CultureTwined

How can humanity…?

Posted on 13 May 2013 by admin

I was just looking through my twitter feed and learned about the bombing in Benghazi today. To be specific, a hospital in Benghazi. At least 2 children dead, they’re saying.

But it’s hard for me to react the way such news deserves, because just two days ago, two car bombs went off in Reyhanli, Southern Turkey. I know people just a few short miles from there. I talked to one of my friends who lives nearby today and I said, “I thank God it didn’t hit your city.” And she said, “Who cares? People died!” And she’s right. But I’m still glad it wasn’t her or her family…

But even that fails to even compare with the news I saw today: the death toll in Syria has now surpassed 80,000. The refugee figures are so high I’ve lost count, but it’s safe to guess that close to 1 out of 3 Syrians have fled their homes. That figure includes almost all of my friends. I praise God that the 82,000 deaths does not include any of my friends, but I tremble to think how close the death has come to their doorstep.

And I stop to wonder, Who are these people? Who would do this!

None of my friends thirst for blood; all my friends are doing everything they can to survive, and are sacrificing deeply to help others to survive.

I don’t want to know these people. I’m glad my friends are not among them.

But I stare at the news like a deer stares into the headlights of an ongoing car. Shocked, scared and completely unsure of what to do. How can someone so lightly take the life of another? What kind of a human being picks up a weapon and points it at a fellow human being? Where is the soul of the person who loads a car full of explosives and walks away to watch the ensuing carnage?

Then I walk into my office, where we are all working as hard as we can to try and somehow minimise the human suffering that is the inevitable fall-out of all this violence, and we play internal politics, gossip about each other, complain about our job. We may not cause any physical harm to each other, but neither do we provide a respite from the pain that is outside. Maybe that’s on purpose: We’d rather feel a bit of pain than feel guilty that we’re safe and happy while the people we serve are suffering so.

But at the end of the day, I see the tweets about fashion news, celebrity gossip, new artwork on display, and I want to escape to that world. I want to pretend the suffering doesn’t exist. I don’t want to find out who those people are. Because if I ever come face to face with one of them, what can I possibly say? If a Syrian fighter, regardless of which side he took, were to talk into my living room right now, what could I say? If the Benghazi or Reyhanli bomber were to sit down in the chair across from me, what could I possibly say?

Is there anything, anything at all, that s/he could say that would convince me that s/he is actually a human being?

Posted in humanitarian work | Tagged humanity, Libya, Syria, Turkey | 4 Comments

the ironies

Posted on 5 May 2013 by admin

Did you know that I left Cairo the day before their famed Arab Spring protests began? I’d been there for a conference and was staying right in the city centre – where the protests happened. Then I moved back to Cairo a few months later to help design some post-revolution development programming. I was there for four months, during which there were, at minimum, weekly protests.

Even though I was staying barely a stone’s throw from Tahrir Square, where all the action took place, I was safely ensconced in a lush five-star hotel with climate control and windows that had no reason to open. So often, on a day after protests, a colleague who lived in a normal flat overlooking the main road would come in to work complaining of how his flat had been full of tear gas that day. I felt sympathy for him, because clearly he’d had a miserable day while I was enjoying my hotel’s spa. But I also felt an inkling of jealousy, wondering what it’d be like to have a front-row seat on history.

I was also in Khartoum, Sudan during some of their worst protests last year but was under no illusions: I knew better than to leave the house. By staying home I was bored out of my mind, but I was also pretty much guaranteed safety. Thinking back to my past, I recall that I was in Lebanon a week before the 2006 war started, and I was in the Middle East during the Palestinian intifada and the beginning of the Iraq War — both historical events which inspired masses to take to the streets. So… I’ve been close to danger many times in my life, but I’ve always been just-far-enough-away to be quite safe indeed. Even this past week, I was in Southern Turkey, near the Syrian border. Yes, the SYRIAN border, a very unsafe border which saw some terrible fighting this week. But I was in a peaceful village a few miles away enjoying local hospitality and working very hard on my computer and in meetings.

So how ironic it is that I arrived back in Istanbul on a sunny Friday afternoon with a lovely breeze floating through the city, and promptly walked into tear gas. Now that it is over, I can say with pride that I have now been gassed. But at that moment, I felt like I was experiencing the most excruciating pain known to humankind. Every inch of my body was stinging, I was barely able to breathe, a putrid smell kept sneaking its way through the towel I was holding up to my nose and mouth, and my eyes were watering which just made them hurt more and I was given lemon juice to wipe on them because that would hurt less! For the record, tear gas is completely inhumane.

A very sweet shopkeeper lady took me into her little airconditioned store to wait it out. Walking on the street was out of the question, after all. With tears – real tears, not just gas-induced – in her eyes, she mourned the events which had led up to an entire neighbourhood being sprayed with tear gas. And this was a neighbourhood with hundreds if not thousand tourists wandering its streets on a Friday afternoon! She apologised repeatedly and profusely for her nation. And she just made me fall in love with Turkey more.

Once the coast was clear, I passed about 200 soldiers wandering up the street of my flat, some of them still carrying gas canisters. I wondered what must be going through their minds right now and what they would tell their mothers next time they went on home leave. Were they proud of causing such pain? Were they frustrated that protestors would put them in such a difficult situation? Were they angry that they’d been recruited into an army that would ask them to gas civilians? They were so young, probably still teenagers, and they know so little of this world.

Anyway, for what I hope are obvious reasons, I did not take any pictures during the gas or in its aftermath, but I soon had another experience which was quite fascinating and so I’ll finish this post by sharing some photos… As you may know, Istanbul has the honour of being built across two continents. You can cross from Europe to Asia and back again on a ferry which costs about a dollar and takes about 15 minutes. Many people do this as a part of their daily commute to work. I’m living in Europe but yesterday I crossed to Asia to visit some friends. While there, a massive fog crept in – my friends said this was unusual. It passed quickly on the Asia side, but it settled on the Europe side, exactly covering the ferry ports. So all ferries were cancelled until further notice, which ended up being almost all day. I was stuck in Asia! After a few hours, I gave up and took a bus which took a long circuitous route over an enormous suspension bridge (it has only been in the last 30 years that there has even existed a bridge connecting Europe and Asia, before that it was ferry or nothing!). But all the locals have informed me that such events are highly unusual in Istanbul. Ferries are rarely cancelled, and fog of this specific nature hardly ever happens. So I took a few photos

I took this from the Asia side, looking at the Europe side. It was a gorgeous day on the Asia banks of the Bosphorous. But the European riverbank was a big mass of cloud.

I took this from the Asia side, looking at the Europe side (you can ALMOST see the buildings on the other side). It was a gorgeous day on the Asia banks of the Bosphorous. But the European riverbank was a big mass of cloud.

I took this photo when I FINALLY got home 5 hours later, from my flat which is high up a hill, ABOVE the cloud

Posted in humanitarian work, travel | Tagged istanbul, protests | 4 Comments

Where in the world is Kati Woronka?

Posted on 27 April 2013 by admin

Why, in a charming little café in one of the most – possibly THE most – magical city in the world. Where else would she be?

Most of my blog readers are my friends and have followed my movements during the last month or so on Facebook, twitter, email, maybe even good old fashioned conversations like normal people [used to do]. So my whirlwind of travels this month is not news.

the café where I’m currently sitting. Will I bond with the owners of this one, or go to a different one each day? I don’t know – there’s so much charm to choose from!

But for the few of you who know me only through CulturTwined, let me give a little recap of the last month+ since I last wrote here: two-day interview for a job in one of my many favourite cities and didn’t get it but got to visit my goddaughter while there… a week of meetings on the outskirts of Istanbul Turkey… another week of meetings in Colorado Springs USA… three tabouli parties to celebrate my novel Dreams in the Medina and raise awareness about Syria in Maryland and Virginia USA… play with niece and nephew… quickie fly-thru in London to unpack and repack… back to Istanbul Turkey where I’ll be living for the next 4-ish months. Things move fast. Some of this was confirmed for months, but some of it came up really last minute. Like the whole moving-to-Turkey thing. That wasn’t in the plans, but how does one say no to Istanbul?

If someone offered you a job that required you watching all your favourite TV shows all day and getting paid for it… or that required driving around in your dream vehicle all day and getting paid for it… or eating the most delicious of foods all day and getting paid for it… it’d be pretty hard to say no, wouldn’t it?

Well, that’s pretty much what happened. Istanbul has long been one of my favourite cities in the world. The food here is great. The Turkish language is music to my ears (although it’d be nice to understand a word or two). The architecture is nothing short of eye candy, but even the gorgeous old houses pale in comparison to the views of the sea and ancient historical monuments across the river. OK, so my job is not to live in Istanbul. But my job brought me to Istanbul and for that I am quite grateful.

To be perfectly honest, though, I’d probably do this job if it required living in a refugee camp in the middle of the desert for 4-6 months. I’m helping projects in four Middle Eastern countries that are designed to save the lives and seek to restore the dignity of Syrians, including Syrian refugees who have fled to neighbouring countries and Syrians who are trying to simply stay alive in their own country. As you may have noticed about me, Syria is very dear to my heart and recent events there have been heartbreaking to witness. So I’m thrilled to have an opportunity to be involved in helping out in some small way. So far the job is tough, and it’s just going to get tougher, but I really hope a few people’s lives improve as a result.

The one downside to this whole thing is that my CulturTwining friends might recall that I’ve talked quite a bit about moving to London, settling down, learning how to be stable. Well, this posting isn’t helping. It’s probably hurting. That makes me sad, but not sad enough to turn down the chance to do something I’m very very passionate about while living in such a fascinating city. And this isn’t a permanent move, just a few months.

the view from my office as the sun set

So after an unscheduled hiatus, CulturTwined is back, though I’m not going to commit to any regularity. I might post on here about the tabouli parties and other exciting developments with Dreams in the Medina. I’ll probably try to introduce Istanbul to CulturTwined readers this and try to convince you to fall in love with this city just as I have and come visit. If I convince myself to start learning Turkish I’ll probably have some silly mishaps to share. Comments about Syria will continue to be inevitable, I suspect. And, as always, I hope to celebrate the joys of exploring diversity, people who are different from me, learning to experience the realities of others in some small way… yeah, I still love to CulturTwine.

p.s. if you use Google Reader and are looking for an alternate, I thought I’d let you know that I’ve migrated to Feedly and am loving it. And it imports everything so I hardly missed a beat! Yes, chances are I’m still reading your blog even if I’m staying silent.

Posted in adjusting to London, announcements, CulturTwining, travel | Tagged istanbul, Syria | Leave a comment

American showing off like a local… at a café in Camberwell

Posted on 16 March 2013 by admin

Today I went to do some work in a charming café that’s not too far from my home. It was my first time there – I’d walked by before and it had looked a little bit too nice and I was intimidated to go in, but today I took the plunge.

First, the café is called Love Walk Café (the name already is pretty cool, eh?) and if you’re in south London consider a visit. It was awesome! Incredibly eclectic décor that was almost but not quite distracting, and fantastic coffee (imho – I don’t purport to speak for coffee sauvants everywhere). I didn’t eat, but all the people eating around me seemed to be really happy.

But I had a fantastic moment in the café. A family of four was ploughing their way through four English breakfasts when I arrived. A mum, a dad and two very blond boys who were at that age where they couldn’t sit still. From their accents, it was clear they were English.

As they started to pack up to leave, they called a waitress over, and the father asked, in his crisp English accent, how to get to the London Aquarium. He explained that they were from out of town and they knew it was near Waterloo but weren’t sure how to get there. The waitress, in a very Eastern European accent, apologised, saying that she didn’t know Camberwell either and couldn’t direct him as to the bus routes. She walked away, the dad shrugged, the kids tumbled on the bench.

I’d overheard every word of this conversation from a few tables over. I guess you could say I was all the way across the room, but I still heard every word. So I caught the father’s eye and called out to him, in my dorky (yes, I know that’s what the English think of it) American accent, that if he wanted to get to the Aquarium he could go to Westminster Bridge but that Waterloo wasn’t too far either. If it were me, I’d walk up to Camberwell Green and take the number 12, but he could just check the bus lists at the stop out front because a number of other buses could also go that way.

And he thanked me.

And I smiled, smugly thinking that I felt as local as I’ll ever feel. An American giving a Brit directions in London.

And after that, I think I might have enjoyed the café even more than I already was doing!

Posted in adjusting to London | Tagged American, british, café, London | Leave a comment

Trauma squared

Posted on 14 March 2013 by admin

“Back when we lived in Homs, the kids would do art activities at school. They drew trees, birds, and pictures of other kids playing. Now, the kids I know still draw, but they draw guns, bombs and fighter jets.”

Today I came across a video posted on the Huffington Post which interviewed children in Syria. One little girl said that her brother makes the sound of bombing in his sleep now: “BDOOH BDOOH BDOOH!” A boy just entering adolescence showed of his newest toy: a collection bullet casings he picks up as he walks through the neighbourhood, where he also checks out the mangled corpses. Where are your schoolfriends now, the interviewer asks? They’re all dead. In this video, children describe these scenes as if they were drawing a picture for their teacher at school: as if it were totally normal. To be sure, not all children have seen such horrors, but a few is already too many.

So their families flee. Whenever possible, or when it becomes utterly impossible to stay at home, mothers pack up their kids, pay a smuggler their life savings, and make their way to neighbouring Jordan, or perhaps Iraq or Lebanon or Turkey. But they find that they fled the fighting to face a new trauma: an agonising journey where they have no rights and no protection whatsoever. What happens to those women and their children on the journey? Then, they finally make it to safety. Praise be to God, they shout! But they have no home, no money, no friends, and no idea what to do next, so mothers work hard and get creative just so that their children can sleep with a roof over their heads. Trauma on top of trauma on top of trauma.

Trauma squared. Or is it trauma to the third power?

I’ve worked in several countries struggling to rebuild themselves after conflict, and the thing that most breaks my heart is the effect of trauma. People suffer from depression, psychosis, schizophrenia or other such ailments (I read today that many Iraqi refugees suffer from trauma-induced incontinence), but they have to get on with their lives. So they join the workforce, they fall in love and get married and have kids. And they do not treat the psychological damage that was done.

So every single person they encounter is affected by their trauma. If you work with someone who is struggling with mental illness, you know it can be complicated. If almost everyone in your workplace is struggling with mental illness, it inevitably alters the entire office. And children who are raised by parents who have seen the unspeakable, who have experienced things that they wish ever so much they could forget… those children’s entire lives are affected by that. In general, it seems that the trauma of war lasts about two generations beyond the generation that saw the war, even if the war itself was short: for example, the Rwandan genocide was 4 months long, two decades ago, and Rwanda is still struggling to rebuild itself.

And so I see the entire fabric of Syrian society being redesigned. A new culture, a new heritage, a new set of dreams will emerge out of the ashes of trauma… an entire nation who rarely knew anything other than peace now knows everything but peace. I fear that this new fabric is going to be ugly, and that we will always mourn the lovely, sheltered, fabric of the past.

linking today with Emily and the lovely Imperfect Prose community

Posted in Syrians who have inspired me | Tagged children, conflict, psychosocial, Syria, trauma, war | 6 Comments

Another touching poem from Syria

Posted on 12 March 2013 by admin

A few weeks ago I posted a poem written by someone who goes by the label “the Syrian poet”. I was impressed by how many hits that poem got, and pleased, because I thought it really captured the heart of some very dear, precious people who have fled Syria.

So today I’m posting another poem from the Syrian poet. This one is about loss. Hope and loss.

WAHEED

(AN ODE TO A LOST SON)

By the Syrian Poet

I had one son, waheed,
the promise for our family, our heritage.
Bring him home to me again, bring him home.

They came and ripped you from my heart
and snatched your life
as quick as breath,
and now I embrace the ocean,
hoping that you are there.
When will I see you again,
the one I bore, who delighted my heart?
I’m ship-wrecked on an island
with nothing all around me,
except grains of sand
that burn my soul
and stick upon my lips
as I whisper out your name.

Click here to read the rest of the poem at the MEE blog…

Posted in Syrians who have inspired me | Tagged loss, Syrian poet | Leave a comment

A quote from Pope Benedict

Posted on 8 March 2013 by admin

As you most likely have heard by now, the first Pope in more than a thousand years has retired. I appreciate his wisdom in accepting his physical limits. In fact, my respect for Pope Benedict only increased during the years he was one of the world’s biggest public figures.

So, as we enter the weekend, I just want to share a quote from him that I really appreciated. May we all strive to live up to the values that lie behind these words…

“To be nourished by Christ is the way not to remain foreign and indifferent to the fortunes of our brothers, but to enter into the very logic of love and of gift. He who is able to kneel before the Eucharist, who receives the Lord’s body cannot fail to be attentive, in the ordinary course of the days, to situations unworthy of man, and is able to bend down personally to attend to need, is able to break his bread with the hungry, share water with the thirsty, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned.”

During the years I worked for a catholic non-profit, we learned a lot about how to help the poorest of the poor in a way that addressed issues at the deepest spiritual level of people’s hearts, through the Pope’s teaching. I am so grateful for that experience and what I learned. Here is an article that shares a bit more about what we’ve learned from Pope Benedict’s encyclicals on “Caritas”. Take a look!

Posted in humanitarian work | Tagged Caritas in Veritate, encyclical, Pope Benedict | Leave a comment

How Za’atari became a city

Posted on 5 March 2013 by admin

“They’re Syrians, after all. What did you expect?”

This is the mantra being passed around among humanitarian aid specialists, NGO representatives, UN personnel and other people working with Syrian refugees in Jordan. It’s the reason given to explain that the largest, and for all intents and purposes only, refugee camp in Jordan looks more like a city than the destitute camp in the middle of the desert that it actually is.

Zaatari… from The Levant Post – Jordan

Zaatari Overview:

Population: 70,000 ish. Everyone has a different figure, but that’s about the average.
Main industry: Trade in subsidised commodities (for example, a blanket that cost 12 JD – equivalent of USD$16 – outside the camp was distributed to refugees for free and is now being sold at an enormous profit for 2 JD – i.e. USD$3).
Central thoroughfare: A row of tents with little shops set up in front of them, now the ubiquitous Arab souq, or market. There is little you can not procure.
Social issues: No one is quite sure exactly how bad domestic violence and sexual harassment has become inside the camp, but chances are that it’s pretty bad; hundreds of restless unemployed teenage boys adds potential for delinquency.
Tourist attractions: Women’s sewing groups set up by NGOs which are now producing beautiful pieces of embroidery; the local school which was occupied by refugees when their tents flooded; children walking around in tattered clothing.
How to get there: Actually, you’re better off not trying. I never got to Zaatari: I went to the nearest town, about 8 km from the camp, but was told that you can’t get into the camp if you don’t have permission or a fantastically flirtatious smile. My odds were better with permission, but those odds weren’t high.

Well, countless people have found ways around the system. Fake permissions? Men with flirtatious smiles? Or perhaps men find that money does what a smile does for a woman… Anyway, Jordanian merchants come and go, trading in commodities. They bring in the products that are not being distributed in the camps: spices for cooking, battery-operated electronics, makeup for the girls. And they leave with ridiculously cheap blankets and gas for space heaters, no doubt with UN or NGO emblems still plastered in visible places.

I think it’s fantastic (except for the very worrying social issues mentioned above), and if Syrians refugees are going to be stereotyped, I’m glad their reputation is of entrepreneurial folk who make the best out of a bad situation.

a veggie shop in Zaatari, from article at http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/09/27/240461.html

Posted in Syrians who have inspired me | Tagged entrepreneurial, jordan, Zaatari camp | 1 Comment

Author interview over at Middle East Experience

Posted on 3 March 2013 by admin

I didn’t mean to, but hey, look at that… I took a break from CulturTwined this week! Every day, I put “BLOG!” on my “to-do” list (yes, I have one of those – do you?) and every day, I cut it and pasted that task to the next day.

Well, here’s why: I have about three more posts about Syrian refugees in Jordan lined up, but I’m tired of depressing news. And even the happy stuff – and there is some happy stuff to share – is sobering. I didn’t want to write sad stories about Syria this week, although I think they need to be told. So turns out this week was a bloggy break.

BUT… I did write about Syria this week. I was invited to do my first “author interview” over at Middle East Experience, a great venue for gathering a variety of interesting and informative resources on the Middle East. If you’re interested, even the teeny tiniest bit, even just because you read my blog and feel like I’m always bugging you to be interested in the Middle East, you should visit their site from time to time.

I loved doing this author interview, and I hope I get invited for more! What made this interview so awesome was that they asked really, really good questions about Syrian women, and the way current events are impacting real people. Please do take a look at the full interview and tell your friends about it. Not to promote Kati and her book (although I always appreciate help promoting my book ), but because the issues about Syrian women that we discussed in the interview are real and important and worthy of our attention.

Here are a few quotes from the interview (yeah, I’m quoting myself. Is that weird?)…

“Many Syrian women are traumatised, and I worry a great deal about my friends who are suffering under a heavy emotional burden, having lost loved ones and sometimes witnessed brutality themselves. And we must keep in mind that, up until two years ago, Syria was one of the most peaceful countries in the world. The violence that surrounds them is a new phenomenon and it’s a hard pill to swallow.”

“In Assad’s Syria, women enjoyed a relatively strong degree of legal rights compared to many other Muslim countries, though many Syrian families are conservative so in reality there was a large proportion of women who never actually accessed these rights. Other women, though, most certainly did: I have had the privilege of getting to know women in Syria’s national parliament, as well as female university professors, doctors and journalists.”

crop1

“I’ve had the privilege of bringing groups of volunteers from the United States, Europe and Latin America, to Syria, and introducing them to my friends, and it has always been a lot of fun. Though there are of course exceptions, most Syrian women are not particularly interested in politics… Instead, my Syrian friends want American women to describe life on the other side of the world, they want to swap stories about children, and they want to show off their amazingly delicious cuisine.”

Read the full interview here!

Photo is, well, of me. The blog administrator over at MEE had trouble uploading it, so I figured why not share it with you myself?

Posted in Dreams in the Medina, Syrians who have inspired me | Tagged author, Middle East Experience, Syria | 2 Comments

Awesome women! One billion rising, even in Sudan…

Posted on 25 February 2013 by admin

Did you know about the One Billion Rising flashmobs on 16 February this year (just two weeks ago)? I somehow missed that this was happening, but now that I’ve finally caught up, I think it’s pretty cool. Watch this video – totally worth the 2 1/2 minute investment – to learn more about it:

Now, I saw videos on YouTube of these flashmobs in Italy, Switzerland, India, Albania, Indonesia, and a wide assortment of other countries. All super cool.

But when I saw a video of 500 Sudanese women at a university in Khartoum joining in, I was particularly psyched. In theory, such things do not happen in Sudan. Protests are not cool and, while Sudanese women are incredible strong and courageous, they don’t enjoy very many rights. But… I could totally imagine my Sudanese women friends joining in and really, really enjoying this. It really made me miss them.

Posted in women | Tagged One Billion Rising, Sudan | 2 Comments