Part II: It’s a jungle out there!

I wrote the other night about the diversity we find in the villages we work in.  My point (whether I reached it or not is unknown) was that we need to recognize the diversity of people that live closely together and not assume that they are all one cuddly community.  Rather we should understand what kind of people they are, and use varied approaches to urge them along in joining the work of becoming a community by definition.  Tonight I am again writing about the diversity of community, but this time it’s from the perspective of the outsider; that is, my own perspective, right here in my neighborhood.

In the time that we have lived in this city, we have experienced a wide spectrum of responses from our neighbors.  We have experienced genuine, humbling hospitality and Good-Samaritan-like kindness from strangers.   In the same time period we have also experienced hate-filled slander, curses, and all-out awful behavior.  It’s been such a wild, up and down spectrum that you cannot anticipate one day to the next which flavor of interaction you will experience.  It truly is a jungle, right outside our door! 

The experience that I describe above has taught me something important about myself.  I have learned that I like to be respected as a human, and when I’m not, it is a heavy burden on my heart and mind.  For example: when I cross paths with a stranger on the sidewalk and he hisses “infidel” in my ear as he passes, I don’t like it.  That word, to them, is the biggest insult they can utter; it is absolutely dehumanizing.  Every time this happens to me it takes at least a few minutes to put it out of my head and go on with my day.  Before I put it out, it threatens to ruin my day and my attitude toward people here for the day.  It is especially polluting because I think to myself, “I’ve done nothing to you and nothing to deserve being dehumanized.  Rather than give me any sort of chance, you immediately cut me down?  I deserve better!”  It has taken, and continues to take, a lot of work to be able to quickly say to myself, “I don’t have to be respected, to be effective at what I was called here for.” 

That short motto has become useful to me, which is good, because I frequently have to repeat it to myself.  It is disappointing to feel as if there has been an avalanche of negative sentiment towards foreigners altogether.  The negative sentiment manifests itself in a dozen different ways, all of which can ruin our days, if we let them. 

BUT, like I said, it’s a jungle out there, and that means you’ll find all sorts of animals out there.  We’re not here to wrestle with the tigers or even try to tame the donkeys, we are here to tend the goats, find the lost sheep, and bind up the brokenhearted.  If we get too scared of the tigers or too fed up with the lousy donkeys, and we stay out of the jungle altogether, then who will help the animals we were sent to help? 

Here’s another thing about jungles, a beautiful thing in fact: Sometimes you’ll even find animals that will take care of you in the jungle.  One of the best mental/emotional/spiritual exercises we started late last year was creating a list of great things that people here have done for us.  I call it the Good Samaritan list.  It always challenges me to be reminded that some people here have been Good Samaritans to us, even while we have come with the intent to be Good Samaritans to them (and so often fail to do so).  In order for someone’s action to make our Good Samaritan list, their action has to be completely empty of expectation of reward.  If we made a list of all the kind things people here have done for us WITH expectation of reward, that would be a LONG list.  Those that have done kindness or mercy without expectation of reward make a much shorter list, but it is a very special list to us.  Here it is:

-       

• Back in 2008 we were looking for a restaurant by ourselves in a city here that we had never been to.  Darkness fell before we found it, so we started to ask for directions from shopkeepers around us.  One of them looked at us caringly, walked with us to the street, hailed a cab, told him where we wanted to go, and paid the cab driver our fare.  He knew we would never see him again.
• -       In 2011 a neighbor boy gave our son his favorite rabbit, a beautiful angora long-haired rabbit that was as tame as could be.  A true sacrifice, simply because he saw how my son’s eyes lit when he saw it. 
• -       This winter we were bumping along in the muddy bazaar and our daughter wiggled out of her stroller straps and fell face first into the mud.  We were right there, but 2 men across the street got to our daughter before we could.  One immediately picked her up, another ran quickly for water to wash her up.  They washed her spotless before gently handing her back to her mother.
• -       My son and I were doing some shopping in the bazaar and he set his backpack down in one shop.  30 minutes later an exhausted old man finally found us, smiled and put my son’s bag back around his shoulders.  He wouldn’t accept a thing in thanks.
• -       One of the poorer staff in our office, a watchman, has a wife that is unable to bear children.  Rather than try to get a second wife that can bear children, he opened his heart and adopted the baby of a teen girl that was raped (this kind of adoption is absolutely unheard of here.  He’s the proudest father ever, and while this Good Samaritan act was not done for or to us, it was one of those remarkably genuine things that was done with such quiet humility, so we decided it had to make our list as well!

This is the conclusion of my thoughts for now on the jungle called diverse society.  We are not respected or appreciated by some number of people here, but that’s okay, we still have purpose in being here for those that are still open, still seeing us as humans, and still looking for light. 

It’s a jungle out there!

A little while ago, while being a part of the mediation of a village conflict, one of the village leaders turned to me privately and said, “Engineer sahib, it’s a jungle out there!”  It was one of those statements about which you think, “how am I to understand this?  Are you speaking literally or figuratively, or are you pulling my leg?”  Then he continued, “In a jungle you’ve got deer, and elephant, you’ve got rabbits, and monkeys, you’ve got mouse, you’ve lions and tigers, and you’ve got donkeys!  There’s all kinds out there!”  Then I understood that he was making reference to a community development training delivered by an Australian development guy, Phil, who is a close friend. 

Phil’s introductory training on community included lots of illustrations like this one, and this one stuck with those he told.  In reality, the village leader had not heard the training from Phil because he never went to that village.  This leader could only have learned it second-hand from our local staff.  I was impressed that Phil’s training illustration had been so good that it was remembered and passed on by our local staff and by a community leader!  And the fact was, he was applying the illustration perfectly!

Why did the village leader say to me: It’s a jungle out there?  He said it because at that moment, the whole community, minus 2 guys, were ready to put their shovels in the ground and start digging the ditch for an irrigation project.  The majority of the community had debated and worked out their preferences and opinions regarding irrigation and come to a consensus conclusion that they wanted this spring-fed irrigation pipe scheme project.  It had taken them a long time to get through that period of debate and resolution, and they were ready to put the arguing behind them and get to work.  Unfortunately on that day there were 2 guys who had not yet had their say in the matter and they decided to make their own disagreeing voices heard rather than accept was the majority of the community agreed upon. 

In this situation, these 2 men were the donkeys of the jungle.  Picture a nice, quiet jungle morning where the animals are calmly moving about as they start their day.  All of the sudden 2 donkeys, for reasons known only to donkeys, bolt through the forest, BRAYING wildly, kicking and knocking over anything in their path.  Despite the fact that there were bigger, wiser animals in the jungle on that day, at that moment there was nothing anyone could do to contend with the wild donkeys!  Then once they had run their route, trampled the ground and relieved themselves of all braying, they went back to being a mostly unnoticed animal.

Like my local staff member, and the village elder, I have been thinking a lot about the lesson on the diversity of people in communities.  Communities can be described in general terms according to their cultural characteristics, level of connectedness, ambitions and goals, and other common measures and norms.  However, communities often if not always contain people that are outliers to every norm that the community tries to hold to.  The strong people might work hard on getting these people to conform, but in the end, they’re going to be who they are going to be. 

The main task of a community development facilitator is to relate well to everyone in the community, and to mobilize them toward positive community changes.  That’s a tall order given the diversity of many communities.  It is possible, however, to realize that there are a diversity of tools and facilitation approaches that can be used to interact with different types of individuals. 

There’s more to say about this jungle business… but that’s for another night.

Update Jan 14:  This week I learned that one of the two men that were the “donkeys” toward our irrigation project, has now become a happy proponent of the project and supporter of our work.  Apparently the reason for his change of mind is that the irrigation water has made watering his animals much easier, and in the words of my staff, “The man’s donkey is jumping for joy!”  I love it.

The irony of this human condition

I have been thinking about the situation of the culture and the people that we live among.  For a few years now we have observed their lives, heard their stories, and studied how, why and when they make changes or improvements in their lives.  Along the way we have also found some aspects of their culture that have a fierce resistance to change.  Thinking about these in detail, I find these situations to be sad and ironic.  I’ll explain what I mean in three examples that I have seen most clearly in this culture.  Be sure you catch my note at the end as well…

The values that we put such esteem in often escape our grasp.  The specific example I see in this culture is honesty.  Whenever I talk to people here about values, one of the first that they mention is honesty.  Whenever they talk about a person with great moral character, they always mention honesty.  If someone is criticizing another, they will almost always include that the person is “not true,” meaning that they are not honest.  The value of honesty is highly prized here, and because of that it is often ascribed as apart of their religion.  I often hear statements like, “This is my religion, and my religion is honest.”  When a person says this, the hearers are supposed to take the implication that this person is telling the truth.  Children often break it down in more simple turns, when, in the middle of their play on the street one of them will shout out, “by the name of God,” or, “by the name of our holy book!”  That’s all they’ll say, and everyone understands it to mean: believe me, I’m telling the truth!  

With all the value put in honesty, and the frequency with which it is talked about, it is a bit ironic how much dishonesty pervades this culture.  Examples?   

·      Shopkeepers mark a price up 500%, and swear to you in the name of God that they are giving it to you at the price they paid

·      Doctors and pharmacists sell poor hospital patients an entire bag of medicine, which almost always includes an antibiotic and a bag of IV fluid, no matter what the sickness or need is.  (and then the sick person will put the IV needle in and walk around town holding the IV bag up)

·      Police and government officials seek bribes wherever they can get them, sometimes using threat and intimidation, more often using inconvenience to prompt the bribe. 

·      One of the most disturbing to me: it is standard practice for parents of high school students to pay the biggest bribe possible to the proctors of college entrance exams.  Your grade on the entrance exam determines which faculty you can study.  Highest grades go into medicine, next to engineering, next to education and agriculture, and so on.

Yes, they talk an awful lot about the importance and value of honesty, but is escapes them.

The vices we hate most in others are often in us as well.  I’ll use the example of pride here.  It has been said that it takes a proud person to notice the pride in another.  Here, the character of pride is also tainted by the justification of jealousy and injustice.  If a person here is acting proudly it is most often because they have found a way to one-up someone else, usually someone that they were previously jealous of.  Here’s the simplified recipe: jealously leads to feeling justified to do something unjust and awful to someone else, which results in pride.  Classic example: Two men are working in the same office, Tom and Ted.  Tom works harder than Ted and gets a raise sooner.  Ted, angry and jealous, digs up some dirt on Tom that gets him fired.  Ted walks around proudly for years, thinking he has won the war.  Tom bides his time, hating the pride of Ted.  Finally 5 years later Tom has his chance, and joins rank with a stronger leader that fires Ted and anyone related to him, putting their whole tribe in worse poverty.  Tom is now proud as ever.

The community that we wished we had is not made up of people just like us. 

When we dialogue with poor villages about community development, we often hear them make erroneous assumptions about more developed/wealthy/happy/peaceful communities/provinces/countries.  It is astonishing to hear a person say they believe the village down the road or the US of A is more developed because the people there are all good religious people like himself, not invalids like the members of his village.  There’s several things going on in these statements, but here’s what I’m pointing out: a community is not made of people that are exactly alike, community is made of people that put each other before themselves, and work for the common good rather than themselves.  That being the motive, it doesn’t matter as much whether there’s a weird egg in the bunch.  A wise man once told me, “Every person is someone else’s weirdo.”  So of course there is going to be a weird egg in the bunch!  

This notion: “If I could only get people that I like around me and people I don’t like away from me, then I would have a peaceful and prosperous life” – that’s wrong.  We need diversity to be effectively growing and developing.  Unfortunately for the culture here, decades of war have hardened people to notions of diversity.  They would rather maintain and defend the boundaries of the ethnic and clan lines that they know and trust.  In some places the groups are so small and so inbred that they suffer severe rates of congenital birth defects.  Places like these desperately need to stretch their trust to see the benefits of creating wider community.

My note at the end:

What you have read above is a collection of critical statements about the culture we work amongst.  Before you take these as a summary of where we are working, consider the perspectives of people inside and outside of a culture.  In this culture I am an outsider.  It does not matter that I have worked here for a few years and speak the language, I’m still very much an outsider here.  Insiders on the other hand are people that are born and raised and native to a given place.  Our staff, neighbors, and people in the villages we work in are all insiders.  Their perspective is different from mine.  They would agree with some of the statements I have made, but they would give more layers of explanation about the external forces upon their culture and society that have made them how they are.  They are partly right, but I am also partly right. 

Now consider your own culture, where you are an insider.  There are things about your own culture that outsiders would make critical statements about.  Some of those statements would probably surprise you; some you would perhaps agree with, but some you would rebut and provide argument against.  You would be partly right, but outsiders who had spent some time looking into your culture (like we have looked into this culture here) would be partly right as well.  My point (finally) is simply this: It is easy to think we are grand, and other peoples are utterly lost, however, our sanctification is not worked out yet, and there is ugliness in every culture of the humanity.  Let us work out our salvation in fear and trembling. (Philippians 2)

Zip's advice

 One of our community development facilitators (I’ll call him Zip) was recently doing some shopping in the bazaar when he heard some men conversing, and the topic of taking a second wife came up.  Zip tuned in and heard one of the men say that he was tired of his first wife, and if he could find the money he would take a second. 

“I heard you want to take a second wife if you can find the money,” said Zip, “and I have good news for you.  I will give you the money you need for your second marriage.”

The man straightened up and asked Zip what he would have to do for this favor.

Zip replied, “I will give you the money you need for your second marriage, but first you have to do some things, exactly as I tell you.  Are you paying attention? Okay here is the first thing you have to do: you must to select and buy and use birth control for the next 2 years.”

“HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT!  You can’t challenge my right to have children!” screamed the man in return. 

“How many children do you have?” asked Zip.

The man thought for a moment, “Well I don’t know, they’re children, they’re hard to keep track of.”

“Exactly!” said Zip, “and have you ever noticed that your wife gets more tired with each pregnancy and birth and new child?  Now pay attention and listen to what else you have to do if you want the money I have promised you:

You must buy your wife a piece of fruit to eat every night.  DON’T let your children eat it, save that piece of fruit especially for her.

You want a beautiful wife right?  You must give her something beautiful so that she can be!  Buy her a new dress, perfume, jewelry.   

Lastly, you must give her a break.  Every day, you need to be at home and take care of the children for 2 hours so that she can take a break. 

You do these things, and then in 2 years come and tell me you still want a second wife.”

Eid-e Ramazan

 A while ago I wrote about the practice of fasting here.  Actually I started writing about fasting and drifted into other matters in my typical serious fashion… anyway.  Today I’ll go back 1 month to the end of the month of fasting, and tell you what happened in what is perhaps the biggest of the “Eids” (annual holidays/celebrations) in this culture. 

As I wrote a while back, the month of fasting is observed differently in different contexts.  In this place, the majority of people were strict and devout about their fasting, even though they struggled to keep the fast through the intense summer heat.  During the fast I talked with some people that I knew were not religious, and they said that even though they did not care about the fast, they could not risk anyone finding out that they do not fast.  So, if the opportunity arose for them to take a drink of water on a day that was over 110, they would take it, but they said that because life is so communal, those chances usually do not come.  As a result, everyone was grouchy for the whole month, tempers flared and fights broke out easily even in our office, and overall, productivity was pitiful.  It was a hard time to be here, I was really discouraged for most of the month, and as the Eid at the end of the fasting approached, I was ready for some celebration.

In the week before Eid, the preparations we observed told us that this context makes a big deal about this Eid.  Each evening we could hear the chanting of neighborhood boys going door to door singing out a traditional song, asking for money for the holiday.  In the bazaar I saw the shopkeepers ramping up their stocks of sweets and goods that are special for Eid.  I went out to buy some of these goods for ours guests and our visiting, and was amazed to find that almost every store had a sidewalk full of nuts, fruit, and candies to sell, even stores that typically sell only nails or paint!  It was as if the whole town stopped their ordinary work to single-mindedly focus on one task: preparing for Eid. 

For us, the day before Eid included the cooking of a feast for our office staff.  All through Ramazan I had wanted to host an Iftar (breaking the daily fast in the evening), and finally we decided that we would do this on the last day of fasting.  My wife was a little scared of cooking for the whole crew, and rightly so, because it was a big lot of them, and they’re not so easy to please.  So we hired two local ladies to cook, and the guard and I ran for all the groceries.  It was a fun day of seeing the party come together.  We have a big enough patio that we could seat them all outside on a nice rug and cushions. 

We did not regret getting help with the meal, because you need to be quite exact with the preparations for Iftar.  Exactly 15 minutes before the night call to prayer, everyone can have some dates and fruit.  Then they should be doing their prayers in prostrations at the time of the call to prayer, and after this, they can return to their supper and eat the main course.  We served a meal calls Doshi: meat in tomato sauce with chickpeas, served over rice with raisins and carrots.  It went over very well!

Still excited about how the Iftar feast went, I was ready to head out with an idea of my own on the first day of Eid.  Tradition is that the first day of Eid is for families to visit one another, and that friends visit friends on days 2-3 (or 4 or 5!).  I thought about the importance of day 1 in this culture, and tried to think of who might be left out of the celebrations on a day like this.  I figured that one group of people that might be left out would be the old men that guard the stockpiles of animal feed on the river banks.  These men were always in their little wood shacks, faithfully protecting the feed from theft, and I figured they would have to be there on the first day of Eid as well.  I was wrong, the shacks were empty on the first day of Eid!  So, I came home and talked with my wife to come up with plan B.  She suggested police officers, so I grabbed my bags of Pepsi cans and cookies (what I planned to give to the men guarding the hay), and took off on motorcycle to look for policemen working on the first day of Eid.  My wife’s idea was a winner!  The policemen were so happy to be considered on the first day of Eid!  I went intersection by intersection offering treats to the policemen directing traffic (they didn’t mind taking a break!).  Then I headed out to the airport, and found the jackpot of policemen staying in a barracks just inside the grounds.  I didn’t have enough pop for all of them, but they were still thrilled when I left all that remained with them.  We had a brief chat, they remarked that no one has ever brought them something on their holiday, and they wished me well in my work here.  After the “Happy Eid-e” for the policemen, my family just enjoyed a nice day together at home, and prepared for the visiting in the next days. 

Visitation is a big deal here, especially during Eid.  Everyone is honored to have guests come to their homes, so we prepared a lot of bags of snacks and treats to take to neighbor’s houses.  We also had to be ready to go on “the tour of houses” with our project staff.  All the men went together on day 4, and the women on day 5.  Both times, the tour started by having everyone from the team come into our guest room, which we had prepared with lots of cookies, snacks, and candies.    The group sits down, eats some snacks, drinks some tea, says a prayer, and speedily moves on to the next place.  The men did not spend more than 10 minutes in each place, because there was an unspoken goal of finishing the visit to all 12 houses before noon.  The women took their sweet time, because they knew the office cook would make them lunch.  If my wife has not written about her time of visiting, I will bug her to do so, because it sounded like the women had more fun!  For me the highlight was seeing the homes of some staff I had not visited yet, and spending all the time driving around with the guys, sharing and laughing together.

Along with the team tours, we enjoyed visiting neighbors and some other friends at a slower pace.  Little t did not accompany either of the tours (good thing, all that sugar would have put him over the top!), but we did enjoy taking him to visit neighbors and other friends.  He is a joy to people here, because he does a good job of shaking hands and then putting his right hand over his chest to show honor.  It seemed like wherever we went, it didn’t matter what we brought as a gift, just that we came.  By the end of the 5 days we were pretty spent, but it had been such a worthwhile endeavor to try to really join this culture in their celebration.

To conclude, I’ll share one reflection I had while observing all the activities of Eid.  As we went around town visiting homes, I noticed that everyone had a light spirit, as if all the insecurity and poverty that IS their lives did not matter on their holiday.  I was amazed at the number of women and girls that walked the streets as they went place to place.  I would be tempted to call it a taste of freedom, but that is probably overstatement.  Perhaps the more appropriate term would be: reckless abandon.  Yes, the place is insecure, and on most days there’s significant risk of something bad happening to you, but that didn’t matter on Eid.  And yes, the whole society is strangled with poverty and lack of opportunity for any progress that the developed world would recognize, but during Eid everyone put on their best appearance of prosperity, and truly, many took the joy that they could from that day.  Maybe you take this description as something to be happy about, or maybe you take it as something to be sad about.  I was happy that the people of this city had one holiday in which the insurgents were quiet, and there were no incidents in our province.  I was also sad to think that this was just one brief holiday, and that during the rest of the year this culture of hosting and visiting and being out and about is confined, muted, and struggling to survive.  I am sad thinking that perhaps more aspects about this culture have also been pummeled into extinction by the war and poverty.  Will this people ever emerge from these struggles to be a healthy society?  Despite these shadowy reflections, I am also encouraged to keep the hope that the creator of this people can also bring peace, and restoration, and life.  These are certainly things to keep in prayer.

Qalapoycha

The title of this blog is the word that has been around the office for about 2 months.  When my local co-workers learned that my son had learned to walk, they immediately clapped their hands and started saying this word.  Then they politely explained that in this culture, a historic tradition is that when a baby first learns to walk that the family celebrates by having a meal called qalapoycha, which literally means: sheep’s head and feet.

Sheep’s head and feet did not sound like a great meal to me, but I liked the idea of hosting a celebration that would really please my co-workers, so we put the plan in motion.  First there was a debate about how many sheep’s heads and feet would be needed to feed our group.  Then we had to guess how many hours it would take to strip the wool and wash the hooves and the whole head up.  Three women committed to take a whole day and evening to do all this preparation, and spend the following morning cooking all the bits.  It was beginning to feel like the buildup before Thanksgiving meal.

Finally the day arrived, and everyone in the office was clearly thrilled that I had followed through and prepared and paid for this meal.  Right before lunchtime most of the staff were either in the kitchen or giving advice from right outside the door.  Feet were being sorted into bowls, along with a barley soup, and heads were arranged on platters.  Finally everything was hauled into the women’s and men’s separate rooms for eating, and everyone grabbed a cushion and scooted up to the table cloth, ready to dig in.

As nice as I am making this sound, I will admit, this meal tasted terrible.  There was nothing on the feet that I would describe as meat, rather it was all skin, tendons, jelly-like stuff, and the actual hooves.  The heads had a wider variety, as they divided up the jelly-like cheeks and lips, the tongue, and the eyeballs.  The barley soup was almost worst than anything, because it tasted not at all like barley soup should.  To be honest the headbits were tolerable, but the soup tasted like death.  I hadn’t eaten much, and the guys were harassing me about this, but they told me not to worry, the brains were yet to come.  The cook then brought a rock into the room, and they turned the heads upside down, raised them above their heads, and then crashed the sheep skulls down upon the rock to break the skulls so they could access the brains.  They then spooned the brains out, mushed them up on a plate and passed them around.  I hope it doesn’t put you over the edge to hear that the brain was actually my favorite part of the meal, because spread on bread, it was quite similar to a tuna salad sandwich. 

What else did this special celebration entail?  Not much really.  After the meal I brought my son over to have tea with the men and he wooed them like usual.  His mother was happy to get rid of him, he has become a bit of a terror eating with the women. 

So what do you think of qalapoycha?  I think I could go the rest of my life without eating it again, and be just fine.  But I don’t regret doing it once.  I don’t say this because I’m an adventurous guy and like to add freakish meals to my list of crazy accomplishments.  I don’t regret it because it meant a lot to my co-workers that I bought and ate this meal with them.  By participating with them in things that are uniquely “their culture”, I show them that I respect and care about them, and that I have not come to push my agenda for change on every aspect of their culture.  You see, when you come to another culture with a hope to facilitate or inspire change, you have to set priorities for the issues you want to work on, choose your battles carefully, and give some ground on other issues so that you don’t lose the respect of the communities you’re trying to help.  So, in that light, bring on the qalapoycha, I have more important things than traditional meals to work on changing!