Category: International volunteering

Going to the “BEYOND” part…

In a few days, I’ll be leaving the many comforts of home and stretching my travels a bit farther than my usual 677 miles east or west down I-70.  I’ll be headed to Morocco, where I’ll be living in Rabat for three weeks.  I’ll be spending my time volunteering at the Feminin Pluriel, a women’s center that utilizes social, cultural, and educational activities to empower women.  That being said, I really have no idea what I will be doing.  The language barrier is a bit daunting to me right now, given that I don’t speak Arabic, and I’m going to assume they don’t speak English, but I may be wrong.

Several months ago, I went through the motions of thinking I’d learn some basic phrases in Arabic. I bought the book, turned a few pages, and got discouraged.  Then there’s the whole Arabic characters situation, which, although quite lovely on the page,  is all very unfamiliar and overwhelming.   I will never complain about the subjunctive tense in Spanish again.  The book tells me that with a vocabulary of only a few hundred words, I will be able to “survive in an Arabic-speaking country and even communicate some thoughts.”  I’m still working on “good morning” (sabaahal kyayr), but am not sure how far the one phrase will get me especially once the sun goes down.  I think I’ll bring my knitting.  That’s one thing I can teach without words.  And photos.  Pictures tell stories without words.

This will be my second volunteer trip with the Cross Cultural Solutions organization (my first being to Peru) and my first time in Africa, which feels very far away to me right now… 4,681 miles to be exact.  While preparing for this (ie, packing, unpacking, rethinking, then repacking, etc.) I find myself teetering between feelings of excitement and anticipation, laced with a bit of what the hell am I doing?  I’ve been down this emotional path before while anticipating the pathways to new adventures. Whether it’s on a mountain trail by myself, or getting ready to travel to a foreign country for three weeks by myself,  where I don’t speak the language and know little about the culture,  I think a bit of fear and trepidation is good.  I believe it helps keep me safe.

I’m guessing people will ask me when I return home, What did I do? Did I help build houses, schools, or develop programs that will live on long after my stay?  And I’ll answer just as I did when I returned from Perú—none of those things.  But what I did do was, I listened.  I held hands.  I accepted gracious invitations into homes with dirt floors and was invited to sit on couches that scared me because of the rodents that I’m sure were sharing the cushions. I danced to Peruvian music that I never could find the beat to, and painted the thick, dirty nails of grateful abuelas with old, sticky nail polish while I held their hands in mine and recognized the thread of vanity that connected us both.  I listened to countless stories of abuse, fear, and pain told to me by some of the strongest women I’ve ever met.  I laughed with them.  I cried with them.  I held their hand and accepted their affection.  I immersed myself in a culture that I thought I knew about before going, but really had no idea.

But what did you DO???

What I did was learn that the world is far bigger than the country where I comfortably reside, and that there is so much to be learned from the handful of third-world countries I’ve spent time in.
I learned how much I take for granted—clean water for starters.  I saw a lot of sickness that resulted from drinking the local water without adding bleach to it first.  Seriously.  Bleach.  While we run our water through filters that are supposed to remove impurities, these people were adding drops of the same substance that has warnings on its label not to ingest. Fortunately, I had the luxury of bottled water at my disposal while in Peru, unlike so many in the community where I stayed.  One of the first things my daughter, Emery, said to me during our initial stay in Perú was how little the people we were volunteering with had, yet how happy they were, and maybe, just maybe, they had a much better understanding of what makes a person happy than we did.  What a beautiful realization for an 18-year-old to recognize about life.  To see such joy on the faces of people who live their lives in a constant struggle to survive was a lesson to us both on the importance of living in the moment and finding gratitude in the simplest of things.

I have no idea what to expect during my stay in Rabat, but am guessing many of the experiences will mirror those from Perú, which is what has attracted me to volunteer again with this organization.

Years ago, during my second attempt at college, I decided to major in anthropology after sitting through the first lecture of a cultural anthropology class.  Before signing up for the class, I wasn’t sure what the study of anthropology was.   After making a definitive declaration that my major was going to be cultural anthropology with a minor in Spanish, I was asked countless times what I planned to do with my Anthropology degree and Spanish studies. Teach Spanish,  perhaps?  I really had no idea.  Almost 30 years later,  it’s all starting to make sense.
Although I’m feeling nervous and have no idea what is ahead for me in the African country of Morocco, or “al-Mamlakah al Maghribiyyah” (المملكة المغربية), which translates to the Kingdom of the West, this feels exactly like what I’m supposed to be doing right now.

I look forward to writing my blog posts from Rabat, as much as time and the internet connection allow.  So, for now…. as-salaamu alaykum – the most common Arabic greeting and one that thankfully gets shortened to “salaam”, which means peace be upon you.

I’m going to call that “how to communicate without fuss or fear… instantly!” false advertising…

Hands…The Dangling Strength That Hangs From Our Arms…

Hands.  Although hardly pretty, I’ve really come to love my hands.  They’re the outward representation of my spirit and in their lined palms, they have held all that I’ve loved, lost, hated, feared, created and comforted. They even hold the scar from a mishap with a tomato can lid while I was pregnant with Emery and trying to precook meals in anticipation of her arrival.  I was told, after my 10 stitches to the palm, that I’d never be able to get an accurate palm reading on that hand as there’s an extra line.  Maybe that tomato can lid added something to my life by adding the line – at least that’s the theory I’m going with.

My sister, Susan, told me that she had a yoga teacher once ask the class to look at their hands deeply enough that they almost seemed separate from the rest of their body and think about what they’ve done in your lifetime.  I had never really done that before and became rather obsessed with the idea of my hands.  Sure, the other parts of my body have also been along for the ride,  but it is the hands, the very visible hands,  that have created,  destroyed, cradled, protected and applauded their way through this life.

Susan told me that during the process of thinking about her hands, she thought about other hands and which pairs she would recognize.  She told me she would recognize my hands easily and wondered, would I be able recognize my own children’s hands out of a group of several?

“Of course I would!!!”  (this definitive YES is in no way trying to neutralize my confession in an early post of not recognizing my own new born in the hospital…)

But I later wondered…. would I?

Somehow hearing that Susan would recognize my hands gave me a deep sense of comfort.  She said they were hard working hands.  She’s right. My hands have always felt right at home digging in the dirt.  I know there are tools for that, and they do help me get the job started, but when it comes to placing a new plant into the earth I want to have full on skin to dirt contact.  That being said, I’ve entered into the season of perpetually dirty nails that do not know their way around a nail salon and quite honestly, kind of feel like they don’t belong.  With garden centers, on the other hand,  I’m full in.

While thinking about hands, I couldn’t help but think back to a few years ago and the volunteer work I did in Perú at a center for the poor elderly.  One of the activities I chose one day was to give manicures to any of the women who wanted them. Much to my surprise, almost all of them did, creating a bit of a frenzy at the small “station” I had set up.  I had danced with these women, chatted with them in their homes,  played games with them, but my favorite, by far, were the manicures.  There was a real intimacy in holding their hand, while painting their nails and like little girls, they were in awe of the process, watching carefully and boldly pointing out to me when my little brush painted outside of the nail line.

These hands made my hands look pampered and delicate.  THESE were working hands and just like Madge on the Palmolive commercial, I had all the waiting hands soaking in soapy water.  I told them it was to soften the nail so I could cut them, but in reality it was simply to clean them up a bit as most were filthy. Again, these were working hands.

One of my favorites, Maria Rivera, waited patiently in line and finally took her spot as my last customer.  She had the hands that needed the most work.  Her fingers were bent with arthritis and her nails thick and dirty and terribly ignored.  She had definite ideas as to how she wanted them to look – cut short, painted bright pink and made to look pretty.

“Bonita y rosada por favor.”

I did the best I could to make them not only bright pink, but well manicured and far cleaner than what she started with.  She seemed pleased.  As I held her hand in mine and tried  to file the nails down to a respectable length (they were far too hard to cut), I couldn’t help but think about what Susan had told me about hands.  As I worked my way across the nail of each of her short, thick fingers, I thought about the history I had been told about her, specifically how her own son had tried to strangle her.  Were these  hands that I was holding the same ones that pulled her own son’s hands off of her neck while trying to save her own life?  What else had these very strong hands done to protect the body that they dangled from?  No doubt there were many stories and I wanted to sit back and hear all of them while I held her fight, her strength and her integrity in my own hands.  These same hands, that were her protectors, still honored her vanity and drew perfectly arched brows over sad brown eyes, and placed a gold hat that looked like a half-popped jiffy pop container on top of her neatly coiffed hair every morning before coming to Los Martincitos.

Me and Maria Rivera

I felt honored to feel such intimacy with these women while working on their nails and making them pretty and pink.  The task at hand was the manicure, but I felt like I gained far more than what I gave.  The simple pleasure of being with these beautiful hard-working women who had experienced so much hardship in their lives, one at a time, while holding their hands and letting its energy mingle with my own was a gift.

Amelia… far prouder than she’d let on…
Petronila de Leon’s nails… pretty in pink!

 

These hands looked a whole lot different 24 hours later…

Besides the fact that the polish was old and sticky and the women insisted on sitting right next to me rather than across from me, which made for awkward angles, plus having to work under the frustration of swarms of flies (I later discovered that directly on the other side of the wall we were sitting in front of was a garbage dump), it has become one of my most treasured memories of my time in Perú.

My own hands, the same that so often had been told to put it down, leave it alone and stop picking at it, followed the rest of myself into a nail salon for a manicure the day before my son, Thomas’ wedding last year.  After the nail tech brought out the third wrong shade of pink,  I had to leave because I started crying.  Yes, crying. That’s not a typo.  When I got home my other son, Grant, asked me if I got my hands all fixed up (boy speak for manicure) and I told him no that I had to leave because I started crying.  He said nothing for a few seconds then responded with:

“You’re not ready for him to get married, are you?”

“No.  He’s still 9 years old… or so it seems.”

Clearly this was not about the wedding, but rather was about my having to face, full on, the passage of time, which felt a whole lot faster than was comfortable.

It’s easier for me to be more accepting of my stubby fingers with rough cuticles and often less than perfectly manicured nails when I think of what these hands have done for me.  The small hands they’ve held while crossing the street, the plants they’ve placed with hope into the dirt and the weeds they’ve pulled out in frustration,  the family dog that they held while he was being put to sleep and the tears they wiped away for so many days that followed, the babies they’ve held, the stories they’ve typed.  I love them in all of their flawed imperfection as they represent my history, my life and my spirit in full view.   How can that not evoke a crazy sense of pride of ownership…dirty nails and all?

The End.