Not your typical 21st...

Yesterday I walked into the kitchen, said good morning to Emma and Micah (my early-rising, castle-building, ever-energetic 5 and 7 year old housemates), and was commanded, “Miss Acadia, don’t you even think about looking over here!” Micah rushed to the counter and indignantly spread his arms, in a quite valiant attempt to hide the large bowls of fruit in plain view.

Someone knows me well…Ridiculous quantities of my favorite fruits and surprise ‘A’ shaped pancakes began the most atypical, and wonderful, birthday ever.


Sometimes pancakes and bananas are better than birthday cake and ice cream (especially if you mercilessly stuff the bananas with chocolate and nutella and stick them in the oven til gooey delicious). Sometimes the best gifts aren’t in wrapping paper. Sometimes catchphrase is a better birthday party game than…uh, any number of more typical 21^st festivities.

Banana smores, Kurdistan edition

That ‘sometime’ was yesterday. My wonderful friends here didn’t ascribe to the traditional birthday customs. They made the effort to incorporate my unique quirks and wishes I didn’t even express. They prepared a surprise fruit breakfast even though a cake mix and candles would’ve been much more simple. They could’ve wrapped up some nice sparkly jewelry for a gift, but instead took the time to (sneakily!) set up a fundraiser for a child’s surgery on the upcoming Remedy Mission.

These dear friends know me well, and showed me that we weren’t celebrating my birthday, but celebrating me.

Spiritual application time: Last night at home group we compared different ways of knowing Jesus. On one hand, memorizing stories, hearing other people speak, and knowing facts (like the date of a birthday) all provide important insights to who a person is. This “head knowledge” requires minimal commitment.  But you can get to know endearing quirks and wishes, and true birthday cake preferences, and favorite activities, and it's a whole different story. This heart knowledge requires daily life together.

I want to know Jesus well enough to truly celebrate him. The Creator God knows each of us that well, and thanks to His Son, it is a two-way road.

That road can be quite beautiful, sometimes a terrifying adventure, and often difficult. Yesterday, I was blessed to take a step down the road by witnessing in my friends the generous spirit of a God who celebrates us. I must thank Him, and them, because it’s the best birthday gift I could ask for. (Banana smores and lifesaving heart surgeries close after…)

Flowers and Mirrors

Once upon a time there was a tragically poetic flower. This pink flower grew among twenty gun-laden combat vehicles in various states of dusty disrepair. These vehicles rested between bullet-ridden buildings and barbed wire frosted walls: the Amna Suraka, Saddam’s past intelligence center and prison for Kurdish rebels (and civilians). The Amna Suraka shared its city block with many homes and workplaces, smack dab in the middle of a bustling city currently growing out and up. Across the street lay Parke Azadi. Occupying the green square of “Freedom Park” were running paths, ice cream stands to motivate said running, pomegranate shaped benches, the most unstable roller coaster I’ve ever been tempted to ride, and…a mass graveyard.

Each of these layers of our tour of the Amna Suraka alone tells a completely different story. The compound now stands as a museum of Kurdish culture and the crimes committed before the prison was liberated by guerilla fighters in 1991. It was a powerful and challenging afternoon, and I wish I could accurately tell you its story, or at least one insightful take-away.

But I hesitate; I’m too afraid.

I’m afraid that my words and limited interpretation of my time here can only communicate one side of the story. The city blocks that house the Amna Suraka and Parque Azadi tell not one story, but many. Last week we discussed a Ted talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html) about the danger of believing a ‘single story.’ In my short description above, I’m sure I’ve perpetuated stereotypes, oversimplified, and focused on what I want to see. A single story tricks us into putting an idea into a predictable box. A single story allows me to assume that I know more than I do about pink flowers and history and people I meet and God.

So I must remind myself as a writer, and you as a reader (to whom I’m so grateful for caring about my jumbled thoughts and experiences!) that no matter how many layers of description I can fit in a blog post, it is still only one interpretation of the story. Maybe setting foot in Iraq entitles me to have an opinion of the sounds I hear, the sights I see, and the feelings I personally experience. But in no way am I qualified to tell an accurate story of Iraq or its people or history.

Inside the Amna Suraka, 180,000 mirrors remember the Kurdish victims of genocide-like violence of the 80s. Each light on the ceiling represents a village destroyed. Each mirror belongs to a unique face, story, life. That’s easy to forget, as I saw hundreds of my own reflection staring back, my one interpretation of this story. But these mirrors show a different image to each passerby, reminding me that there are countless stories involved. Oversimplification leads to pity instead of progress and assumption instead of understanding. That makes it quite difficult to write a blog, or share my experiences, or find motivation to begin the daunting task of meaningful understanding. But hearing more than a single story can only happen one step, or one day, or one pink flower, at a time.

Worth 8000 Words

 

 

 



Photo collage inspiration thanks to Alex! Check out her blog at www.somewherenearbabylon.blogspot.com. Sorry about the watermark I can't get rid of; my limited technology skills barely made it this far. :) 

Bucket Showers

You know those situations or ideas (or people, every once in awhile) that manage to be perfectly rational and utterly illogical, at the same exact time?

Bucket showers: utterly illogical. Imagine a large and flimsy bucket of water, a very stationary and grounded sort of vessel, too small to be a bath and too large to be effectively poured. Although the water in that bucket does (supposedly) possess hygienic qualities, it in no way acts or rinses or falls like any sort of shower I know.

Bucket showers: perfectly rational. Perfectly, that is, when 12 people in one household must conserve enough water for showers, dishes, cooking, clothes, toothbrushing, and most importantly, squatty potty flushing. Thus the toasty mornings in which I don’t resort to dry shampoo begin with this awkwardly executed but necessary ritual.

Pedestrians have no right away: utterly illogical. There is NEVER a time when it is your designated turn to walk across the street. What bustling urban traffic system operates like that??

Pedestrians have no right away: perfectly rational. Only a few life-threatening walks to work until I realized that actually, it is always your turn to cross the street. No waiting for signals or green lights. Just walk out into the 6 lane busy road and stare down a hopefully attentive driver. He’s 99.9% likely to choose slamming on the breaks over a hit-and-run charge.

And because I’m overseas and feel like finding meaning in every little experience is the thing to do, it makes me think…

There are a lot of ‘bucket showers’ here, situations in which I first label the completely illogical, but know that deep down it must make sense to someone. On the flip side, I’m sure there are countless things I do or say every day that seem rational to me, but appear ridiculous to everyone else. Some mornings Alex and I wake up early and run in the park (despite the heat, wearing the same amount of clothes I would for a run in late November in MN), and every man we pass gives us quite the confused look. To them, two women running early in the morning are not one but three baffling bucket-shower-sort-of-situations. What is a perfectly normal activity for Alex and me raises eyebrows of people for whom it is completely out of place.

I suppose the insightful takeaway is… people aren’t stupid. None of us act or think in ways that don’t make sense to ourselves. I suppose that’s one thing we all have in common, even if that doesn’t guarantee we share the same definition of commonsense.

Cross-cultural living and decoding each situation to find the hidden logical explanation sometimes feel like an exciting game. (Tiebreaker round if you’re up to a challenge: how to possibly think that eating goat tongue soup is a quality culinary idea. Still has me stumped). But attempting to see the logic underneath what I label as ridiculous is not a merely a game; it’s a very important habit called empathy. Whether walking in another’s shoes to understand their water conservation tricks, or pedestrian manners, or beliefs, or values, empathy is the only hope we have to really understand each other, and why we all do what we do. Still won’t motivate me to ever eat another bite of goat tongue soup; no force is that strong…

Tiny Hearts and Language Barriers

Departing from the office work I have been doing since arriving here, this week I shadowed a pediatric cardiologist from the states, in Iraq on a medical mission. Receiving a crash course in medical scribing, I took patient histories, recorded all of Dr. Kirk’s notes, and observed countless ECHOs and heart exams. Despite being emotionally exhausting, the week proved incredible, giving faces and meaning to the statistics I’ve been typing up in the office, teaching me to hear different heart murmurs, and inspiring in me a new calling. Mom, Dad, I want to be a translator.

Don’t get me wrong, my limited Kurdish still consists of awkward introductory remarks and ordering one type of food. My brain truly is not wired for foreign language acquisition, but I witnessed two types of translation this week, and the latter requires no language skills. Let me explain. ..

I can’t think of anything that appears more terrifying than parenthood. This week I was scared to even consider putting myself in the shoes of the mothers and fathers of children with broken hearts. How can you love someone so very much, wanting to give everything you can to your child, and be so utterly helpless to translate that love into tangible change? The pain I saw overwhelmed me. I don’t doubt the incredible strength of a parent’s love, but it can’t physically close a hole in your daughter’s right ventricle, or correct your son’s transposed arteries.

Fortunately, a surgeon’s hands can.  A heart surgeon’s knowledge and passion and skill can translate parents’ loving desire for their child to have a long, healthy life into the reality of a strongly pumping heart. What if we all viewed our careers and friendships and families and lives as similar services for “translation”? 

God works in often frustratingly mysterious ways, but there’s quite a bit of evidence that his fatherly loving desire for his broken-hearted children includes the world being daily made right. Sometimes that means physical healing of a small heart, sometimes it means peace in a violent place, sometimes it means His children coming to know Him. And instead of accomplishing those desires on his own (which he could do much more cleanly and in a trillionth of a second, no sweat), he lets us in as partners on his work of daily Redeeming. As agents of His love communicated to this world, aren’t well all in essence  just translators of his plan?

I don’t yet have the skills to translate God’s love into a physically healed heart.  But no matter the career or stage of life any of us are in, we can daily translate his love into tangible actions that make the world a bit more right. Jesus interpreted Love into our language, so we can follow his example to not just translate that Love into words, but into action. “We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters.”  Later on in 1 John, we are reminded that “Such love has no fear.” If we can learn to trust each other and God to translate perfect love into the promised rightness of the world, maybe the helplessness I saw in so many parents’ eyes will be less of a reality.

Next week I’ll be back in the office, crunching numbers and writing drafts of reports. But viewing it as God’s work spoken in the language of a business, necessary for the service and love PLC provides, it is not mundane, and just as incredible a job to be able to perform as a heart surgery.

Interior Decorating

 

I do not expect to return home in two months with a tattoo in Kurdish, although the script is the most beautiful writing I’ve ever seen. I do not expect to return home with a deep passionate love for lemons or onions, although people have a habit of eating them straight before every meal. I definitely do not expect to return home with a complete, infallible understanding of life in the Middle East, or even my own personal life. (Let me know where to find that, if you’ve heard.)

But I can tell you one certain life-altering change Kurdistan will impress on me.

My future dining room will lack a table. It is not atypical here to eat dinner on cushions on the floor, surrounding a plastic “lazy tablecloth” and delicious spread of food. (The tablecloth gets its name from the end-of-dinner simplicity of throwing all trash and scraps in the center, rolling it up, and tossing it away. Brilliant.) We eat, talk, drink tea, and recline in the dimming light for hours. No stiff dining room chairs or manners mandating upright posture impede conversation, comfort, and company. So often in the habitual rush of life, the purpose of meals becomes only caloric nutrition. Fitting with the leisurely pace of life here, meals with guests provide much more important sustenance: rest and the time to allow company to turn into friendship.

In Kurdish culture, when you serve a guest tea, a saucer always accompanies the cup. Not for the sake of appearance, but because true hospitality means serving the tea overflowing. The nights here, sans internet, and within the walls of home after sunset likewise overflow with good conversation and friendship. In Kurdish culture, you are welcome to stay in someone’s company until the fruit is brought out. I look forward to the next few months until the ‘fruit’ will be brought and my time here will end. I am sure by then I will be overflowing with many carpet-level conversations, cups of tea, and interior decorating plans.

 

 

This picture is of typical Kurdish food, although at a table-d restaurant.

Everyday delights of life in Kurdistan

·         Multi-colored baby chicks in the bazaar. Genetic engineering?

·         The freedom to eat apricots with any course of a meal

·         Simple joy of the water arrival! Announced by a man in the back of a pick up, yelling through a bullhorn. Excitement over assurance of something as taken for granted as showers and dish washing

·         Attending a Kurdish university graduation while wearing Jili Kurdi, the bright red and gold traditional Kurdish formal garb. And the more impressive feat, managing to not trip for the entire afternoon.

·         Internet-free evenings to sit around the living room in good company for hours on end

·         Worshipping Jesus with His followers far across the world…although a bit closer to where He actually walked

·         Loquats fresh off the tree

·         New friends/role models/superheroes

·         Currency that gives the false impression you have thousands in your pocket

·         The concoction of smells in the bazaar. It can’t be described entirely accurately as a delight…

·         Feeling adult enough to work in a real grown-up, 9:00-5:00 office

·         Mandated bare feet in said office

·         Park benches shaped like half eaten fruit, complete with bite marks

·         Even the frustrations of adapting to existence in a completely foreign context; they are welcome and delightful in their strange own way