The Road to the Market

I had a day off not long ago and it was the first time I had vacation without having Chris, my partner in crime here, around. I stayed in my room most of the day, as I eavesdropped on the sounds of the voices in the kitchen in the language that remains a crossword puzzle much too advanced for me. Ibu Rose, our housekeeper, had her children over, which she does pretty often. I was trapped in my room despite my longing to play with them. It’s a constant battle: wanting to reach out for some company but fearing facing my inadequacies with every sound I utter. It’s a catch 22. I wish I hadn’t the option of hiding in my room because I would always take it. I felt like a coward.

Later that day, I forced myself to take a walk in the streets. I used buying things as an excuse to talk to people in a setting I’m comfortable with: it’s a limited transaction, purposeful, and doesn’t require much vocabulary. “How much?” I would say, and then it would take me a few seconds to decipher the string of sounds they utter back. I would nod and smile, and hand them a large enough bill to cover whatever may have been reasonable. They would then hand me a ball of money for change. “Thank you” I would say. They would often then start to ask me questions, some I could barely understand and some I knew I didn’t have a chance of figuring out. Occasionally I would pick out the word for “name” or “from” and I would nod eagerly and say “Beverly” or “Canada” (I never say I’m from the US anymore in fear of the bad reputation we have in politics). They would then keep talking and asking questions until eventually they too realize that they have exhausted the limits of my vocabulary and the extent of this brief friendship we were to have. An awkward silence would set in if I didn’t first say “see you later!” or “good afternoon” a little too eagerly to avoid it. By then, my face would be tired from the extensive amount of smiling I do to compensate. Each encounter, though so brief, was exhausting. I realized as I reached my doorstep how many bags of food I had bought, some of which I still couldn’t identify and some of which I didn’t even like. All this to rid myself of my loneliness, to make some contact with someone and to not feel completely invisible.

The streets here are very exposing. People sitting in the endless shops and restaurants that line the streets stare at me and point at me as I walk by. I hear some shouts of “Hello!” and occasionally “What’s your name!” in an accented English that has become too familiar. My eyeglasses give me away. No one else wears them here. Those driving motorbikes and scooter carriages honk at me to ask if I am looking for a ride, as I am the only one walking on the street. It’s surprising that people don’t walk much here. Perhaps it’s because of the heat. Perhaps everyone already has a motorbike. Perhaps it’s the obstacle course of garbage, gutters, and broken concrete that one has to take on when trying to walk. It only makes me stand out more. I feel naked in these streets though I’m covered down to my wrists and ankles. Exposed, yet invisible.

The roads are very dusty here. They’re lined by cracked pieces of previous attempts at a sidewalk or just piles of dirt in the process of becoming a sidewalk. Occasionally one finds a relieving stretch of a few feet of tiles that is currently in tact. Even the ground cannot escape the transience of things around here. But reliably, along the sides of the street much like a moat, there is always a sewage gutter, 2 feet wide, 3 feet deep, just deep enough for one to worry about falling in, just shallow enough for one to always see the sometimes green, sometimes brown fluid thick with garbage and other unidentifiable items that flows through…if it flows at all. Perhaps this is the lesson the city learned from the frequent downpours, or from the occasional tsunami but in the face of which the presence of gutters would be a moot point.

There are occasional clusters of fruit stands selling the same exact assortment of fruits such that I had no idea when or where to stop looking and finally spend my money. Otherwise the street is lined with restaurants consisting of a roof and 3 walls that open onto the street with tables and chairs both under the roof or outside. There is always a glass case near the front displaying colorful fruits and vegetables or ready-made plates of various dishes, sometimes shielded from the swarming flies only by a lacy curtain but never anything more substantial. People here seem to have no difficulties eating dishes that have been sitting in the case for the day, despite the number of flies that have been previous customers or the perfect temperature for bacterial colonization. I too have become a believer. Refrigeration is so overrated. Food here is served at the temperature of the day: high 80’s – 90’s with a small chance of downpours.

DVD stores and cell phone stores fill in the gaps between the restaurants and fruit stands. They all look the same such that one wonders how anyone here decides which establishment to frequent. All the restaurants serve the same food, all of them advertise “Nasi Goreng” (fried rice), which we all know can be found anywhere at any time anyways. All the stores have the same large bright red banners for “Clas Mild” cigarettes.

I realize I’ve been avoiding talking about what I really care about most. Perhaps it’s often easier for us to talk about things that are tangential because it is of limited consequence, limited investment, and limited duration. Perhaps the things we care about the most are often too difficult to characterize in the ready-made vocabulary we are used to. Whatever the reason, I will try to talk about it this time.

I feel inadequate. Inadequacy is a feeling I’ve gotten used to here. Inadequacy in understanding, in expressing, and in my energy to keep trying. I play with children in the daytime, and I hear the stories of the families at the end of the day when I realize I may never see them again. I hear about their loses and troubles second hand through the somewhat awkward and broken English of our interpreters whose abilities are tested by the depth and power of the accounts they are required to recite. I don’t see the tears they see or hear the frustration they hear in the people’s voices. I get the report stating blankly that “mother lost everyone in her family and her home during the tsunami. Her son is very shy and has become afraid of wind and rain. She hopes her son will be a good person one day.” What parts were forgotten? What did I neglect to ask? What was lost in translation? I will never find out. I feel inadequate in the depth of emotion I feel for the people despite knowing the worst of their tragedies…because I cannot be there to listen to them with my own ears. I thirst for the tears I once shed when listening to someone talk about their failing health and I realize that I probably won’t have them here. Despite all of this, transcribing the stories onto my laptop was my favorite part of the day.

I have taken up sketching the children I am fond of…by fond of I mean somehow not being able to get enough of their smiles because really that is the main constituent of what I manage to exchange with them. How I wish I could ask about their hopes and dreams, about their friends and favorite subjects. I can get as far as their age, their favorite flavor of juice, what they like to play, and how many siblings they have. And then they leave me with the familiar yet incomprehensible sounds interrupted by laughter and eventually the apprehension of an answer from me I don’t know how to give. I have a lot more time to take in the looks their eyes make, telling me that they’re proud of their drawings, that they feel special we’ve chosen them, that they’re bashful and shy. I spend hours studying the curves and the shadows on their faces, trying to decipher what I cannot learn otherwise. I trace the outlines of their eyes in attempt to show them my hopes for them because I don’t know what else to give back. A girl I went to China with who didn’t speak much Chinese had done the same back then…she sketched everyone she met…perhaps so that she could take away something or absorb something if nothing else.

It rained one day when we were interviewing families in a small barrack here. Most of the people there have already moved out, leaving about 20 or so families in a small courtyard. The barracks are made of wooden planks and resemble those outhouses one might find at a rest area on the side of a highway at home. They are simple wooden huts on stilts with wooden planks leading up to each doorway. The floors are a thin and bounce up and down and squeak as one walks across. There is always a smell of mold inside. Each family has 2 rooms usually the size of 2 singles in Vandy. Some hang up curtains to create more rooms. There are usually a few straw mats on the floors of colorful designs and always a plaque displaying Arabic letters embroidered in gold somewhere near the ceiling. Some hang up old photographs of family members on the walls. Some have drawn on the walls in chalk portraits of family members who have passed away. Occasionally there are fluorescent pink or green curtains that hang in the doorways. For light, people open the window or the door. At the center of the barrack, there is a raised wooden platform with a wooden roof on stilts. It is where the community meets, although I’ve never seen them do so. This barrack was particularly muddy. Some random goats and cats roamed about picking at the garbage scattered around.

At the end of the day, it was raining quite hard. I walked out to find a crowd of children shouting and giggling throwing around the rubber ball we gave them to play with. They were mostly boys whose bare brown chests were already covered in mud streaked by the falling rain. “You’re dirty!” I told one of them and then he ran under the giant red water tank in the middle of the barrack to wash himself off. They scrambled on top of one another striking poses as I pulled out my camera. They reminded me of the innocence and freedom I once had…or perhaps never had. What must it be like to have no pretty clothes to soil? To have no money to lose? To have no status to upkeep? What must it be like to lose everything one has and be left with nothing but the mud and rain?

There was one boy who had the best smile. Here are my notes on him:
“T is 12 years old. His mother lost everyone in her family in the tsunami except her brother. Her husband lost everyone. She was very sad when asked about the tsunami and said she feels as though she relives it when we ask her about it. She started to cry. T is a good boy and often lets other people win. But when he knows he’s right, he will stand up for himself. She hopes he can be a good person and have more money. She hopes to send him to Banda Aceh for school and have a higher education when he grows up. It’s difficult for her to get much money and her kids don’t have money for allowances. She makes popcicles sometimes to make money for her kids spending.

We found T at a small snack shop in someone’s home. He was wearing pants with a belt that was much too long for him. He had no shirt on but put one on when we started the drawing session. He smiled a lot. He asked his mom for permission to do the interview and his mom said he can’t draw well. He was a bit bashful but then said he wanted to do it. He got more and more interested in his drawings during the interview. He would nod and smile at his drawings when he is happy with them. He enjoyed playing ball with us very much. While playing with other children, he tries to make sure everyone gets a chance to catch the ball.”

T was one of the children I decided to sketch. I’ve attached a picture of him. He’s quite handsome, isn’t he?

Well, here I am with 3 more weeks left, struggling to extract all I can from my time here. Hope all of you are enjoying your summers wherever you happen to be.

The Road to Parapat

This weekend we shoved our bodies against a crowd and finally squeezed ourselves into the bus, one that appeared as though that any trip now may be its last. Everything chattered with the engine and it was uncertain how far the domain of the exhaust fumes reached. Despite this, a garland of bright pink cloth flowers wrapped itself around the railing above the windshield and lime green ruffled curtains stained with the gray of the air lined the glass. We finally popped ourselves into our reserved seats and suddenly realized that we were the only riders who bought tickets. The others relied on their brute force to win over the rest. I was smashed between the window, the hard metal seat with a poor excuse for a cushion, my partner’s sweaty cargo pants, and my laptop case. I could move one limb and I decided it was going to be my left arm. But then I didn’t know where to put it so I left it hanging on the railing above the window much as a monkey would do if given the option. The doors finally closed and we were relieved by a small intermittent breeze through the front door window as the movement began. A small man stood by the door frequently sticking his head out the window yelling “Parapat! Parapat!” at people standing at the side of the street. When they yelled back, he would signal the driver to stop, open the door, shove them in, and shut the door again in one graceful swooping motion, and before we knew it, we would be moving again. He also doubled as the bus DJ and shoved an audiotape into the slit by the steering wheel. The lively exotic rhythm and a woman’s voice reminiscent of something familiar but unidentifiable filled the atmosphere already stuffed with exhaust, sweat, and cigarette smoke, and suddenly the picture was complete…and it was perfect.

For the next 6 hours as we drove down the one highway through the center of Sumatra, I watched the people on motorbikes, people leaning against their shops, people frying things behind glass displays, people sitting by the fire…there’s something about watching the world as one speeds along that clarifies things, much like a flip book that only makes sense when flipped through quickly. Perhaps it allows one to catch on to the patterns in the way people move, the way they are when they’re unaware that you’re watching, the way they watch you when they’re unaware that you’re watching. It is like seeing into small peepholes of people’s lives one after another at 50 miles an hour. The woman holding a child waiting to cross the street; the man smoking a cigarette sitting on a stool in front of his shop; the boy holding a stick on a boat in the river. What lives they must have? It is intense. It is powerful. I attempted to digest an episode of The Office at my partner’s suggestion, but it was not long before I found myself turning out the window, seduced by the voice from the cassette player to keep watching the filmstrip going by. This is a place with a compelling story to tell.

Despite the long sleeves and pants, people here are more naked than I am used to – in the way they move, the way they stay still, their facial expressions, and their gaze. It is familiar yet it feels like long ago. They don’t wear layers of make-up, shame, or vanity as do the people we see at home. There is something raw and earthy here, reminiscent of an innocence which may have been found in the Garden of Eden. I’m not sure when that was lost to us in America. Was it when we saw each other on TV? When we picked up our first issue of Seventeen magazine? When we somehow decided that the world was watching us? What were we all like before we saw ourselves being seen? Was there ever such a time?

There is something sacred about this place. With every greeting, we hold the other person’s hand between ours, bow, touch our hearts, and utter ‘selamat pagi’ (good morning) or ‘assaimamulaikum’ (God be with you). The children occasionally will gently bring your hand to their forehead out of respect…and each time, without fail it brings my heart closer to the surface. With entry into every house, we leave our shoes just outside the doorstep. There is often very little furniture, just a straw mat or two people bring out for guests to sit on. The floor somehow remains remarkably clean. Every day at 6pm like clockwork, the town closes its doors for the protection of the prayer hour from the tainted rubble of business. Women’s bodies are covered down to the wrists and ankles, and most wear head covers as well, to protect from the dirt and fumes of the city that which is sacred underneath. Even the smallest glimpse of a bare knee or a fleshy shoulder could arouse the strongest emotions.

The sacredness has remained despite the intrusion of the dust, the water, and the disaster.

The resilience of the people here is remarkable. The night guard here at the guest house showed me his tattered birth certificate. He said he carried it with him as he swam through the waters the flooded the city. That’s why it became so worn. He lost his father in the tsunami as well as his house. He now lives in a new house built by an NGO. He does traditional Acenese dance and likes Ricky Martin. He smiles a shy smile. The pay here isn’t great but he enjoys working here. He is 24 like me.

But this is a people that is used to trying to recover. A 10 year old girl from the barracks lost her father after he was beaten by the army. He actually made it back home and to the hospital and was told to follow-up. 2 days later he didn’t follow-up and died of internal bleeding. Her mother was left with three children on her own and was at work when the tsunami hit. Prior to the tsunami reaching the shore, the water was sucked back into the ocean, leaving hundreds of meters of exposed sand carpeted with flopping fish that were caught off guard. People rushed in to grab the fish believing it to be a blessing, amongst them was the girl and her sister. Only seconds later, the tsunami arrived and took them in. Miraculously, they survived, but the girl was never the same again, not with her friends, not with schoolwork. We always play a game with the kids where we try to throw a ball between people’s feet. She has so far been my all-time favorite player…plays by the rules, but tricky.

An 11 year old girl from a nearby village used to live in the barracks. Her father worked as a security guard at a plantation and was forced to pick up numerous dead bodies of those who had been shot on the plantation during the civil war. The girl was still young back then. These days she struck me as quite mature for her age. She was the leader of the crowd of children in her village and enforced the rules of our dodgeball and kickball games and initiated the singing and drawing amongst themselves when I ran out of ideas and energy. She has a certain way of nodding at the end of each sentence and was one of the few who tried to help me find the words I didn’t know how to say. She always looked at me as though she had so many questions for me that she knew I couldn’t understand. She was particularly good at coloring in the leaves she drew and refused to use one color more than once for her bouquet of flowers.

We bring a ball and 2 stuffed animals every day and other than a few threatening looking “toy” guns that shoot metal pellets, they are the only toys we have seen. But the children make do with what they have. They can be found making a small fire from the trash, teasing and picking up the stray cats, climbing on their family motorbike, etc. Most of the time, they just sit with each other on the porch watching motorbikes drive by. Many of us cannot claim to be much more creative without our shopping malls, television, and Nintendo Wii’s. I always underestimate the children’s ages here. They are smaller, more innocent in some ways, more corrupt and jaded in other ways that allows them to point their toy guns at us and each other and, to our surprise, pull the trigger. The children can be quite dirty here, more so in the barracks than in the villages. Their feet are shades darker than parts of their face, and open sores dot their toes and shins, inhabited with which parasite I cannot recall from my boards studying. They do not mind the piles of trash alongside their roads and underneath their homes. They do not mind the greenish putrid sewage that drains into the open gutters just outside their front door. They seem to play and grow up just the same.

Despite the threat that water brings, I suppose water remains the oldest friend of an island nation. Everything is wet around here: the gutters that line the front porch of every establishment, the floors of the bathrooms, even the toilet seats. Coming from a place where wetness is disgusting, it’s taking me a while to get used to water being my friend. Here, it washes away the odors, stains, and garbage of the day’s spending, leaving things wet in exchange. But I’ve learned that there is nothing so frightening about wetness alone. Water on my clothes, my feet, my shoes – no need to wipe it away – it all eventually dries in the heat.

After a paradise mini-break over the weekend, I find it comforting to return to my room here in the guest house. Despite the lack of a shower, of access to more food options than the handful of greasy fried dishes, and of the opportunity to swim in my bikini in the middle of a lake where I can’t be seen and judged, this is my home here in this country. As I hear the all too familiar sound of Whitney Houston’s voice suddenly parting through the exotic rhythm I’ve been immersed in this entire time, I realize that even more so, despite the lack of the triumph of helping the needy, of the adventure of torturing oneself into fitting in to a foreign culture, and the luxury of discovering a different people, I miss my generic upper-middle class ranch in the suburbs of Detroit, where I can reliably go to the toilet without getting wet at all, wear whatever I choose, and discover only the mundane daily activities of those few people I’ve known my entire life: my family. I have a hard time saying that I miss home…I think this may be a general phenomenon we have, those of us who come from the most fortunate of lifestyles. To say we miss home is to admit that we can’t take the hardship, that we are indeed (surprise, surprise) spoiled. Whereas those who immigrate from the direst of situations may cry out for home with every opportunity and be genuinely glorified for their love of their way of life, we are left to be shunned for wanting too many luxuries. But don’t we have the right to miss home? What about our culture of shopping at Costco, going clubbing on Thursday nights, or lounging in our bikinis at the pool? If missing the US is shunned, then missing Harvard is simply unspoken. Since when did being privileged mean sacrificing one’s right to a home and an identity one can be proud of?

All this because of Guilt. It’s an epidemic that has yet to be identified but it has been there since the beginning. The guilt of leaving others behind, of being happy in a world tormented by war and poverty, of living the supposed “dream” of mankind. Where is true happiness if when one finally achieves it, all one could feel is the guilt of having done so? Happiness becomes a myth and a riddle without a solution.

I should probably stop here before I upset more of you with my ranting. Unlike my previous trip to China, I have a lot of room to think this time around, for better or for worse, thanks to the fact that this project is not run by a slave-driving tyrant (AKA me). All in all Meulaboh is a place I find that I can stay for a short while. The people here are kind and strong. It becomes too much to think of all they have been through so I prefer to think of them as who they are at this moment, and that is not without problems but also not without incredible spirit. Perhaps all people become such when given the opportunity. People in general amaze me, I think.

The Road To Calang

All the office workers decided to take a trip to the beach in a nearby town called Calang. We have the tsunami to thank for our trip. The town was hit quite hard by the tsunami but as a result, afterwards, a road was built using foreign aid provided to the government and now the trip is possible, taking only 2 hours as compared to the 4-6 hours it used to take when the road was a rocky dirt path. As we road smoothly along in our air conditioned SUV to Indonesian house music which occasionally resembles bangra, I, clutching my camera in my sweaty hands, town after town, desperately attempted to capture the rhythm of this land.

I’m at a loss of words to characterize this place. It seems to be the one time I’m at a loss of stereotypes and categories. Perhaps the most honest thing to say would be that this seems to be a place that hasn’t had the chance to sleep.

Sleep is what one might say the Aztec empire did when they were left alone to become indulgent enough to build pyramids to reach their gods before they were demolished by the Spanish; it’s what the many tribes in Africa had done before the AIDS epidemic; it’s what the people of rural China are just waking from now that capitalism has invaded their villages. To sleep is to be at peace, left alone to become saturated with oneself.

It’s hard to imagine that this place had ever had time to sleep: sometime between being infiltrated by the Arabic, Chinese, and Indian merchants, then preached about Buddhism, then Hinduism, then Christianity, then Islam, followed by being conquered and colonized by the Dutch, then slaughtered by war and flattened by the weather, and then resurrected by NGOs, and now finally being abandoned by them. It’s hard to know when to start calling anything Indonesian, anything a tradition, anything a change. And of course the remaining 9/10ths of the country is all different from here and from each other. I’m completely confused.

I don’t even know who to study. I spend a few hours a day observing interviews of the people living in villages and barracks, then most of my time mingling in a city of people who may or may not have been irked at all by the weather, then in the time in between listening to the stories of the upper-middle class employees of this NGO, most of whom are from the very modern capital, then on occasion meet the expats who have devoted the rest of their lives to the people here, then occasionally overhearing about the notorious group of volunteers who have already come and gone. I can’t decide who has a more intriguing story, or who is really Indonesian.

I would have to say that with respect to the term “melting pot,” this place makes the US look like we still haven’t taken our ingredients out of the box. People can look anywhere from Chinese to Persian. Skin tones range the full brownscale. The music sounds Arabic, the MTV clips resemble Hindi films, the food tastes Thai/Chinese, the architecture appears “Polynesian” (whatever that is in my head) but with occasional mosques to remind you that it’s much more complicated than that. Then there is the element of time: women wearing embroidered tunics, over cargo pants and crocs, riding behind their husbands or alone or with a girlfriend on motorbikes, with their bright colored head shawls blowing in the wind. Along the side of the road one sees old wooden plank houses, new cement houses, brown gray houses blending into the dirt, hot pink and aqua houses, houses overflowing with children and elderly, abandoned houses, and fields of houses waiting to be broken into. Regardless of how worn down, how basic the shacks, how poor the people, there seems to always be room to decorate it with bright colored paints: hot pink, bright blue, orange, yellow, aqua…It all melts together: the flavors, the colors, the time.

All this is set in a backdrop of palm trees rising above large leaved tropical bushes, interrupted occasionally by a field of rice paddies or an area of flattened green that hasn’t quite awakened from the memory of the storm. A large round salmon sun hangs low just above the fingertips of the palms against the dim gray of the dusk. But I was wrong…no, that is the moon.

Riding in a car here always feels like you’re involved in a ridiculously risky stunt you would have only attempted in high school. There are few roads with lines drawn on them to designate who should be where, and when they are there, they taken only as polite suggestions. People generally drive on the left side of the road here…but really, they prefer to drive in the middle of the road. That goes for people going in either direction, which makes for a problem whenever anyone crosses each other. That’s when the honking begins. The rule is to just keep honking until the other gets out of the way. But of course, livestock always have the right of way because they don’t know the rules and they move slowly. The fact we’re often the only full size vehicle on the road and that most of the traffic consists of couples on motorbikes with the occasional cement truck and flock of cows makes things possible.

Regardless of how old, how wooden, how few houses there are in the village, there is always a mosque. The mosques here are breathtaking, perhaps made even more so when they rise amidst the humble decaying crooked shacks like the people’s spirit from the ashes of the past. They are incredibly intricate yet remarkably simple: a matrix of pillars standing on a cement or marble base that hold up an elaborately carved roof of geometric patterns topped by shapely domes. The air moves freely through the holy space created. One can often see straight through the entire mosque between the pillars. The walls are made of solid cement. No hidden rooms or insulation or gadgets or wires or pipes or furniture. The people gather to worship and kneel on the marble or cement floor, easily seen from the road. It is pure and transparent. It is the way God should be.

Each morning, I awaken to the sound of distant chanting in Arabic, a floating, wandering melody that, in the way the smell of incense makes its way into your deepest secrets, climbs through the awnings and window panes, teasing the pages of my dreams. Somehow it feels as though this is the way it should have been every morning, as though I have finally come home.

Just as reliably in each village there is a village community center with big bright letters marked ‘Balai Desa’, often appearing like a hot pink birthday cake in the middle of the forest of shacks. As I had guessed, they were mostly sponsored by the NGOs and recently built. Like the mosque it is just as simple and transparent with just a few walls and pillars holding up a roof to a base. I suppose that’s all one really needs to live a good life here.

I wish I had a better sense of what is Indonesian. I don’t think I could have asked for a more complicated question. But perhaps the answer is very simple: just a people who, like all people, are trying to make a good life with what they have. They are like the people of Costa Rica, of China, of Chelsea, of my home town. I suppose there’s nothing so foreign or complicated about that.

Last Email from China

Dear friends,

This will be my last email from China. I left the rural village and
arrived in the large city of Xi An last night. It was a very striking
transition. We got off the train and were caught in a massive flood of
people. There must have been more people on that train than in all of
the village or even the county. I could suddenly understand everyone
around me cuz no one spoke the rural dialect anymore. On our taxi ride
home, we stared at the beautiful people in their fine flowing dresses,
high heels, carrying shopping bags, looking leisurely at manekins in
store windows, comfortably enjoying their mp3 players, audi's, and
their view of themselves in the reflection in the glass. In contrast
to the villagers who were always working on something, carrying
alarming amounts of grain on their backs in hand woven baskets, trying
to feed their children while batting away the flies from their bowls,
the people in the city looks so much more comfortable and unstrained,
carefree and so lacking of wrinkles on their bodies or dirt on their
clothes. We ate at McD's today and had real ice cream for the first
time in months last night. People here looked so happy, so contented.
Their lives are so great. I felt so relieved and felt at home almost
immediately. I didn't realize the amount of strain the lifestyle
placed on me. I'm undoubtedly a city girl and probably always will be.

Since I last wrote, my experience of the village changed a great deal.
It took a while for me to look at the people in the village as anyone
I could be close to. They were warm, admirable, and genuine, but only
creatures that I observed from afar and talked to to figure out how
their lives were. Only toward the end did I learn to love them like
real people. They became a part of my life and I was a part of theirs.

I'll just talk about one of them:
I met a 14 year old boy named Zhang Xin one of the first days I was in
the village. That day he told me that he wanted to be village chief
one day so he could improve the living conditions for his people. He
doesn't really want to be an official because there's so much
corruption, but he was determined to help his village. From that day I
sensed that he was different from the other kids. Most kids just
giggle and stare as we walk by them down the street. Others would
answer our questions with a word or two and ask some questions they've
been curious about, like whether there's cats and dogs in the US. I
don't believe Zhang Xin talked to me out of curiosity and wonder. He
actually knew a great deal about the US and was a great fan of the NBA
and Yao Ming of course. But I think he talked to me because I listened
to his dreams. He wanted to teach me about what China and what his
village was all about. Throughout our conversations, he explained to
me the meanings of countless Chinese sayings and poetry, and told me
so many stories from Chinese history and literature.

One of his stories was about a man and his family who lived on one
side of a tall mountain that few people could cross. He had to cross
the mountain to reach the rest of the village and their relatives. The
man walked a path so much he carved a road into the mountain and as a
result, all people were able to use it from then on and people were
finally able to cross the mountain. He said this story is to teach us
to be persistent and that what we can accomplish could help so many
others. I asked him if he thinks about these stories and if they
influence him. He said of course, especially because there is a need:
the older generation of officials are very corrupt and old fashioned
in their thinking these days.

Before we left, he took us mountain climbing and led us down safely
from an incredibly dangerous slope so we wouldn't fall. At the bottom
of the mountain, he led his friends in building a bridge of rocks so
we could all cross a stream. He gave us many gifts before we left:
bracelets he made himself of red thread, bags of rocks from his rock
collection (he had a story and a name for each rock), a snake he
carved and painted himself from a stick he showed me one day on the
street, and a poem he wrote into my notebook that embedded my Chinese
name into his sentiments for our friendship. His handwriting is
absolutely beautiful. He doesn't make any mistakes and if he does, he
rips up the piece of paper and throws it out. That's the custom here,
he says.

The day before we left the village his mother invited our whole crew
(8 people) for lunch. Their family owns a restaurant we eat at
frequently, but this time, she cooked instead of the chef, and we ate
in their home upstairs instead of the restaurant on the first floor.
That was the first time I felt like I was a real friend. Not just a
foreigner everyone wants to be polite to, not just someone people are
curious about, not just a guest everyone is obligated to serve. This
was completely gratuitous. His mom made 10 dishes as well as
dumplings. It was the best food I've had during my entire stay in the
village. Zhang Xin wasn't eating much and I asked him why. He said he
was too happy that we were there. Him and his two uncles ate with us
while the female members of the household stood outside to eat. That
was the custom here. It's not that great for the women, he said. That
was the first time I heard a man say something disapproving about the
sexism around here. His uncles played the popular drinking game "Tiger
Tiger" with each and everyone of us. The girls drank Fruit Beer, which
was a really low alcohol content drink that's very popular here. The
men drank real beer. We were all experts at Tiger Tiger but despite
that I ingested enough Fruit Beer to turn bright red anyway.

Zhang Xin's clan takes up most of the houses on the street of the
village. He said there are thousands of his relatives in the township
and the weddings and New Years celebrations are enormous. There's a
long poem of characters that was written by his ancestors and each
successive generation has a designated character for their middle
name. His is "He" or "together." He shares this with everyone in his
generation. His father is an electrician and one of his uncles sells
motorcycles. The past few days he got into a fight with his dad while
his dad was drunk and he slept over at his friend's house for a week.
His dad gets drunk quite often like many of the men here. He also
smokes a great deal as all men do here and yells at Zhang Xin when he
tries to convince him to quit. That may be why for his summer project
Zhang Xin is having people sign up for a study on how much money they
spend a year on cigarettes and how that could all be used towards
reforming education in the town. He already made fliers to put up on
the street corner. His mom never graduated from elementary school cuz
her family needed her to work in the fields and help out at home. But
I'm sure she's a very wise woman regardless because her kids are all
so wonderful. Zhang Xin has two sisters. One is studying Chinese
medicine next year and the other is an amazing writer and loves to
sing. There's about 8 kids living in their two story house and 4 or 5
adults. Behind their house is their field where they grow some corn
and other crops.

I've never met a kid quite like Zhang Xin. He seemed years wiser than
the other kids in town, much wiser than I was when I was 14. His
friends respected him a great deal despite them being much older than
he was and much taller and bigger. They listened to him when he spoke.

During our last night in the village, I gave Zhang Xin a letter and
spoke to him. I told him that I would pay for his college education
and that I would help him come to the US for college if he wanted to
come. I had three requests for him and they were to work hard, write
to me and let me know what he's doing, and to not tell anyone else
about this, except maybe his mother. He nodded and said he would. I
could see he felt the real weight of what this meant.

I had to think about this alot before I decided what to do. It was a
big promise but totally do-able for a working person in the US.
College there costs 10,000 Y a year, which is a little over $1,000 US.
But to people in rural China, it's a great deal of money. Most farming
families have no income at all. They grow enough to feed themselves
for the year. Coming to the US is a much much greater challenge than
that. Zhang Xin's family is one of the better off ones. I thought
about all the children I've met including the young 1 year old who
still has yet to have her own name, and how hard they and their
families have to work to keep them in school. One of the school girls
I talked to said about 1 in 10 can make it into college. For them, she
said, college is just a dream. How much we envy all of you! she said.
I thought how much this place needed a scholarship, and how little
money that would be to give for doctors like us in the US. For the
money I've gotten this summer alone, I could have put 2 or 3 kids
through a year of college in China.

When we said goodbye to Zhang Xin, he was pretty quiet and just looked
down. He ran upstairs right after. The health official told us later
that there's a saying here that "men only bleed, they don't cry." His
mother walked us to our bus and she had tears in her eyes. She had
given us a bag of eggs she boiled for us, and a bag of walnuts for the
road. I saw her many times in the restaurant near the beginning of our
stay. Back then, she was just the restaurant owner. Now I see how much
she cares about her son, his friends, and his future. I felt comforted
by her presence. I think it's because she reminded me of my mother.
She says very little, but cares and gives so much. She held me for a
few seconds and I crawled into the bus quickly and saved most of my
tears for the road.

Meeting Zhang Xin and his family changed what the village meant to me.
Before I surely would have left with a piece of the village in my
heart, but now I have left a piece of my heart back there. Now there
is reason enough for me to go back one day.

I will be returning to the states in about a week and a half. I hope
everyone's had a great summer. I can't wait to see pictures. I am now
just a tourist like most visitors to China and I will enjoy the
luxuries of air conditioning, washing machines, and real ice cream
once more. I'll wait anxiously to hear all your stories when we are
reunited.

much love,

Bev

Stories from Rural China

Hey!

I miss you guys and can't wait to see you again.

This is a very long email so feel free to choose to read
whichever paragraphs you'd like. They're just stories I've experienced
that were significant in some way.

So I have returned after visiting two remote villages around here. I
have to say that the days went by incredibly slowly at first because
there's just so many details and obstacles one had to struggle with
and as a result, will remember.

I'm back in the small city, which I realized today was much bigger
than I thought. I was once again overwhelmed by the plentifulness of
all the goods here compared to the three little junk shops in the
villages where we stayed, where everything from fly swatters, bras,
and bottles of orange juice were discolored from age and covered with
a thick layer of dust from the lack of circulation of customers. It
was almost a culture shock this time to come back to the city. Three
of us girls got off the bus and just stood around dazed by all the
food, shops, people, and cars buzzing around us.

Our bus was even more crowded than last time. It has 25 seats total,
and is a small van. When it stopped for us to get on, the door barely
opened and people were almost falling out of it. The woman told me
there were no other buses coming and I stared in disbelief as I
squeezed into the litterbox of people. There were large heavy bags of
grains, dvd players, and tomatoes in the isle on which piled some
sitting people on which piled some standing people, on which I would
pile onto. Somehow, the three of us and our large bookbags disappeared
into the crevases of this bundle of bodies. We stood the whole way
down the winding bumpy road. Falling wasn't a problem – there was no
room to fall. The bus stopped suddenly twice. The first time was due
to a few large rocks that had fallen from the side of the mountain
onto the road. Some men got off and moved them and we drove on. The
second time, there was heavy traffic all of sudden. We were stopped
for inspection and everyone standing in the isle was told to squat and
duck down to hide. There were over 50 in the van and if the inspectors
saw more than the 25 it was supposed to hold, we would get fined. I
don't understand how we made it with the sea of bodies.

Since I last wrote, I met the people from the real rural areas. Many
live on distant hills that require a 2 hour treck to get to from the
center of the village. Children have to travel by foot to get to the
village center to go to elementary school; then take a 1 hour bus ride
to get to middle school, then another 1 hour ride on another bus from
there to get to high school in the small city. It's a big deal to make
it to high school, not to mention college. Most people I've
interviewed never completed elementary school. I met one girl who
graduated from college and I was really excited for her. I understood
after that how much people must envy those with education and how
lucky they feel for them. She was the first out of the over 50 I've
interviewed who made it to college. She studied math and is 23 years
old, like us. She will be teaching high school starting in the fall.
She looked at me and I looked at her with such fondness and mutual
admiration; I for her ability and fortune to rise out of the dirt
houses where her parents still live, and she possibly for my being
from where she has only heard about and suddenly there in her old home
in the mountains. We were so reluctant to part, despite only
exchanging a few words.

Hepatitis and TB are very common here. I met one man with hep B who
lived on a mountain. He was in his forty's. He was unmarried and had a
1.5 year old daughter (which was unusual), and lived with his parents.
He could no longer work because he's too weak and by the slow and
distant manner in which he spoke, it was no surprise. I asked what he
was most worried about with his illness, he said he doesn't know what
will happen to his daughter if he can't work, since his parents are
getting old. His dad was out working in the fields as we spoke. People
work until their bodies give out around here. I looked at his daughter
and imagined what would happen to her if her dad were gone. His
daughter was very pale and pretty. It was a blessing to see such pale
and tender skin after seeing the leather-like skin of the peasants,
browned and toughened by the sun in the fields. I understood then why
Chinese people treasured pale skin so much. I asked him what his
daughter's name was and he said she doesn't have one. I was shocked. I
asked what he called her, and he said 'girl.' 'Why don't you give him
a name?' he asked me in a somewhat desperate tone. I was speechless.
The fact that such a beautiful girl didn't have a name for so long
made life seem so arbitrary, so plain and generic. And to ask a
stranger to give her a name made it seem even more meaningless. Was
this what life was like here? Just another shot at survival? The man
asked me again to give his daughter a name when I stepped out the
door, and I realized he actually meant it. I told him his daughter
liked to smile a lot and if he runs out of ideas, he can call her 'le
le' which meant 'laughter.' It's my cousin's name. He wrote it out
with his finger on his hand and nodded, and we said goodbye. I don't
know what the little girl will be called when she grows up. I don't
know if I'll ever find out. I hoped for me that I could leave my mark
by having her named after my cousin, but I hoped for her that she
wouldn't be named in such a reckless manner by a complete stranger.

I've heard of many stories of mental illness since I last wrote.
Everyone in the villages knows of all the people with mental illness
in their village. The village minister told me that there were 7 in
the village I visited last. One died, four recovered with some
relapses once in a while, and 2 are still ill. All of the cases lasted
over 10 years. Most cases seem to be due to marital problems. The
marriages were all arranged until 10 years ago. They all sounded like
they began with anxiety or depression. One case many people mentioned
was a woman who always suspected her husband was cheating on her while
he was away in the city working, which I'm sure happens quite often
with so many migrant workers. She went crazy after a while under such
anxiety and paranoia. The first two years, people said she would go to
her mother's grave in a nearby village and cry for days on end. Later,
she would not eat for days and then eat raw meats and vegetables and
everything in sight. She's fine when her husband is not within sight
and can talk to people normally, but when her husband would walk by,
she would lose all energy and become withdrawn. It's been over 10
years and as far as the village minister knew, she never went for any
treatment until the past few months. She went to a mental hospital for
3 months and returned with no sign of improvement. I found this odd
since her husband was a doctor. I asked why her husband decided to
treat her all of sudden, but the village minister didn't know.

Another man went crazy after he his wife left him over 10 years ago.
He runs around at night all over the village and takes things from
stores and takes food off of people's tables without inhibition. Other
stories involve people cursing and hurting other people and ruining
crops for no reason. I've never heard of depression like this in the
states, but then again, I've never encountered depression that has
been left untreated for over 10 years. With so many severe cases in
one village, it's hard to imagine how many milder cases there are that
are still developing untreated. I can't imagine how bad depression
would have to be for it to manifest like this.

I've been impressed by the sensitivity of people to mental illness
around here. They all recognize the cases as depression, as
psychological problems, and they believe it's a serious form of
illness. It's not as I expected, that they don't take mental illness
seriously or that they don't understand how one's mood and
psychological well being can also turn ill. They also believe that
mental illness is treatable, so it's not that they don't have hope for
these people. They also recognize the importance of family and friends
in offering support to bring the mentally ill back to health. Their
limitation doesn't seem to be knowledge, but rather money and the
inability to change their situation. They can't afford psychiatrists
nor the medications available. They also have little choice but to
live at home and go on doing the farming that they do. In the states,
people could move away for a while, get a new job, get a divorce, etc.
But here, these changes are nearly impossible. There have been 5
divorces in that village. Before each one is official, the village
officials and all the friends and families try to help the couple make
amends but after the actual divorce, friends keep their distance from
the recent divorcees, in particular the women. One of the questions on
our suvey is 'does the mentally ill person face so much difficulty at
home that they can't live at home?' People answer: 'the difficulty is
great, but where would they live if not at home?' People here don't
choose their jobs. They work so they can eat. It's astonishing to me
every time when I ask for their yearly income and they respond "what
income?" They grow things and eat them, and if they stop growing
things, they wouldn't have anything to eat. I'm still getting over
this concept.

I somehow imagined peasants to be contently working, whistling and
singing as they work, and laughing and spirited and having a great
time. But I have heard little singing and whistling and there's no
time for idle talk and play. They work from 5am till the sun goes down
and in the winter they look for firewood or go to the city to work
construction or other odd jobs. They're constantly working. There's no
sense of the weekend or a vacation. They eat potatoes, noodles, and a
god-aweful tastine sour vegetable until they're bellies are full
because they know they have a lot of labor ahead of them. I imagined
them to be thirsty for knowledge, until I spoke with a man who told me
otherwise. I asked him what illnesses he would like to learn about
most, and he answered 'why would I want to learn about anything until
I get sick with it?' I got angry at first at his apathy, but then I
realized that this was probably the best information I've gotten all
afternoon. 'That's how we think here in the rural places,' he said,
'we don't care to learn things. We just want to get better after we
get sick.' I thought about it and I thought, of course they wouldn't.
I wouldn't either if I had to work so hard just to make it through
another year.

There's a lot of obstacles for all of here to achieve what we'd like
to do with the RMHC. People don't know how this health insurance
works, they don't know they have a say in how it runs, there's no one
outside of the one health official who is running and education people
about it around here, and there's no money to hire any others. It
looks so much bleaker than the beautifully structured power point flow
charts I saw back at my professor's seminar on this program.

I think we will finish our project far ahead of schedule. The three of
us Americans are all homesick and listen to rap and country to ease
our pain, not much different from what soldiers must have done when
they were away at war. We dream of McD sundaes, steak, driving on long
stretches of high ways with wind in our hair, sitting on a real couch,
going to see movies…Those of you in the states, think about what
you're doing right now and we'd probably be envious. It's not a matter
of money or material things. It's a matter of home.

Until next time,

Beverly

Ni Hao from China...

ni hao,

greetings! from rural China. sorry no pictures, but i promise they're
coming soon. i will try to describe as vividly as possible.

my first week in China i was in Beijing going to meetings with
professors and my college friends in fancy hotels and huge shopping
malls in beijing. that week i also interviewed a mother of a man who
has schizophrenia. she broke down as she spoke to me when she
mentioned the question she always asked herself: ' when will there be
help for people like my son and for families like us?' she really
feels that people suffering from mental illness are at the bottom of
society, with no way of competiting for jobs and a future and no
support from society. it's disappointing because the situation was as
bad as i expected.

i did hit up quite a few bars and clubs in beijing with my cousin and
his buddies on the summer Chinese language program at Beijing
University. apparently, they party a great deal. the clubs we went to
were populated greatly by foreign students and the rest were children
of wealthy politicians, businessmen, etc. i could tell by the audi's,
jaguars, and bmw's parked out in the lot. beijing's a fun city to
party all day and night in. hot pot is available 24 hours. the karaoke
place was the shit. it looked like a 5 star hotel fully equipped with
fountains in the lobby, an all you can eat buffet, and servants in
tuxedos who arrive literally at the push of a button.

after Beijing, I went to Xi An for a few days of training and the past
week and a half I've been living in a small town in the middle of
China called Tie Chang or metal factory. I'm in the county capital
today, which is the bigger city closest to Tie Chang. We took a day
trip here to take a shower...the first shower in about a week. we
rented out a hotel room for 2 hours and took showers. i made sure to
clean everything since i know i won't be doing anything remotely clost
to this for a while. it felt great to be clean. we also ordered some
meat dishes, which we could not find in the town. we've been eating
mainly noodles and rice for the past few weeks. after being in the
rural town, which had two small restaurants, one paved block, and a
few snack stores, this tiny city (with 3 or 4 major streets) seemed so
high tech and bustling. i was amazed to see paved sidewalks and people
in high heels. i can imagine what the villagers must feel when they
first step into this city.

It's been pretty nice living...well, the toilets here are like slits
in cement that you stoop over...basically permanent port-a potties.
it's actually more sanitary since nothing ever touches a toilet seat.
you just kind of hover. there's a communal sink in the corner of the
yard where they boil water with coal in the mornings. everyone has
these basins to hold water and we wash our hands, faces, and hair in
the basins or right under the faucet. we took our first "bath" the
other day. it was a joint effort. two girls held up a sheet to block
the view while the third one poured water on herself with the basin
and water from the faucet. it was quite an adventure. not having
running water down the hall makes getting ready for bed quite
complicated. after fetching a basin of water, one needs to do
everything in just the right order to minimize the number of times you
need to fetch water again.

quite often, we'd find strange looking bugs in our room. the first
night our room could have been a moth exhibit, with all different
sorts of moths of different colors and shapes. there are also giant
centipedes, beetles, and spiders of all sorts. last night we found a
giant moth...it had a wingspan of about the width of my hand and quite
a fat body. we failed to lure it out of the room so we just slept with
it. coexisting is something i've learned to accept with these
critters.

otherwise, the view is gorgeous here. we're surrounded by mountains,
often with mist hovering in the slopes, not much different than the
chinese painting i had in my room. i've taken many pictures that i
will put up when i get back. there's a river that runs by the complex
we're staying in that makes a constant rushing sound we often mistaken
for the sound of rain hitting the pavement. it's quite soothing and
every morning it makes me feel that life is good. many of the mountain
slopes are terraced and thickly growing with corn, and other fields of
crops. once in a while you'll see the farmers bent over tirelessly
working on the slopes. i can't imagine one family working so much land
on their own on such steep hills, and yet they've been doing this for
hundreds or thousands of years.

in America, i always imagine the people you find somewhere to have
setted the land not so long ago, and imagine what it was like for
them to break new grounds there. i would imagine people arriving from
all different places, there to do different things, and eventually
moving elsewhere when they grow up. but here, people were born here,
families were never really from anywhere else but here, and they fail
to see themselves being able to go much further than the county
capital. i asked the girl who works at the health office what she
would want to do if she could do anything she wanted. she said to find
a good job in the county capital like her brother who drives a taxi
there. i realize how much broader i've been taught to imagine. i see
so much more as possible than they do here.


there are seven of us students here: me, this girl from stanford, a
harvard undergrad, two med students from taiwan, and two grad students
from Xi An (big city in China). the grad students come to the rural
villages quite often for research on the rural mutual health care
program there and they know the area pretty well. they are like our
chaperones. the two med students from taiwan know are my age but know
so much more medicine than we do. they go right into medical school
from high school. one of them is pretty obsessive compulsive and
carries his own chopsticks, bags of medication, and his own syringe.
they're quite amusing.

the local dialect is a bit difficult to understand, but if i ask them
to repeat things, i'm usually able to figure it out. the word for
'child' is the equivalent of 'doll' and they use it no matter how old
the child is. i like how they can call a 40 year old son, 'my doll.'

people here are extremely friendly. the village chief has our fellow
students over for a huge feast almost every day. (amusing note: he
apparently also gets drunk at noon everyday and comes home to sleep it
off). when we arrive, people would by reflex start bringing out stools
for us to sit on and ask if we've eaten. a 13 year old boy i met who
was the son of the owners of the restaurant we eat at gave me a
picture he drew. he said it was the best one he's done. i asked if he
wanted to be an artist when he grew up. he said no. he wanted to
change some things in this village. i asked what things. he said all
the things that are behind the times. he said he wrote to yao ming
many times but he doesn't think the letters ever reached him. people
here are pretty into the NBA.

the children here are so mature for their ages. 10 year olds would
tend the shop and 5 year olds would serve as waitresses at
restaurants. the kids raise the younger kids. the look in their eyes
are even different. they look at things with the same scrutiny and
understanding as adults, not so much of the wonder and innocence i'm
used to seeing in schoolchildren. even toddlers seems to stroll around
on the streets like old men sometimes.

people move slower here and they sit in the same place everyday.
things are so regular. it's hard for me to imagine staying in such a
place for all of your life, not to mention all of your family's life,
generation after generation.

in terms of the health conditions, so many things go untreated here
because people have no money. there was a woman i met whose husband
has been bedridden for years but they gave up on treating him because
they ran out of money. during our interview with her, we heard a weak
moaning in the back room, which i assumed to be her husband. when they
can afford it, people here get IVs and injections when they get a bad
cold because they're so desperate to get well soon so they can go on
working in the fields. time is precious to them. some women who work
at a paper folding business work from 7am till 10pm with two 30min
breaks for meals during the day. their job is to fold yellow paper in
3 and tie a stack together with red string. the paper is for people to
burn in their worship at the temples.

as expected, they don't know much about mental illness here. they
assume mental illness to be "going crazy" or something like psychosis
is what they describe. surprisingly, however, most beleive they can be
brought back to normal with treatment, which is good. they seem to
have a great deal of faith in medical technology, but their faith in
the care that they themselves are able to obtain with their income is
another story. they're big fans of drugs. if they can afford it,
they'll buy drugs for everything, even the smallest cold. i was sick a
few days ago and the health official kept telling me to go and get an
IV. i really feared going to the town hospital knowing what little
training the doctors had.

most houses here are made of dirt and wood. the floor is dirt, the
walls are dirt, and the ceiling is dirt, with some wood crossbridging
wood planks. some of them are quite large but even the big ones are of
similar material. they sit mainly on small stools of hard wood that
hurts my butt after many interviews in a row. it's usually very dim
and i don't think there's many electric lights in these houses.
there's always the smell of mold or damp wood. no matter how poor the
household, there is always a decorative floral design made of stone at
the center of the top of the roof and the edges of the top rim is
always sloping upwards. there is always words of poetry written on
each side of the door, traditionally specifically written to protect
the house from harm and bring it good luck. these things are a given.
they seem to give the area such character and shed light on the
livelihood of the people despite their difficult and quiet lives.

for the next few days, the 7 of us and the health official will be
going to the most remote village in the township. we'll be living at
the village chief's house and sleeping 3 to a bed. no cell phone
reception there, no phone lines that call out internationally, no
stores to buy bottled water or other things, 1 hour drive from the
safety of our town. i'm not sure what it'll be like.

i wish i could send some pictures, but it's hard to do that at the
internet cafe.

i might be able to write again in a few weeks. but i do have email
access at the town via a phone line. it's quite amazing actually.
write back and let me know how you're doing!

bev