Fireflies in the Night

I am still suffering a bit from jet lag but this morning I woke up even earlier than my usual seven a.m. and began my day around five.  With an encroaching rainy season on the horizon, I am ecstatic every morning when I wake up and look out my window to find one more sunny day.  This morning when I woke up, I opened the curtains and was shocked at how bright it was outside.  Japan is truly the "Land of the Rising Sun," with the sun rising at 4:30 in the morning! However, despite the early sunrise, Tokyo is a bit chilly in the morning and at nights (although it is plenty hot during the day).  It was on a more chilly and windy night than usual that I discovered you can access the rooftop of the building I live in.

As I quickly scaled the access ladder to the roof, I was struck by the multitude of lights all around me.  Tokyo is the biggest city in the world in terms of both population and land area.  It makes perfect sense that I would be bathed in the lights from the neon restaurant signs, the flashing red airplane guides on skyscrapers, or the occasional light left on from a condominium apartment, but the sight still surprised me.  I honestly have never seen so many lights or so much proof of human life before.

I wish I had brought my real camera with me to the roof but all I had was my rented Japanese flip-phone (which is actually pretty neat despite having no touch screen).  The picture above can't even begin to describe what I saw around me but it is proof of that chilly night I stood on the roof of my building, looked out, and was mesmerized by the flashing firefly-like lights around me, so different from the fireflies back home, but somehow still magical all the same.

Dress for Success - First Day of Work

Today was my first day of work at JEN (Japanese Emergency NGO).  Since I have arrived in Tokyo, I have noticed how well dressed everyone is in the city.  All the men and women dress very business-like and I think it is a safe bet that 90% of women here wear heels of various heights.  When I woke up this morning, I wanted to blend in (or at least not stick out) with the workforce so I put on a black pencil skirt, a cardigan, and a pair of heels.  However, when Jamie and I first stepped into JEN, I realized I was in a different office setting than the other people who had ridden the train with me to their respective offices.  Everyone around me was not dressed to the nines with various shapes and shades of black bottoms and white tops but rather their colorfully casual but nice clothing seemed almost symbolic of their grassroot run organization.

JEN has over 400 staff but at their headquarters in Tokyo they only have 20 employees.  The staff members pick their own hours and so throughout the day I saw people arriving and leaving the office.  One of the most difficult things I have found when traveling abroad is how to learn different cultures' societal rules and manners.  In Japan, it is customary to announce to the entire office when you enter in the morning, when you leave for lunch/errands/snacks in the middle of the day, and also when you leave at night.  However, not only are you expected to say a traditional phrase when you exit the office but when other people leave, there is also a response you are expected to say in return.  To say the least, it was very difficult for my jet-lagged muddled brain to sort through the appropriate calls and responses, but I managed with a few mispronunciations and lots of smiles both from me and my new co-workers.

Hopefully, as the summer goes on, my pronunciation of Japanese will become more accurate and both I and my new co-workers will continue to smile together but perhaps over new things besides my, albeit inevitable, cultural faux pas.

Lift Up Your Voice

I think service work/building trips are a very interesting concept.  At the heart of work trips there are two conflicting goals: the work getting done and relational service.  It is a very unique balance of being productive but at the same reserving time to build relationships.  This can be very difficult to accomplish well.  As a junior, I have gone on two other international break team trips with Wesley Fellowship.  Each trip has left an impression on my heart and created relationships that have far outlasted the time I actually spent abroad.  Traveling to Costa Rica, this past winter break was no different;I felt my faith and the faith of my team members grow as we completed relational service with our hosts.

When we arrived in Costa Rica we were very excited about the work we would begin the day after we got in.  However, when we arrived at the church we would be staying at, we discovered that our contact in Costa Rica had a back injury and was unable to move from his home a few hours away. Luckily, our little group of seven had several Spanish speakers so we were able to make new plans with our hosts at the church. Our project changed work locations and our “light” construction crew turned into dry walling an outside three story stairwell (both the inside and outside surfaces) and plastering the third floor. 


The day after we got in, we woke up early to begin working but then discovered that the foreman who was supposed to assist us, quit suddenly. While at first I felt like we were wasting a day trying to find a new foreman, that day became my favorite from the trip. Instead of doing construction work we spent the day with our hosts at the church, walking around town, and sharing our cultures with one another. I speak very little Spanish and our hosts spoke very little English but we still managed to share our thoughts and have fun together. When we found a new foreman, he proved to be an ideal match. It was not only important to him for our group to get the job done but for us to also be learning. He would not only supervise our work but would assist us in the hard parts until we could do it ourselves. Although painting turned into plastering and wiring turned into dry walling, I don’t think I could have imagined a better experience.

As the week continued, we worked with various members of the church and community to help drywall the stairwell we were working on.  As we sweated and served together, we also shared stories with each other.  I learned about and met their families, what led them to join a Methodist church when the majority of their country is Catholic, what they wanted to do in the future, and a lot of, "I will tell you what this object is in English if you tell me what it is in Spanish" game.  

Over the course of the week, we worshiped with the church we were staying at several times.  Every time, I was struck by both the differences and similarities between their service and the services I had grown up attending.  Some of the songs, I recognized their English equivalents but others were completely foreign to me.  While I didn’t understand the words I found myself getting caught up in the passion that surrounded me.  I loved how when it was time for offering everyone in the congregation came and laid something on the alter.  I loved how when we prayed it was never silent.  As the preacher spoke, everyone else whispered their own additions to the prayer.  I could never make up out the whispered words that surrounded me but I could clearly hear the devotion present in their voices.  The words wrapped around me like a blanket and I found comfort in their presence and ambiguity.

When our little team would meet together to discuss our experiences from the day, we often would often spend time retelling our favorite stories and experiences with our wonderful hosts, inevitably ending up laughing all over again.  Often members of the church would wander in during these times and together we would share what the day had meant to us.  It’s hard to say precisely just how my faith was changed by the trip but I think it resides in those little moments: the whispered prayers, carefully being taught to use a drill by our foreman, holding hands with our hosts and team members as we gathered around the table to pray, gentle corrections of my poor Spanish pronunciation, the high fives youth from the church gave me as we finished a game of soccer, and of course the never-ending smiles and laughter from everyone.  

This trip was probably one of the more challenging ones I have been on because of the language barrier; however, I only had to lift up my voice in worship and language suddenly no longer mattered.

Our team members with an Alajuela sign in the town.

 


Our team members with Julio: our friend, wonderful cook, guide around town, teller of all fruits and vegetable Spanish names, and generally all-around wonderful person.

Part of the stairwell we worked on plastering and dry-walling.

Something Old, Something New

When my friends and family learned I was traveling to Poland, I was repeatedly told to travel to Kraków and not Warsaw. When I asked why, they explained to me that since Warsaw was almost completely rebuilt after WWII, it was not “authentic.”  The word “authenticity” made me wonder: what exactly makes a city authentic?  Is it the people and culture that makes a city authentic, or is it the history exuded by centuries old buildings?  Warsaw and Kraków have an interesting relationship in terms of authenticity. Kraków has roots dating back to the 7^th century and was the original capital of Poland. Warsaw, however, dates only back to the 14^th century and it wasn’t until 1596 that the city became the new capital of Poland. Seven centuries older than Warsaw, Kraków is also often deemed more “authentic,” because it emerged virtually unscathed from the bombings of WWII. On the other hand, almost 85% of the buildings in Warsaw were razed to the ground towards the end of WWII. However, after WWII an initiative was formed to restore Warsaw’s Old Town (the 17^th and 18^th century city center) to its original condition. The results were so well done that United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) added Old Town to the World Heritage List.¹ Today, when you walk across Old Town it is hard to believe that the building are actually less than fifty years old.

Can you tell what is old and what is new?  Guess which pictures were taken in Kraków and which were taken in Warsaw.

Warsaw

Kraków

Warsaw

Kraków

 

1.      Wilson, Neil, Tom Parkinson, and Richard Watkins. Poland. China: Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd, 2005.

Wildflowers in Armenia - Traveling to Berdzor

When I first arrived in Armenia I was awestruck by the landscape: mountains, open skies, and field after field of wildflowers that filled the valleys and climbed the slopes. Coming from the forested hills of North Carolina’s Piedmont, I was used to smelling pine and honeysuckle and tasting the random wild blackberry dangling from a vine. Never before had I seen wildflower-covered plains seemingly jut into mountains much higher than my dear Appalachians. My hills have long been tamed into sectioned reserves and carefully cultivated parks. What I found in Armenia was an untamed Eden.

Eden might not be too far from the truth; Armenia is an ancient nation with a rich past. Whenever I travel to a new country, I love to discover the history of the land I am entering. The Bible cites Mt. Ararat, a part of ancient Armenia, as where Noah’s Ark landed after the Great Flood.¹ Archeologists have even found cuneiform inscriptions in Yerevan (the capital of modern day Armenia) in 782 B.C., making Yerevan the world’s oldest city with documentation of the exact date of its foundation.² The Kingdom of Armenia was established around 600 B.C. and extended to parts of modern day Turkey, Syria, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.³ Among other firsts, Armenia became the first official Christian nation in 301 B.C., thirty-six years before Constantine the Great was baptized and ten years before the Roman Empire embraced Christianity.⁴ Since its establishment, Armenia has been conquered and passed into foreign hands time after time, but again and again the country has reemerged, even surviving monolithic civilizations such as the Roman and Ottoman Empires. Even the name Armenia itself has historical significance: “Ar” stands for “life, light, and God,” and thus the name Armenia literally means “people of God.”⁵ 

However, the past hundred years have not been kind to Armenia. From the Armenian genocide in the early 20^th century, to the 7.1 magnitude earthquake in 1980 that leveled the country and killed 25,000, to the Soviet invasion, and most recently, to the war with Azerbaijan over the contested land, Karabakh, the Armenian people understand suffering. This understanding seeps into their day-to-day lives, living in small oft said comments: all Russian products (and there are a lot) are referred to as “Russian trash;” despite being located in Turkey Mt. Ararat is referred as “our Ararat;” and always “Karabakh is a part of Armenia.” While suffering might sound out in the base note, the heart note of Armenia is certainly the people. Tried and true, their abundant generosity knows no bounds.

Although I began my journey in Yerevan, Armenia, I actually spent most of my time outside of Armenia proper, in Nagorno-Karabakh, an area of contention between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the Soviet expulsion in the early 1990s. From 1988 to 1994, this region of the world was shell-shocked with land mines, bombs, and gunshots, leaving more ruins than functional buildings. The town I was in, Berdzor, was so destroyed by the war that it had been easier to move the city center than to clear the rubble that remained. Even today, almost twenty years later, the area still has more bombed buildings than not. Landlocked and surrounded by closed borders with Turkey, Iran, and Azerbaijan, the nascent nation has more problems than just the ruins it lives in. Throughout Karabakh, the people only have water for fifteen minutes every two days. Even in the modern city of Yerevan, only fifty to sixty percent of the people have water throughout the day. Although the water shortage is an important issue, the people also lack the financial power to rebuild their communities, as the average income of male workers in Karabakh is only hundred dollars a month.

During my time in Armenia and Karabakh, I served with Project Agape, the only aid organization with international connections that serves the Karabakh region. Due to political tensions between Karabakh and Azerbaijan, most international aid organizations refuse to work in Karabakh, lest they risk their relationship with Azerbaijan. Through Project Agape, I mostly did construction work (reroofing houses) but I also had the opportunity to do arts and crafts with kids at the orphanage Project Agape sponsors, and visit some of the potential houses in the community that Project Agape might work on in the future.

On my trip, I was able to interact with the local people and what struck me the most was their generosity. Despite their economic situations, every family we visited wouldn’t let us leave without a sampling of fruit, cookies, or coffee. Although every instance of generosity left me awestruck, there was one experience in particular that will remain with me. Several people who came with me to Armenia this past summer also went last fall, so we visited some of the houses they had worked on the previous year. One of the houses we visited belonged to an elderly woman named Anosh, who lived there with her children and grandchildren. Before construction, her house had been little more than crumbling rocks and mortar with a tattered roof. However, once the team completed the construction work, the house had new mortar, a roof, and floorboards. I had heard that the previous year Anosh had looked so downfallen it was as if she was carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. I had expected to see a woman scarred from life, but instead I was immediately greeted with a bright toothless smile and a warm hug. She ushered us quickly into the house, giving us snacks and water, smiling and pointing all around the room at the decorations she had added. When we finished the tour of her two-room house, she brought out a beautiful crocheted scarf and walked over to Cailyn (another girl on the trip) and me. Although neither of us had worked on her house, Anosh wanted to express her appreciation by giving us the scarf. Since there were two of us and only one scarf, Anosh gave the scarf to Cailyn but immediately walked over to a vase at the side of the room and pulled out a wildflower to hand to me. Although short on water, Armenia is not deficient in terms of the varieties or numbers of wildflowers that dot the countryside. I had seen countless wildflowers on my journey already, but this wildflower had special meaning to me. It was a gift given freely, reminding me of the Native American proverb that states, “May your life be like a wildflower growing freely in the beauty and joy of each day.”⁶ At the end of our visit, we left Anosh smiling at the door standing tall with her feet firmly planted, determinedly holding onto her family’s new life.

After I received the wildflower, I quietly filed away the memory of Anosh and focused once more on working. Yet the day before we left Berdzor to return to Yerevan, Anosh walked through the gates of Project Agape, with a small bag in hand. I went up to greet her and she pulled me aside. She couldn’t speak English and I could only speak a little conversational Armenian, but from the determined set of her eyes, I could tell she had come to do something important. She pulled out of her bag a beautiful pink crocheted scarf along with some chocolate. Unsatisfied without giving both of us girls a token of appreciation from her own hands, she had knitted another scarf in only a few days to give to me. Anosh’s gratefulness and generosity, so present in the Armenian people I had interacted with, have inspired me to be more grateful for all I have been given and to give more generously with my time and money to others around me.

After traveling to Armenia, one question remains with me: what is it that attracts us to serve our neighbor and to give with abundant generosity? The closest comparison I can find is that of a wildflower that grows unintentionally and unbidden, just as our service and generosity must be to our neighbors if we want to see our labors come to fruition. From my research prior to arrival, I had already marveled at the historical tapestry that was woven into the land, but what I experienced gave dimension and color to the vision I had created in my mind. Like a wildflower that brightens the field stretching toward the horizon, the people I met and formed relationships with in Armenia colored my time there, forming something more beautiful and genuine than I could have imagined.

1.       Embassy of Armenia to the United States of America, "Discover Armenia." Accessed November 16, 2012. http://www.armeniaemb.org/DiscoverArmenia/History/History.htm.

2.       Tourism Armenia, "Armenian History." Accessed November 16, 2012. http://www.tourismarmenia.net/about-armenia/history.

3.       Armeniapedia, "Armenian History." Accessed November 16, 2012. http://www.armeniapedia.org/index.php?title=Armenian_History.

4.       Wikipedia, "Armenia." Accessed November 16, 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenia.

5.       Wikipedia, "Armenian Mythology." Accessed November 16, 2012. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_mythology.

6.       Proverbatim, Accessed November 16, 2012. http://www.proverbatim.com/native-american/native-american-may-your-life-be-like-a-wildflower.html.

Perfectly Imperfect

Sitting in the airport now getting ready to leave Haiti, all I can think about is how blessed I have been to have this wonderful opportunity.  The past few days have been powerful and hard but we have also created many beautiful and precious memories.  Yesterday, we traveled to one of the sister ministries of the Saint Joseph, Trinity family, called Wings of Hope.  I had grown up hearing about the Wings of Hope Ministry from my church but what I experienced exceeded all of my expectations.  Wings of Hope is a community and home for children and young adults with special needs.  Some of the kids spoke some English, some Creole, and some couldn’t speak at all, but it was the first time it felt like the language barrier didn’t matter.  We were just there to laugh, smile, and fellowship with some wonderful kids.

We were tired from a long hot hour bus ride through winding mountain roads.  When we finally arrived at Wings of Hope the gates opened and some of the children ran up to us screaming and laughing.  Their energy and enthusiasm instantly gave life to our group and we were soon running around and laughing with them.  One of my favorite moments was when we were passing out donations.  A young girl who could speak English and was showing us around, Josephine, eyes instantly lit up when we gave her a pair of fashion sunglasses and a stuffed animal.  She was so excited about the gifts and she wanted to help us pass them out to the other children as well.  As we wheeled her around it was so beautiful to see the kids interactions with each other as they shared their gifts and helped make sure no one was left out.  I felt like I was experiencing the meaning of true community.

At Duke, an English professor told me that a “poem's power and  beauty comes from unfulfilled expectations.”  I think the same can be said of life.  Life’s most beautiful moments come from when we expect a certain rhythm or beat but instead a new note sounds out instead.  To me this “dissonance” is where life’s true beauty shines through.  I never expected what I felt at Wings of Hope and I think others also felt the same.  For a very marginalized community in Haiti, many people across the world would not treat these kids as a part of a normal community.  Because of the volunteers these children are loved and valued and the children share this love with all who come.  Their joy of life was simply infectious and taught me that despite any pitfalls in life by living through whatever “dissonant” chords are played, our lives could turned in beautiful new directions.  Things happen in life, good things and bad things, and sometimes we fall hard; but if we can maintain a “joie de vivre,” joy of life, there is no telling where our “unfulfilled expectations” can take us.

Our journey was perfectly imperfect, but personally, I think that’s beautiful.

A Beautiful Haiti

I am trying to remember now my first impression of Haiti.  I guess the first thing I felt was how awfully hot is was.  Not thinking, I put on an extra pair of pants to stay warm on the plane (which wasn't even cold) and once I stepped off the plane in Haiti I was overwhelmed by the heat.  I guess my next impression was that the roads were less than desirable for traveling on but that the food was fantastic!  You've never had a banana or a mango until you've been to Haiti.  I've never tasted pineapple juice before either that was sweet without artificial flavoring.

At Blanchard in Port-au-Prince, we had a wonderful time playing with the children who go to school there, visiting the Mother Theresa Home for the Destitute and Dying, and traveling to the artisan district called Croix-des-Bouquets.  At Croix-des-Bouquets I was amazed by the art.  Beautiful metalwork lined the streets often propped up in the dirt in front of small huts and shops.  Croix-des-Bouquets was the first place I had been to in Haiti were I actually felt like the people could make a sustainable living.  The metal they used from their artwork was from massive oil drums and squatting in the dirt you would see men pounding on the metal.  It amazed me that from an oil drum they could create such intricate delicate pieces of metalwork.  The beauty of the artwork astounded me.

Today was a little bit harder.  Our accommodations and food have been sparse but we did get the chance to journey to the orphanage at Fondwa.  It took about 40 minutes walking downhill a trecherous path, and over an hour to get back.  However, there was something beautiful about today besides the breath taking scenery.  We had been talking this week about how frustrated we are by all the the walls around us, well today those walls came down.  I've said before how I believe beauty comes from unfulfilled expectations being met in new "beautiful" ways.  I still find that to be true, especially for me in Haiti.  All my expectations came crashing down and instead I found a beautiful inside and out Haiti.  We saw dog fights, massive "tap-taps" zooming around curves, wild cows and bulls, lots and lots of children, a suitcase rolling down the side of a mountain, people saying "bonswa!" everywhere you go, no breakfast or dinner, an hour long walk UP a mountain, valleys like I've never seen before, sick friends, doors that won't close, smell of trash burning, cold colas, thin beds, and a donkey neighing.  Today was nothing like I expected, but today I saw a beautiful Haiti.