Addicted to a dark roast liberty!

I have often been accused of being addicted to coffee. My friends, years ago, threatened to host a massive "intervention", inviting my family along, until they realised that genetics played a major role, my mother suffering from a similar affliction. She would more than likely have driven the get-away car directly to the nearest Starbucks to order me a grande vanilla skim cappuccino - intravenous STAT!

So, after years of being harranged, imagine my relief when I came across the following quote this morning at my favourite Granada coffee shop: "El Café es la bebída que incita a pensar. Y cuando un pueblo empieza a pensar, resulta peligroso para tiranos y los enimigos de la libertad" (W.H. VccKers). Roughly translated, it says, "Coffee is the drink that incites/inspires one to think. And when a village begins to think, it is dangerous for tyrants and the enemies of liberty".

Finally, after years of friends trying to tie me fast to that metaphorical wagon of non-caffeinated moderation, I have found my justification. My love of for an extra large cup of steaming black goodness in the morning (afternoon and evening) is no normal addition. Don't you see? It is an addiction to freedom and liberty, to the struggle against the tyrants of this world! So, I say, "Pour me another glass of that dark roasted liberty and let the tyrants fall!

Back to a comfortable and convenient world

What is it about coming back to the West that makes me feel like people are trying to organise and manage me into their boxes? What is it that makes me feel as if a large muffling pillow is being slowly lowered over my voice, like a screen is being pulled slowly across my heart so that they would be more palpable, more acceptable to our "civilised" world? Why is it that I feel that much more of a need to stand on a balcony somewhere and scream or beg, "Wake up! Arise! Break for a broken world!"? Why do I feel so alone in the crushing of my heart?

I don't understand a world that exists as if the poor are not our own flesh; as if "war" is not just a polite word for unconscionable suffering - for whole nations of widowed, orphaned, handicapped and traumatised people; as if each one of us do not have a choice!

We (Christians) are called to love, yet how often do we opt to interpret that love in its most comfortable and convenient way? What do we do with Christ's words: "This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." (John 15: 12-13)? How do we interpret God saying that his true fast, the fast that makes Him hear and answer, is to "give ourselves to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted"; "to let the oppressed go free And break every yoke" (Isaiah 58)? How do we make this convenient and comfortable?

So back again in this "civilised" Western world, I feel the pressure to squelch my cries and my confessions. I am sinner, perhaps more than the rest of this Western world, because I have seen the face of poverty and war and still too often choose comfort and convenience.

Lord, would you be my comfort even as You keep me desperately uncomfortable with the comfort and convenience of this world!

Privileged to suffer with Christ

In my younger years, walking with the Lord, I would cry out to God with eagerness, "Take my life! It is Yours!" I realised about a year or two ago that I could not pray that prayer with the same whole-hearted enthusiasm. I still said the words with obedience, but they were sober words, not excited ones. I worried that was evidence of my lack of faith or love for God. Then, I realised, that these words had become sober because, in those few years that had passed, I had learned something (a tiny bit) of the price of true obedience.

Why are we (Christians) so often surprised that true discipleship involves suffering? Why are we so uncomfortable with the fact that the Christian experience should involve periods of suffering? After all, the Word tells us explicitly not to be surprised: "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you, which comes upon you for your testing, as though some strange thing were happening to you" (1 Peter 4:12). I am convinced that one of the most cunning tricks of the Enemy has been enticing us to sidelines suffering as a non-essential part of the Christian experience. Too often, I have found myself expecting ease in my Christian walk, feeling ashamed or weak or angry when it is a struggle and when it hurts or wounds me. Slowly, I am learning that in so doing, I have denied the gravity of Christ's promise that "In this world [we] will have much tribulation" and have thus weakened the sheer and overwhelming power of Christ's call for us to "take courage, for [He] has overcome the world! (John 16:33). There is a dramatic promise and spiritual truth that I have missed in denying or refusing suffering. Slowly, through my years of various struggles and now, in all the hardness of living and working in this country, I am learning the reason that the Word calls us to rejoice in our suffering - because in this place, we meet God in His true healing and overcoming power and we are granted real peace! It is for this reason that we are privileged to suffer with Christ!

So, the fact that living and working in Afghanistan is beyond hard - that it strips away at me - is something that I cannot and not want to deny because it would be denying the victory and power of God in its midst.

Curvaceous Lady

I’ve signed myself up for a ten-day photography course in Thailand with Jonathan Taylor, one of the top photographers working in this region.

Day one: The basics of composition. I’m being asked to find lines and curves and patterns of repetition that make a good composition. We get off the Skytrain and I begin my internal cheerleader monologue, trying to drown out the fear that I’m going to be a phenomenal flop: “You are a photographing genius! Your photos know no bounds!”

I spot a line of broken-down wooden structures lining a staircase. “Repetition” I think, “I’ve found it!” I do my best “I’m an arteeest” pose, crouching down to get that unforgettable angle … Nothing doing. The wooden repetition still just looks like rotting wood clumsily banged together. I start to get nervous. Jonathan gently suggests that I think smaller. Fixated with these planks, I walk up to one of the decrepit wooden things and try to think small - desperately searching for a line or curve. I spend the next 10 minutes obsessing over a nail in the wood. It’s a line! (This is NOT going well!)

I leave Jonathan to go and sit inside an air-conditioned mall while I search for inspiration. I begin to have an argument with the internal cheerleader … she was lying to me!

I round a bend and there it is, what I’ve been waiting for … a pile of bricks. What ensues is a ridiculous picture of me rummaging for 30 minutes among a pile of bricks, obsessed with the patters of 1’s and 2’s being repeated, trying to make the pile of bricks not look like … well, a pile of bricks. I eventually think I need to introduce Jonathan to this pile of bricks and proudly walk into one of Bangkok’s poshest malls, my black trousers stained orange. Giorgio Armani is shaking his head. “Come quickly … it’s astonishing!” Jonathan follows me patiently into the heat, but unbelievable, he seems less excited by my pile of bricks. I try pointing out the repetition of the numbers, the lines … It begins to dawn on me that I look like a mad woman and we’re only two hours into our ten days.

After some mini cakes at a posh little coffee shop, Jonathan takes me a few blocks away to a plaza lined with fantastic architecture. Here the whole concept of lines and curves finally begins to make sense, but Jonathan tells me that the police don’t like people taking photographs here. “Well,” I think, “The authorities be damned! I’ve got curves to capture and this day is not going as I had hoped!” I wonder off and begin snapping until a policeman comes and tells me to stop. I try my biggest, most charming, “Oh, come now dear sir” smile, but to no avail. We were waved off, but I had captured my first shot …

The X-chrome factor

Afghanistan is, as both real and stereotypical descriptions suggest, a thoroughly male-dominated society. Every aspect of public and private Afghan life is ruled by men and boys. Theirs are the dusty street corners, the businesses and the government offices. Theirs are the places of worship and theirs the rights to make monumental life decisions like marriage and divorce.

The expat scene similarly teams with Y-chromes, with a male to female ratio of about 3:1. These aren’t just normal men, either. These are super-testosteroned men! Ex-military, private security contractors … even the softer tree-hugging NGO workers seem to be pumped with an extra shot of man that makes them super adventurers, out riding their motorcycles through the city or hiking far-off mountain passes.

I have had friends suggest that this abundance of men makes for a great statistical dating advantage. There’s no doubt that it adds to the Kabul-cute factor – a bit like drinking goggles that make everyone look good, the dearth of women gives all of us a bit of a boost. But, while there are plenty of men, there don’t seem to be plenty of normal, balanced ones. The odds may be good, but the goods are odd!

Being a woman here means becoming accustomed to navigating the rules and norms of Y-chromed society. When I first arrived almost two years ago, I remember feeling a self-conscious awareness every time I was the only woman in a room of men. This being an almost daily occurrence, it has now become utterly normal and I barely acknowledge the experience.

While expat women certainly enjoy far more freedom than our female Afghan friends and colleagues, neither are we able to be females in the full Western sense. We are a third sex – neither really male nor female – we are allowed many of the liberties of men, without ever gaining either the respect or the leverage of our male expat colleagues. (It should be said here that expat men are often the biggest culprits of this subtle sexism as some take it on themselves to be particularly “culturally appropriate”.)

Taking up this quasi-male position in society, many expat women in Afghanistan seem to have lost a vision for what real feminine beauty is. (Now the following, I realise, is a generalisation. Not all women fit these categories ... not all to the extreem. But my time here makes me suspect the following trends.)

There are those who become hyper-sexual and their worth slowly becomes defined by the attention given to them by men. They move, detached, from one relationship to the next and the softness of their hearts becomes bruised and calloused. They are treated largely as bodies by men who seem just as broken and confused. Eventually this is all they expect and so it is all they receive.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are those women who embrace the hyper-modesty of Afghan culture so fully that they abandon the celebration of their bodies as beautiful and sensual things that are meant to be desirable to men. Draping themselves in swaths of dull-coloured fabric, they escape the intrusive eyes of men, but lose something of what God intended when he created the female body.

In the midst of all this mess and confusion, and the frequent temptation to fall into both extremes myself, I long to reflect a more whole kind of feminine beauty – one both defined by a soft and loving heart and by a modest, elegant celebration of the female body. I long for men and women around me to know that they are meant to long for and be longed after as whole, wonderful creations. Perhaps if we begin to embrace this, we will actually have something to offer Afghans in a vision of sexuality and gender. Before then, I'm afraid we only have another version of brokenness.

“I miss the donkeys!” … A lesson on culture shock

Walking slowly down the cleanly buffed halls of the Georgetown Mall, I felt myself slowly drowning, gasping for breath, in a rising flood of merchandise, advertisements and messages. Scantily-clad posters of artificially manufactured, starved and busty Victoria’s Secret models, jewellery stores selling massive shiny rocks, bright neon lights, slogans and logos all assailed me – assaulting each of my senses.

And all I could think as my heart beat nervously in my chest and my brain struggled to process this absurd onslaught of messages was, “Help! Someone, please! Where are the donkeys? I just want the donkeys!” I was longing, inexplicably for the crowded, dusty streets of Kabul, where donkeys, money changers, crippled mine victims begging for “bakhshish” (charitable gifts of money) and man-pulled wooden carts all join in the chaos of rush-hour traffic. The chaos of an American mall was simply too much – too clean, too organized, too bright and too demanding.

I suppose my friend Chris was right when he said that culture shock is not so much the obvious differences. It is not my not needing to wear a scarf, for instance (though I did take a double take a few times on the way out of a house when I realized I was lacking my chadur). Instead, the more difficult culture shock involves one’s constant semi-conscious evaluation of and adjustments to unspoken norms, rules and behaviours.

Reverse culture shock, usually far more difficult and painful, is more like an old pair of jeans that no longer fit. Perhaps they have shrunk in the wash of time that has passed in one’s absence or perhaps one has grown too big for them. In either case, these norms and rules which once fit so perfectly are suddenly uncomfortable and unnatural, leaving one to suck in and pull tight so as not to be revealed as being totally naked and ill-equipped in one’s own “home” culture.

After five weeks away and having generally succeeded in pulling my Western jeans on, I have returned to Kabul and am again having to readjust. I am reminding myself again not to look men in the eye, not to laugh too loudly in public, to dress appropriately and to take time to ask the long series of questions about one’s health and family that make up a proper Afghan greeting. I am reacquainting myself with dust and dirt, with a few hours of municipal power daily, with cold showers and the challenges of transportation. My tongue is relearning its way around the Afghan language. And as much as some of these things leave me a little frustrated, I mostly find myself happy to be back. Not yet quite comfortable in these cultural clothes, but grateful to once again see the donkeys.

The NGO Chaos Theory

“It seems like NGO workers are constantly followed by a certain amount of chaos.”

These were the words of an almost perfect stranger, a friend of a friend who had graciously offered me his sofa in Dubai when I had, in desperation, contacted him less than twenty-four hours earlier to ask if I could stay the night. This conclusion, I recognised, had largely been formed through years of experiences with our mutual friend, a fellow Kabul-based NGO type. Yet, somehow, through our first conversation this man, who knew almost nothing about me, had managed to confirm for himself this statement. I sat there wondering whether to be insulted or convicted. Surely I am not followed by chaos … am I?

Perhaps he had reason for his statement. After all, I had just shared with him the story of how it was that I had come to sit cross-legged on his living room floor – a story that included airport strikes, cancelled and delayed flights, plane malfunctions, international calls failing to go through, totally booked hotel rooms in both London and Dubai, taxi drivers getting me lost and a rather dodgy promise of a seat on the flight to Kabul the next day. I hadn’t even mentioned my having booked a rental car at the wrong airport in Washington, DC earlier in my holiday.

“Chaos?” I thought. “I deny it!”

No, just a day in the life of a NGO worker – one who functions in a world where Murphy’s Law rules, a world where complications will always occur at the most inconvenient times and will find the most amusing solutions and a world where laughter and patience are essential tools should one not wish to find their next trip involving a straight jacket and padded walls. I’m sure this is thoroughly normal.

Alas, all this “chaos” did not meet my mother’s prediction of my meeting a tall, dark and handsome number on the connecting flight. I had to settle for several offers by airport staff – the first to sell me a pack of gum for the bargain price of one million Euros with the Granada Airport barman included, the second by a car rental agent at Gatwick to help me book a hotel room for two instead of one (wink wink), and yet another by the passport check man who lamented at what a shame it was I was travelling alone. I suppose this is better than the Afghan passport and baggage checking staff who always feel it is absolutely necessary to know my marital status. The last time I was asked by the Kabul passport checking official first, where I was travelling to and then whether my husband was there, I decided that “there” was a general enough term and said yes. I certainly hope he’s out “there” somewhere. I suppose we’ll just have to wait for the next chaotic travel experience to find out where.

Goodbye tonight …

(A poem written after what I thought was my last conversation on this earth with my Nana.)

Goodbye tonight is a delicate thread
Like a spider’s wispy fibre, seen only under the low slant of your setting life
Loosely tugging at the membrane of that world
One stitch, tenuously sewing this world
For one instant
To that one

Goodbye tonight is a single drop
Swelling with the substance of all your years
Escaping through some minute fracture between our worlds
Falling against the surface of this one
Sending ripples that play against the wall of my heart
Calling me to tilt my chin up for its source

Goodbye tonight is an old, worn leather bag
Its scarred surface covered with the worn stickers of so many journeys
Bloated with my history
Clasping shut a century of memories
The legacy of those that have come before
The heaviness and contents of what I will carry forward

Goodbye tonight is the soft flutter of a white handkerchief
Your embroidered initials clasped between my fingers
Bidding bon voyage
Wiping away every tear
Signalling truce
Introducing wholeness

Goodbye tonight is a towering red cliff face
The heaviness and certitude of my faith rising up immensely all around me
Unshakable, immoveable, certain
The conviction of your destination
The awe of its victory
The hope of our future

Goodbye tonight is the scribbled note of my heart
Rolled up for you to deliver
Placed within the wrinkled clasp of your hand
“When you look on His face, tell Him I love Him
Tell Him He’s beautiful
Tell Him He has my life
Tell Him I’ll see Him soon”

Goodbye tonight is a weightless rising ember
Glowing red with all my love
Ascending up from my open palms
Letting your life go where I cannot yet follow
Calling out for you to pray for me
Promising to carry forward the flame you leave behind