West Side Story Elections

Pakistan resembles West Side Story more than you might imagine.

This past weekend, Pakistan held elections for its first successful transition between two elected civilian governments. Every other transition has been marred by take overs, military rulings, assassinations, or coups. For many, this represented a major step in democracy. For me, it meant I had Once You’re a Jet and Just Play it Cool stuck in my head.

Similar to red states and blue states in the US, there are areas and regions in Pakistan that have historically pulled for one particular party. However, the way this manifests itself is slightly different than the occasional red elephant bumper sticker or blue donkey emblazoned shirt. In Pakistan, there are areas of towns that are designated as MQM territory, PPP streets, or PMLN neighborhoods. The walls are heavy with graffiti of the respective parties and party flags hang over streets and off the backs of motorcycles. When a political rally or killing occurs, these boundaries become even more distinct. You can tell by the level of traffic, presence of Army men, or number of closed shops whose turf you’re in. Each party draws a line with their toe just daring the other to cross it- while snapping their fingers, doing a grand jeté, and harmonizing. Well maybe not that last bit, but you get the idea.

Yet, for the Jets and Sharks, even the presence of Officer Krupke does little to dilute their highly charged attitudes or remove the threads of allegiance that have been stitched into the fabric of their communities. It is impossible for either side to see the other, to recognize their potential for good, to acknowledge their prospect for something positive, or to set aside their differences for the sake of discussion. They only know the other by words of hearsay, by the media’s depiction, by seeded hatred, and by their fear of the unknown.

My prayer is that the new leader of this country, Nawaz Sharif, will have the incredible wisdom and insight needed to bring all sides together and be able to remove the barriers that continue to drive them apart and towards violence. A united Pakistan can make strides towards better education for ALL; a united Pakistan can extinguish forces of extremism, hostility, and tyranny; a united Pakistan can make efforts in protecting it’s beauty and natural resources; a united Pakistan can work together to meet the needs of it’s people; a divided one will only sustain the violence, fear, and instability.

May the leaders and people of this beautiful nation come to see the Love that can bring enemies to the same table. May they know the power of the Love that declares that every person valuable. May they understand the Love that can bring peace- a peace that begins in each of us.

MIA

19 girls are missing.

I was doing a report on female attendance in schools and the bottom dropped out of the graph. As my eyes searched the screen for some error I had made, I realized the error was not mine. 19 girls were indeed missing.

I took the stairs two at a time; I wanted to reach the Training Hall upstairs before the teachers left for the day. Satira* is one of the few female teachers we have so I recognized her immediately. “Satira,” I said, “Ap ka lurkia khaha hei?” Where are your girls?

She looked down at her feet, “They are gone.”

Satira’s class of girls boasted an enrollment of 40. The children were coming from several villages to attend classes, so when one group of them didn’t show up for school one day Satira assumed something had happened in the village. Perhaps a funeral or wedding was taking place. Perhaps the landlord was harvesting his crop that day and everyone was needed to help.

A few days passed though and still none of the girls from that village had returned to school. Satira started asking questions.

The girls that were missing were from particularly low caste families. When it came time for their families to receive their pay from the landlord, he refused to give it to them. They petitioned him and demanded their pay- to no avail. He claimed they all had loans. He claimed they had all taken money from him. He claimed that all of them owed him something. Because the majority of the parents cannot do simple math due to lack of school, they have no proof or way of knowing if he is correct. They do not keep track of the days they work or the small loans they might take from the landlord because they have never been taught how. Perhaps one of the families did have a loan. Or perhaps one family did owe him something. The unfortunate reality is though that no one knows. What is most likely is that the families are being taken advantage of and their situation exacerbated because of their illiteracy and because of their caste. Poverty and ignorance bind them.

So they ran. If the landlord withheld money from them once, he is likely to do it again. If they try to report him to the police for not paying them, the police will be bribed by the landlord to say they are the ones lying. After all, they have no proof. If they demand again to be paid, they could be beaten or killed and their wives and daughters raped or kidnapped. They have been silenced against the injustice against them and so- they ran.

19 girls are missing from school today. Because of discrimination. Because of injustice. Because of years of oppression, systems of slave labor, and a lack of opportunities.

19 dreams. 19 hearts. 19 beautiful possibilities.

So what do we do?

We sit in the silence of half an empty classroom and hope that raising up a generation of educated children will change ways of injustice. We pray for hearts that love their neighbor and don’t try to harm them. We give more children a chance to go to school. We promise to do better with the time and resources given us. We ask God to make our hearts larger and more durable for the journey ahead. 

 

*The teacher’s name has been changed. 

What I saw in the trash pile

He gave out of his nothingness and peace poured from his hands.

There is a mafia of cats in my neighborhood compound. There is also a gang of malnourished, most likely diseased, pretty ugly dogs that live all around the compound as well. The dogs dig for food in the piles of trash that line the road.  The cats make deep-throated gurgling cries during the night that make me think someone is being brutally murdered outside my window. And they fight. All. The. Time.

I was in the market one hot evening after work when I witnessed the miracle. While the man weighed out half a kilo of tomatoes, I glanced apathetically across the street. The familiarity of the piles of trash, animals rummaging through it, and pedestrians dodging traffic almost blinded me. But something held my gaze.

There was a man, hunched over and squatting down amidst the trash. His prominent cheekbones and willowy arms spoke louder of his hunger than a rumbling stomach might. But as he reached into the shopping bag on his arm, he pulled out naan, bread. I thought the trash pile was probably not the best spot for a picnic. He pulled out the naan, tore it into pieces, and the he FED those mangy dogs as they licked his feet. He stroked their muddy backs and the dogs ate ravenously. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed three miserable looking cats creeping cautiously towards this scene. The dogs lifted their heads long enough to acknowledge the cats’ presence and then MOVED OVER. The dogs made room for those ugly little cats at their dinner table. The man seemed to smile, but then again perhaps it was the pollution from the roaring rickshaws that altered my vision. As his guests at the feast grew, he continued to pull more naan from his bag and give. The dogs never gave another moments notice to the cats and the cats never made any offense against the dogs.

As I thanked the tomato man and took my bag, I stopped just a moment more, mustered as much love as I could, and sent it telepathically across the street to that wonderful man.

There are people all over the world content to ignore poverty. They get by squinting their eyes as they walk down the street, scroll through news websites, and sort through the charity letters that fill their mailboxes with picture of malnourished children. They try to disregard those “poor people” by replacing them with facts. They try to insulate. The people who bypass the beggars are the same ones who fail to bypass the latest designer jeans or new restaurant.

This man likely had nothing. No electricity or clean drinking water or computer or the latest video game or access to quality free education for all of his children.

But he gave. He gave out of his nothingness.

It is not easy- to give with all of our hearts. Sometimes it means sitting in trash piles. Sometimes it means standing in the tension of dangerous places. Sometimes it involves foul smells, open wounds, or loss. It always involves sacrifice.

This type of love- this deeply rooted, gut-filled relinquishment of selfish entitlement and acceptance of sacrifice- produces peace.

The cats and the dogs ate together. The enemies shared a meal together under the most unlikely of circumstances. Someone saw value in them and they were able to see value in one another.

But only after one was willing to give without holding back.

We need people willing to give out of nothingness. We need people to give regardless. We need people willing to hold out their hands and share their bounty, whatever size their bounty may be. We need people dedicated to creating places of peace. We need people to follow in example, stretch out their hands and arms, and declare, I love you THIS MUCH.

Give. Give out of your seemingly nothingness. Give out of your poverty. If you have no more compassion, give love. If you’re out of grace, forgive. If you have run out of excuses to withhold, give today. If you think you have nothing to offer, know holding out your hand is enough. Stop thinking it is moral, ethical, Christian, or right to continue sitting in your insulated home ignoring and bypassing the beggar. Come, sit, and be with the mangy, disease ridden, ugly, shabby, and sinful all of us.

May we see value in one another. May we learn from the One who gave all. 

 

The Stone Table

I sit cross-legged in our paisley green and beige arm chair. My puppy dog pajama set and red hair scrunchie tell my age. The rain outside muffles any noisy distractions as the thunder makes my dog curl up at the base of my chair and whimper. I hold up my book to see the words by the light of the brass lamp, but the words grow blurry. The collar of my pajamas grows damp and I wipe my face with the back of my hand. I read through my tears, “The great Cat is dead.”

Only two days earlier I had received the book from my mom. Since then I had spent every playground minute, silent reading session, car ride and free hour with my fingers flicking through the pages and my eyes devouring the words.

Wardrobe. Lampost. Turkish delight. Aslan.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is the first book I remember truly captivating me. It was the first time my parents allowed me to stay up as late as I wanted so that I could finish it. It was the first time words on a page ever made my cry. It was also the first time I really understood the Crucifixion. As they bound Aslan’s paws, I yelled at the pages, “Its not fair- its not fair!” I shivered as I saw him be shaved; I felt the embarrassment and shame with him. As the crowd around him cried out horrible things, my tears fell faster than the rain outside the window.

I’ve always been more stunned by the emotional pain of the Cross than by the physical. The betrayal from your ally. The abandonment of your closest friend. The humiliation from the mocking shouts. The fear. The complete lack of being understood or known. The pain of seeing you mother cry. The tireless hounding. The nakedness. The devastation of being left alone in your darkest hour.

This Easter I feel a little like Lucy hiding in horror and shame watching the scene unfold- knowing I can do nothing to stop it. I hide and watch as the violence of humanity meets the greatest depth of love. In Cross we see both the need for reconciliation and the means. The one that longs to reconcile and repair, no matter how violent and traitorous the other may be and no matter the cost, is also the one that we follow. On Good Friday, we watch the brutality and feel the pain. Yet the beauty of the story is that love wins. Love, Mercy, and Hope prevail over the worst humanity can offer.

We are called to do more than witness this great act; we are called to follow by overwhelming violence and hatred with grace and truth. We are invited to grab onto His mane, and ride with Him. We meet the darkest violence with the greatest love and call it Easter. 

My Crappy Two Weeks

Ap ko toro cana pasun hey?!

Translation: Do you like poop food?!

I have said this sentence over 25 times in the past two weeks, often excitedly screaming it as a chorus of ginihe! neyh! and no! echoed back. For the past two weeks I have been in 25 different villages evaluating our schools on the Community Led Health and Sanitation training they received. The schools  we visited were in the middle of nowhere, between fields of wheat, tucked into dessert hills, and down roads so bumpy they resembled roller coasters. The remoteness of these communities strongly contributes to their poverty and marginality.

Over the past few months, PEP has trained teachers in hand washing, clean water, and the consequences of open defecation. During these visits, our team was doing a community wide evaluation to see the impact of those trainings and resources.

We checked the water of our newly built hand pumps (three for each village!) and are sending the samples to check for cleanliness.

I presented two new posters to the children and asked questions about how we should wash our hands, why open defecation makes us sick, why washrooms are better for us, and why clean water is important.

I also got the privilege (haha) of inspecting the new washrooms to ensure they were constructed correctly, met PEP requirements, and had things like buckets of water and soap inside.

At the same time, our Women’s Empowerment Coordinator and Area Coordinator were meeting with the women to gage their knowledge and our Community Liaison was meeting with the men to gage theirs.

To conclude our visits, a drama team performed a skit about what happens when communities use open defecation, the shame of not using a washroom, the consequences of being sick from unclean water, etc. The team used children from that particular village to act out the role of the children and could do the drama in 5 different languages, tailoring it to what each community spoke. The women’s faces while they watched their kids acting out pooping in a field were simply priceless. Imagine a roomful of mothers and grandmothers rolling with laughter. The skit was a great way to communicate our message and the humor ensured their attention!

I loved really getting to see the impact of our trainings, our new hand pumps and washrooms, the children’s excitement over their classroom posters, and having each smile, hug, and hand squeeze remind me why I’m so lucky to be here.

Career Day

When I was little I wanted to be Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, a Cruise Director, the President, a Krispie Kreme worker, or a Broadway star. I would get so excited when someone asked me that question, “Caroline, what do you want to do when you grow up?”

Apparently I am now a grown up. I no longer get the privilege of hiding behind extracurriculars, school semesters, or summer breaks. I now have a choice in what it is I do with my time and I’m realizing that I’ve had a choice all along- we all have.

Every weeknight I go to bed around 11:30 or 12. Why? Because I have to get up at 7 for work and I need to not be exhausted so I can properly function. I work until 5 and by the time I’m home, have a cup of coffee or glass of lemonade, and exhale- it is 5:30. I’ve then got about 6 hours to cook and eat dinner, put away clothes, clean the bathroom, exercise, visit/skype a friend, or whatever it is I’m attempting to do that evening; it seems these 6 hours go incredibly quickly.

50 hours of our week come between 7 and 5. If you count your sleep the night before, it’s 90. 90 hours a week that you will not get back, that you will spend doing something, that you only get once.

We have a choice.

I have a friend who is thinking about putting in her 2 weeks notice. She doesn’t feel that these 90 hours are worth whatever it is she is doing. All of her energy, time, and strength go into sustaining herself so she can do her work.

And time passes. 90 hours every week turns into 180 and then 270. And then it’s been 6 months, or 12, or 24.

I asked my friend what she wanted to do or what she felt she wasn’t getting to do in her job. She said there was a dichotomy between her work and her “ministry.” That somewhere between 7 and 5 her hands at work became separated from her heart’s passion. I don’t believe she is alone. Somewhere amidst those 90 hours, our hearts stop beating and our hands go on autopilot. We forget that we’re living our lives. Our one and only life. We forget that we won’t ever get March 10, 2013 back. We forget we have a choice.

A director I once had in theatre would yell at us whenever he thought our energy was down, our lines were mechanical, or our performance was sub-par. “High stakes!” he would yell, “These are your lives people! High stakes everyone!”

I think we have to ask ourselves, unless we want those 90 hours to be wasted each and every week, why we do what we do and what for.

I think instead of asking children what they want to be when they grow up, we should ask them who they want to be. Maybe their answers will move from engineers, teachers, and firemen to encouragers, comforters, justice-seekers, and peace-makers. I think God is much less concerned about the former and much more interested in the latter. God longs to define who we are. Our identity is not in what we do but where our heart is when we do it. The blessing is, we get to choose.

I do not think this means that everyone should be a pastor. Or build an orphanage. Or start a non-profit for the homeless. I don’t think we should glorify the people who do these things either. But I do think that we should give a lot more time and energy to the 90 hours that so often drive the focus of our week. I do not think we should all move to developing countries and love on street children (Though I’m sure there are many that need it). I do not think we should all trade in our white collars for clerical robes (Though some probably should). I do not think we should all hand in our notices for hammers to build homes for the homeless (Though I’m sure some hammers lie waiting). I do think though that our lives should operate on a different timetable than 7 to 5.

You owe it to yourself to ask what is it that I want to do, stand for, be, and seek after and how can I do that in the best way possible. I think you pick your virtues or values and let those determine your life. Your job is not the end; your job is not the goal; your life should not operate only between 7 and 5. Your job is only the means to the end. If you want to live a life of compassion- be a nurse, be a dad, be a dancer, be a professional cyclist. If you want to live a life of justice- be a lawyer, be an activist, be a tailor, be a gardener. But remember that being a gardener is not the end. A gardener is only a means to embracing justice. Remember that being a nurse does not make you compassionate. A nurse is only one choice that you can choose to demonstrate compassion through. God plants inside each of us passions and desires that will bring the kingdom of Heaven to this kingdom of earth, but we exchange those higher ends and goals for currencies of careers.

If you never ask yourself what for, if you never see you have a choice, if you never stop between 7 and 5 and say why in the world am I doing this- your 90 hours will direct you. They will consume you. They will devour your days.

Operate today from a different timetable. Today- you will not be a chef; you will be a bringer of gentleness, a seeker of beauty, and a demonstration of creativity. And if you find that being a chef no longer allows you to do these things, if being a chef is no longer a means to your ultimate ends of gentleness, beauty, and creativity- then tomorrow, perhaps you shouldn’t be a chef, perhaps you should be unemployed. Perhaps tomorrow you should courageously take hold of your choice and choose to direct your own 90 hours. You have that choice.

Perhaps one day I will have the courage of Dr. Quinn, the enthusiasm of a Cruise Director, and the confidence of a Broadway star. But if you asked me now what I want to do when I grow up- I’d tell you I want to be a lover of the poor, a creator of potential, a shepherd of hope, a light of joy, a killer of apathy, and a rain of justice. It is my prayer that I always choose a means that allows me to seek these as my ends. After all, these are high stakes everyone and we have a choice.

Thankful

Her hands feel like sandpaper after countless days in the fields and hours in the sun. She grasps mine between her two palms then places one of her hands on my cheek. “Shukriyah, shukriyah,” Thank you, thank you.

I sit on a beautifully embroidered, wildly colorful blanket with this woman and many like her on the ground in their village. I ask them about their lives and about their choices. Do you think it is okay for a man to hit a woman? How much education do you think girls need? When your village is in conflict with another village, what do you do?

Some of their answers break my heart. Every single village I go to says yes, it is okay for a man to hit a woman. I ask them what happens after the man hits the woman. “She will cry as she makes food for him so he will not get angry again.”

Some answers crack me up. A 70-year-old mother says if a neighboring village tries to attack she will run after them with a stick, even if they take her goats- she will chase them away her stick.

Some answers give me hope. One 11-year-old female student says confidently, “I don’t think only boys should get jobs and get good pay- girls have rights too. I know about them.”

We drink chai together while they let me learn about their lives. I hear fathers beaming of the achievements of their daughters, mothers demanding a high school for her daughter through desperate tears, and Village Leaders talking about their 12 year old daughter’s upcoming marriage.

Like the colorful blankets we sit on and the balance between tea and milk in the chai- it is a mixture and collage of emotions and responses.

But like sandpaper hands, amidst the roughness and dryness- there is gentle strength. This strength does not yield swift currents of change, but sweet moments of faith and thankfulness. There is a long road ahead, but their weathered hands are ready.

For these hands we say, “Shukriyah, shukriyah,” Thank you, thank you.