Photographs Not Taken April 15, 2012

I just finished reading a book called Photographs Not Taken, a compilation of essays by photographers about shots they missed or chose not to take for various reasons.  As I’m getting ready to leave Houston in less than two months, I find myself seeing the city through an imaginary camera lens – snapping shots of scenes I want to carry with me to Detroit and Kenya and beyond.  And often I’m looking through an actual camera lens, especially when I’m with friends.  There have been lots of celebrations lately – my engagement, others’ birthdays and baby showers.  I want to capture these last moments with people I love, with people I’ve been developing relationships with over the course of the past two or six or nine years.

 

This weekend was one such weekend that was full of friends.  I had my camera with me the whole time but somehow only managed to take it out on Friday night at Kelly’s 30th birthday dinner at the hibachi grill.  I’ve got the images to prove the laughter and the flames and the sparkler on the “special moment package” and the sake bombs.  The rest of the weekend was captured in my mind:

 

-Edna looking gorgeous in her long blue dress, basketball belly sticking out.  A year ago I was at her wedding.  Now they’re welcoming their first baby.  It was only two years ago that Edna and I had conversations about the guys we were interested in in California and Michigan and our anticipation of visits with them.  It was two years ago that we woke up early, early on Saturday mornings to drive before the sun rose to destinations outside of the city to ride our bikes in training for the MS150.  That’s how we met and got to know each other.  We laughed months later when we saw each other for the first time in non-bike gear, and I thought, “Edna looks different with her hair down,” and she said, “You wear glasses?”  We haven’t ridden together since that MS150 since she was planning a wedding last year, and I’m planning a wedding this year, and she’s pregnant.  But we continue to catch up every couple months for a meal (or a baby shower as it were!).

 

– Connecting with Lija and Lindsay and Dena at the shower.  I’ve known Lija since my early days in Houston, before she and her husband started dating.  She was at the shower with Baby #2.  Talking to Lindsay, I remembered how much I enjoy her and our connections over Africa.  And it’s been too long since I’ve seen Dena.  She’s one of my Houston friends that I don’t really know how I know…maybe through her sister who goes to my church…maybe through Lija and Edna…maybe she visited my small group one time?  I loved catching up and laughing with these girls.

 

– I snapped a picture in my mind of eight of us bouncing around a bouncy castle at Kelly’s 30th birthday party (not to be confused with her birthday dinner the night before).  We bounced then sat and talked then bounced some more and threw a ball around then sat and talked some more.  I felt like I was back in middle school – but the fun parts, not the awkward parts because we’re all adults now and confident in who we are.  So this time was just playtime – eight people, some of us long-time friends, some of us meeting for the first time last night.

 

– I went to the 1pm service at my church today and sat at the end of a row.  There was a couple sitting several chairs away from me, but I never know anyone at the services, so I didn’t look.  When it was time to greet one another, I looked over and realized it was my good friend Julie and her husband.  They’ve never been to my church but decided to visit today.  Julie and I haven’t seen each other in awhile but had just texted earlier today to make plans for dinner this week.  Julie is one of my first friends from Houston, and we’ve connected over the years on so many things:  same age, both interested in foreign missions, both in education, both overseas at the same time and struggling with singleness versus missions.  She got married a year ago to a wonderful man, and her wedding was the most beautiful I’ve ever been to.

 

– While I was talking to Julie and Marcos after the service I noticed a man I haven’t seen in years.  I met David at a mission training in Chicago about ten years ago.  We kept in touch via email for a little while but lost touch many years ago.  I knew he had been in Lake Jackson, about an hour south of Houston, but have not seen him since I’ve been here.  There he was at my church with his wife and child.  They’ve been making the commute from Lake Jackson to my church for awhile, but we’ve never crossed paths with all the services we have.  Until today.

 

A month ago, a weekend like this would have made me sad and anxious about moving to Detroit:  I don’t want to say good-bye!  This weekend I just felt grateful for the relationships I have, grateful for the memories my friends and I have created, grateful that I know I’ll stay connected to many of these people.  I still don’t want to say good-bye, but I’m ready for the next stage.  I’m still filling up my Houston photo albums – the tangible ones and the ones I get to flip through in my mind.  I am so thankful that I get to take those pictures.

 

 

And Now For the Video to Further Illustrate… January 7, 2012

The kid’s voice is annoying, but his points are fantastic.

 

Some More Thoughts Along the Same Line… January 4, 2012

I promise I have not been looking for these links.  I’ve been stumbling upon them.  I’m glad that people are finally starting to publicly raise these concerns.  Let’s start talking about this in our churches.  What can we do so that it really is a win-win situation?

Click HERE for more thoughts on short-term missions.

Photo #82 November 4, 2011

When I saw this picture, I thought, “Oh, I love my church!”  Which is funny because I never felt entirely comfortable there, nor did I always understand what was going on.  Looking back, as with so many things in Mozambique, I would have done church differently.  Like I would have gone to Sunday school, even just to practice more Portuguese.  I also would have made a point of getting to know the pastor.  I knew his wife because she worked at Oasis, but I never had a conversation with her husband.  Yet he is one of the reasons why I liked the church so much.  Many Mozambican pastors are power-hungry and readily feed into the hierarchy of African culture.  I have met pastors who ignore women and many who completely ignore children and youth.  They are stern and yell from the pulpit, often with no point because they have such weak biblical and theological knowledge.  This pastor smiled almost perpetually, spoke gently, encouraged women and youth leadership, and delighted in children.  In fact, on Sundays that he wasn’t preaching, he would sit in the back with his youngest children and their friends sitting in his lap and beside him.  He also knew the Word better than many pastors I heard and preached it more intelligently and succinctly.

 

I also say I love my church because many of my colleagues attended, so I knew a lot of people.  Plus, the music was usually good.  And always lively!  I miss dancing in church.  (Or rather clapping and moving a bit in my row since I never actually got up the nerve to join the other women dancing and jumping down the aisle and in the front!)

 

Photo #71 October 17, 2011

I take a lot of pictures of food.  I like trying new food, and it often connects me to a place.  If I have a picture of a certain dish, I also remember who I was with, where I was at the time, how I was feeling, what else we did that day, etc.  I always take pictures of food when I’m with people, so food pictures always equal happy times with friends and good memories.

The food in this picture doesn’t necessarily look that appetizing, but it was quite a luxurious feast of treats by our meager Beira standards.  It was my 30th birthday party/housewarming party that my housemate and I hosted.  Between the two of us and one of our colleagues, we made pizza, fresh guacamole, tomato-feta bites, spring rolls, and sushi.  Because it was Mozambique, all of that was made from scratch.  No Kroger take-out sushi!  Our colleague hand-rolled those and hand-made the spring rolls.  Then we also had chips and veggies and dip and cheese and crackers.  Yes, that’s brie.  (Sometimes we could find brie in the supermarket but not milk.  Go figure.)  But look at that poor cheddar all melting into a cheddary pool on the plate.  We might have had delicious appetizers, but we still had no air-conditioning.

What does this picture connect me to?  My housemates, friends, hospitality, and the fun of being creative with what we had.

Photo #65 October 6, 2011

A school mural against HIV/AIDS

From the Archives: Change in Opinion September 24, 2011

This was my application essay for the Honors Program at Linfield College, written in March 1996.  The prompt was:  Examine your recent life and write about a time in which you made a significant change in your opinion, attitude or behavior.  I was accepted into the program and attended the college for a year before transferring to U of M.  Apparently, I had some strong political opinions at 18!  It’s interesting to be reminded of what was happening in Bahrain in 1996 as a background to what’s happening there now.  The current uprisings are not new.  They are just new in the western media.

———-

“All that remains of seven precious lives…” was the bold title inside the front page of last Friday’s edition of the Gulf Daily News.  Beneath this heading were five disturbingly graphic photographs of the victims of the restaurant arson attack.  The short commentary accompanying the pictures seemed to be an appeal to the public’s emotions rather than the straightforward factual information that is required of any newspaper.  The obvious intent was to increase the anger and hatred for the readers toward the terrorists.  That was exactly my emotional response; I became more angry with the government.

 

Four years ago when I moved to Bahrain, I had the pleasure of sharing breakfast with the Emir outside his beach house.  He was a friendly man, who lived in a palace less extravagant than many wealthy Bahrainis.  This meeting gave me an ititial good impression of the local government.  When I began school, I realized that I was in the company of royal family members and other important Bahrainis, who were supportive of the government.  Because these were the only Bahrainis with whom I ever came into contact, I assumed the majority of the local population was satisfied with the way the Emir, the Premier, and the Crown Prince were running the country.  In fact, it bothered me the way the United States kept pushing the idea of democracy.  In the U.S. democracy means high crime rates and low moral values.  How would this system of government benefit a monarchy that upholds the family and boasts virtually non-existent crime?

 

Because of the apparent peace on the island, it came as quite a surprise to the expatriates, and probably some wealthy locals, that a group of lower-class Bahrainis were angry enough at the government to throw stones at policemen and burn tires and gas cylinders in their villages.  The reaction of most expatriates was anger at these rioters for disturbing our peaceful existence within their country.

 

The initial reason for the uprisings was unhappiness with unemployment.  Many young Bahraini men are unemployed because the government has given the jobs to foreigners, who have a stronger work ethic than local labor.  The problem did not stay at this level, however.  It grew to include the majority of the poor Shi’ite Muslim community, who form a different religious group from the ruling family, who are Sunni.  At the start of the riots, I was informed that about 70 percent of Bahrainis are Shi’ite while the Sunni minority are the ones in control.  For years these ruling Sunni have oppressed their Shi’ite neighbors for fear that they would come to power.  Despite this eye-opening piece of information, I still condemned the actions of the villagers.

 

Around May, the nightly gas cylinder explosions and tire burning ceased.  It was not until troubles started up again a few months ago that my views on the whole situation changed.

 

I was raised to believe, as most of us were, that the ones who go against the law are the “bad guys”.  Therefore, when a photograph of a fire-gutted car would be published on the front page of the GDN, it was the Shi’ite villagers who were the “bad guys”.  What the newspaper failed to show were the pictures of the other “bad guys”, the men in uniform who drove through villages every night destroying families and lives by arresting every man on the street then taking them to unknown destinations where torture awaited them.

 

It is understandable, then, why the dissidents made the move from their previous futile acts of violence to planting bombs in restaurants, hotels, and even an ATM of a bank.  It was reported that the ATM bomb exploded in the hands of the saboteur, which killed him and injured two counterparts.  The man who was killed was lucky; he managed to avoid a life filled with government-induced torture.

 

While there have been several attacks lately, none have been as devastating as the recent restaurant firebombing.  The way in which this attack was performed – ski masks, blocking exits – was uncharacteristic of the tactics normally used.  That, along with a personal conversation with a Shi’ite man who disclaimed Shi’ite involvement, plus the newspaper report that the masked men were caught only two days after the incident, have led many to believe that it was actually a stunt pulled by the government.  In this way  the government can justify the unjust actions that have been taken against their opposition.

 

Although I do not support the idea of arson or planting bombs, I am more sympathetic with the dissidents than with the government.  I understand their anger at being discriminated against and oppressed by their own people.  There are less violent ways of expressing this dissatisfaction, but the government does not seem to respond positively to peaceful protest.  While riots should be dealt with in a forceful manner, it should not exceed that to forms of brutality.  The government is making the mistake of ignoring the needs of its won people, yet the leaders are too stubborn and arrogant to admit that they are even partially at fault.  In this self-denial and poor handling of the situation, the government is causing its own demise.

Remembering September 12, 2011

Has it really been ten years?  That’s what I keep thinking, what keeps coming up in conversation.  I don’t watch much TV and don’t read much online news, so I’ve barely caught any of the ten-years-on reports or tributes.  Part of me wants to avoid it.  I wonder:  Is this really helpful for the families who lost loved ones to keep replaying footage and speculate and commemorate?  I don’t know.

 

As a child I remember my parents saying that they could remember exactly where they were when they heard the news that JFK had been assassinated.  They claimed everyone in their generation and older could do exactly the same.  I thought that was weird.  I tried to compare it to events in my life.  Could I remember exactly where I was when I heard that Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait?  Vaguely.  Could I remember exactly where I was when I heard that the first Gulf War had started?  Vaguely.  When the occupation was over?  Vaguely.

 

But I remember vividly that Tuesday morning in Ann Arbor when I was housesitting for friends on the Old West Side.  It was such a gorgeous morning that I decided to ride my bike to my part-time job at Jimmy John’s.  (As a side note of explanation:  I was in Ann Arbor for about six months between stints in Honduras.  I was substitute teaching but also working at Jimmy John’s just for fun.)  Our church offices were in a house across the street from JJ’s, so I carried my bike up there to leave it.  Tom met me at the door and told me we were under attack and to come and watch TV.  There were the images that are burned into every American’s psyche.  Immediately I knew Arabs would be blamed.  I pleaded with God for it not to be true, knowing the societal repercussions.  I wanted to stay and watch more but had to be at work.  As customers entered the store, we knew which ones knew and which ones didn’t.  The ones who didn’t always asked what was going on, why was everyone so somber, why were people angry, what were we listening to on the news.

 

The rest of my story is like so many others’:  Who do I know in NY or DC?  Are they okay?  I need to call my family and my boyfriend.  A memorial on campus.  A memorial at church.  Crying at every news item.  Feeling patriotic.  Grieving for the families whose lives were directly touched.

 

I still tear up when I see the images or hear reports.  I cried on the way to church this morning listening to a youth choir sing the national anthem.  They have no personal recollection of what happened.  That’s the strangest thing for me – that my former students were not even alive ten years ago.  Stories of that day are like stories to me of JFK’s assassination.  Would my students think it’s weird that I know exactly where I was when I heard the news?

 

For a younger generation 9-11 is another JFK or Pearl Harbor.  Children will hear their teachers and parents and grandparents talk about it.  But ten years on (and 48 years on and 70 years on) we still grieve and we still pray for comfort and for healing.  For some, ten years was a lifetime ago, but for others it is still so fresh.

Thank You Detroit Drug Dealers July 5, 2011

I drove over to T’s last night around 10pm.  Everywhere I looked, there were fireworks being set off in the sky, from street corners, backyards, and rooftops.  Children in front yards waved sparklers.  Who knew inner-city folk knew how to celebrate the 4th so well!  When I got to T’s, he wanted me to help take the kayak off the roof of the car and into the storage shed.  “But will we miss the fireworks?” I asked.  There was a particularly good show off the roof the multi-story apartment building at the end of his block.  He laughed, “They’ll be going on all night long.”

 

Sure enough.  We sat on the back porch and watched a lengthy show through the trees.  And I mean lengthy.  And impressive.  These were big fireworks.  And lots of them.  I kept thinking we had seen the finale, but then there would be another “finale”.  T explained that the good displays are put on by the drug dealers as a way of “giving back” to the community.  The random little three-firework displays were just the neighbors.  The others were dealers.  Clearly they’ve got cash.

 

I just googled “how much do fireworks cost?” and found this:  The typical July 4th show budget is $3000 to $20,000. For smaller events, away from the July 4th holiday, we suggest starting at about $3000. 

 

Detroit is a depressed place, but for one night it was magical as dueling fireworks lit up the sky for hours.  Thank you drug dealers for giving back for a night.

 

Official firework display over the river between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario on June 27 to celebrate Canada Day and American Independence Day. (Sorry, no photos from last night.)

Summer Lovin’ June 12, 2011

I got a manicure last week and had my toes painted yellow.  I have happy feet.

I went dancing one night with friends.  We stayed out till 4am.

I go to yoga every day.  Today it kicked my butt, but my body’s getting stronger, and I truly am more relaxed and clear-minded each day because of it.

I wake up early, but not too early, every morning with enough time to have a full morning but after the sun has already risen.  Good morning sunshine!

My internet has been down in my apartment for over a week.  It’s a bit frustrating but simplifies my life.  I spend time at coffee shops these days to read and write emails and blogs.

I have brunch and coffee with good friends.

People bless my home with their presence around my table for home-cooked meals.

My goal this summer is to cook every recipe in the Spring and Summer sections of the Mennonite cookbook, Simply in Season.  I am only five recipes in, but so far they’ve all been a success.  Biggest hit:  asparagus quiche in potato crust.

I volunteered for three days at the warehouse that my church bought and is renovating.  I hauled wood and weathering strips and picked up piles of nuts and bolts and stacked insulation and tore down a wall and loaded copper wires on a trailer.  I was filthy and scratched up and tired, but it felt so good.  I also got the best compliment ever:  One of the guys told the supervisor that I’m “a beast” and “work with the dudes”.

I’m reading a memoir by a white Zimbabwean.

I’m going to see my old students in summer school on Tuesday.  Afterwards I’m meeting a former colleague for foot massages in Chinatown.

I think I’m going to have my hairdresser cut some bangs this week.

I’m cleaning out and reorganizing my apartment.

Sometimes I sit in the peace and quiet of my apartment and watch the bamboo leaves outside my kitchen window blow in the wind and pray or just be still.