized that I can be that otter. I can lie back in the sea’s embrace and enjoy my fucking sea urchin thank you very much, without a care in the world for the competition around me. It’s not my competition, my life is other than that.

I laughed again. The damp clothing was the only weight on my shoulders.

Not waiting for shuffle to lend a hand I chose some upbeat music, potent rhythm, and returned home, steps coming quick and powerful. So maybe someday I’ll tell this blog that I finished my book. Maybe not. Sea otter don’t give a shit, the world is good.