Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns
If you think Jesus would have come into your home that day and not issued a strong rebuke to the head of household, you are mistaken. These words of condemnation have been haunting me for days now. They aren’t all that different than the soundtrack I play in my head on an almost-daily basis. It’s…
I am nesting. On Saturday I emptied the refrigerator. Last summer’s homemade pickles in their jars. The bread ends that seem to multiply on every shelf. The eggs. The milk. The fruit and veggies. All of it sat on the floor or the counter as I carefully removed the shelves and wiped them down with…
I’ve heard that life is like a highway. And it definitely seems like that sometimes. The pace of life swirls around me at dizzying speeds. We’re all so busy. In such a hurry. Always somewhere to be, something else to do. I’m a get-to-the-point, get-there-quick kind of girl. I don’t like to waste time on…
We’re on our second snow day in a row today, and it’s been snowing for three days, so I’m convinced we now live in a snow globe. At the beginning of the year (was that only a month ago?) I decided to start keeping track of the things our family was doing, watching, eating and reading each month and at the end of the month I would publish the round-up. Some of it is super ordinary, but it’s helping me appreciate our days more. You might find some of it interesting, you might not, and that’s okay. This is one of those things I’m doing for me. As I did with a post late last year, I’ve broken it out with headings so if you’re only interested in the books we’ve read, for example, you can skip to that section and ignore all the shows we watch.
We’re gradually working our way through the Marvel Universe. This month we checked these movies off the list:
We were supposed to watch the first Spiderman movie but we had to get it from the library and they closed for COVID and then snow, so we decided to introduce the kids to Napoleon Dynamite. They laughed at the physical comedy parts, but I’m not sure they loved it as much as I always have.
Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? We started the third season of the animated version on Netflix.
Grantchester, season 4 on Amazon Prime. This includes a significant turning point for Sidney Chambers, which made me sad. I once described this show to a friend as “hot vicar solves mysteries” and I stand by that description still.
The Crown, season 4 on Netflix. Diana deserved better! Also, this part of the story is traumatic for me because I know how it ends. Is this what it’s like to watch fictional creations of history you’ve lived through?
Bridgerton, on Netflix. Brilliant. There are subtle creative touches like the orchestra playing contemporary songs at the balls and in the background of scenes. I will admit to having never watched a series by Shonda Rhimes before. Is she a genius? Yes. I watched all the episodes and I might watch them again while waiting for the first book to be available from the library.
Mr. Mayor, the new NBC comedy starring Ted Danson. Can we just be honest and say that Ted Danson has only gotten better with age?
Schitt’s Creek. Phil and I are still working our way through the series, mostly because we don’t want it to end. We just finished season 5 and are a few episodes in to season 6, the final season. Does it have to end?
The Presidential Inauguration. Because of my quarantine (see the “What We Did” section) I was able to watch it live all day with Phil.
Daily press briefings. Phil has a little crush on the new White House press secretary, so he tunes in regularly but also we just appreciate the wealth of information being disseminated from the administration.
Our son picks the meal on Saturdays and helps make it. One meal in his rotation is pork chops. He decided he didn’t want to make an onion sauce this time around, so we did caramelized onions. I followed the recipe in Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything cookbook (a MUST for every kitchen. It’s comprehensive and accessible) and I fell in love with my own cooking for the first time in a long time. (Usually I consider myself adequate.)
Homemade chicken soup. While we waited for Phil’s COVID test results (again, see the next section), I made chicken soup for dinner. Because I believe in science and medicine but I also think food contributes to healing. Did I pull the frozen bone broth out of the freezer to make the soup? Yes. Did I drink all the broth that was left in the soup pot? Also, yes.
After I learned I would be quarantining, I searched the Internet for foods that boost your immune system, intending to give my body a head start, in case it would need to fight the virus. I made a soup with a variety of vegetables, bone broth, and miso paste. It was delicious, and it makes me feel like I’m doing something to help my body.
During the inauguration, Phil and I ate summer rolls, sushi and samosas, a nod to the multicultural heritage of our new vice president. (And because it’s good food and we wanted something sort of special for our quarantine date.) For dinner, we researched some of the favorite foods of our new president and vice president. Kamala Harris likes seafood gumbo, and Phil got a cookbook for Christmas that celebrates black cooks, so we picked a gumbo recipe from there that has meaning to the African-American community. Marcus Samuelsson, the cookbook’s author, honored New Orleans chef Leah Chase, who ran a restaurant in New Orleans during the Civil Rights era (the restaurant still exists) and served everybody, regardless of race. Chase’s gumbo recipe is what we ate, and it was GOOD.
We picked up some of Joe Biden’s favorite ice cream, a brand called Jeni’s, made in Ohio. We tried three different flavors:
January 25th is Scottish poet Robert Burns’ birthday, and because the pandemic is feeling like it will never end, I decided to do something sort of crazy that also made me happy. I planned a sort of Burns’ Night Dinner for the occasion. Here’s what was on the menu:
Phil plans and executes the meal on Wednesdays, so one night we had a plant-based burger taste test. Phil cooked two kinds of plant-based burgers–Impossible Burgers and Beyond Burgers–then gave each of us half of each kind to decide which one we liked better. We did not tell the kids, at first, that they were plant-based protein. Three of us liked the Beyond Burger better; one preferred the Impossible Burger. And the biggest surprise of all was that our son, who is a meat-atarian, liked the Beyond Burger so much that he added it to his Saturday menu rotation.
We’re trying to eat local takeout once a month, so for January we went to Noodle King for pho and egg rolls. There was a time, pre-pandemic, that we ate at Noodle King once a month. The kids are convinced this is what kept us so healthy.
Our son figured out how to play his Switch online with friends–one from school and one who lives on the other side of the country, and I couldn’t love this more. He now hosts regular online meetings with his friends to play video games together. He’s being social.
We left our church. There’s a lot I could say about this, but the decision has taken up a lot of emotional and mental space in my head, so I’m just going to leave it at that for now.
We took the Christmas decorations down and put them away for the year. I miss the tree’s presence in the living room, but I have some evergreen/pine candles to re-create the scent.
I played Minecraft with my children. A highlight: My son saying, “I’m going to revive Izzy because she’s more helpful.” I also played an old-school Nintendo game with my son.
Phil got a COVID test and we isolated at home for a day (or two). Then I quarantined for a week. These were anxiety-induced days, but we made it through without either of us testing positive or developing symptoms.
On two consecutive nights, I watched the International Space Station pass overhead from our backyard.
I finished a puzzle of Cinque Terre, Italy. Sometime last year, Phil and I watched a travel documentary about Cinque Terre. When I saw the puzzle, I had to have it. Now, I’m dreaming of the Italian coast.
I unintentionally cleaned the area around my desk while searching for some documents I needed to fill out paperwork.
Isabelle and I attended a Zoom meeting live from Dadaab, the largest refugee camp in Kenya. The meeting was hosted by the co-author of a book we read this month–a man local to Lancaster now who grew up in the refugee camp. It was heart-opening.
The kids went to a new dentist. It was an overall positive experience but the practice’s policies are different than our previous dentist and it was a bit jarring at first. (The kids went back to the cleaning with the hygienist. I waited in the car with a pager.) Both have healthy teeth, though!
Most of what I list here will be what I read, but I’ll include some from the rest of the family as I can.
Clanlands: Whisky, Warfare and a Scottish Adventure Like No Other by Sam Heughan and Graham McTavish. If you’re among those who are in Droughtlander (the time between release of Outlander TV series seasons and/or books) right now, this is a suitable substitute. There is A LOT of history in this book, but it actually just makes me curious to know more. If you’re familiar with these two actors as personalities, the book will be that much better for you.
I started reading Truman by David McCullough as part of my It Was Always Burning reading challenge. It is slow going, but mostly because it’s a thousand pages long. The politics section I’m in right now feels like a slog.
3,000 Miles to Jesus: Pilgrimage as a Way of Life for Spiritual Seekers by Lisa Deam. Full review on this in a separate blog post. I met Lisa at a writing retreat several years ago, and I was pleased to be able to read her book in advance of its release.
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. My daughter and I both finished this as part of our school reading. I don’t remember if I ever read it as a student. Her conclusion? It’s such a good book. I agree, although sometimes the vast descriptions are difficult for students to sift through to find the main actions. Part of my job was to help with that.
When Stars are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed. Omar lives and works locally in my city. I’ve met him and heard his story through one of the refugee resettlement organizations. I’ve had his book for months and wanted to read it before he hosted a Zoom meeting from the Kenyan refugee camp where he once lived. (See previous section, “What We Did.”)
Selected poems by Robert Burns. This while drinking the peaty Scotch.
Monster by Walter Dean Myers. Another one for school. I’m only a few “chapters” into it. I read along so I can better help my students. (It’s not a huge sacrifice to me.) Myers is quickly become a go-to author for a quick but meaningful read.
Raisins and Almonds by Kerry Greenwood. Back to the Phryne Fisher mysteries.
The next two books deal with mental health issues and suicide, so if those topics are triggering for you, please feel free to skip.
I started All The Bright Places by Jennifer Niven for a book club I’m in. I’ve read the first quarter of the book, as needed for book club. It was really hard to stop but I don’t want to read ahead and accidentally spoil for someone else!
The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. A few weeks ago, I checked this out of the library and then had to return it because it was on hold and I couldn’t renew it. Second time’s a charm! Unforgettable. I finished it in a day.
Our son likes the Stick Dog books by Tom Watson and he and I are reading one together at night. (There are also Stick Cat books, which is where he got his start.) These are quirky, humorous stories about a band of dogs who get into a little bit of trouble now and then.
If you want to keep up with my reading in real-time, you can follow me on Instagram, where I post a picture and short review every time I finish a book, or find me on Goodreads.
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Well, there’s a bit of what we’ve been up to. You can check in towards the end of each month for another riveting update of our lives in media, food, activities and books.
Six years ago, Phil and I had an opportunity, one I couldn’t get out of my head. Our church was planning a trip to Kenya, to support and encourage a couple who served there at a school. It was an impossible dream, in my mind, that I would see Africa. Our young family was barely making ends meet. My passport had long expired. There were so many steps, so many pieces that had to fall into place for this to happen. The deposit for both of us was due before Christmas, and in the lean years, we had no extra money for such things. I trusted somehow that things would work out, and in what I consider a truly miraculous way, I got a freelance job that paid almost exactly what we needed for the deposit.
That’s how I remember it, anyway.
I was compelled by a force I could not explain to take this trip, and I couldn’t do it with my own resources.
As our team raised funds for the trip, some people we sought out for support thought we were asking them to fund our vacation. Our trip did include a safari and a hike to the top of a volcano, but the bulk of our time was spent working at the school where our friends worked.
And on one unforgettable day, we traveled to a refugee camp to attend church. While I consider the entire trip life-changing, it was that day in particular that changed my life in real and tangible ways.
Before that day, I’d barely heard about refugees. I didn’t understand the global crisis or know anything about what I could do about it. I’d certainly never met a refugee. (At least not that I knew of.) But that day, I watched children stuff hard-boiled eggs into their mouths, followed by a banana–a meal they could count on. I stood in a circle of children who reached for the free T-shirts we were distributing, overwhelmed by the need and surprised by the desperation. I had thought the children would receive the gifts with patience and gratitude. Instead, they grasped for what we had to give, some even telling us they needed a second one for their brother who was at home. (Which may or may not have been true.)
I stood in a church service listening to the voices around me sing about God’s faithfulness and wondered why I could not find my own voice. I peed in a hole in the ground. I walked through a dry riverbed to the homes of some refugee women who had walked miles to be at church that morning. I stood in their homes and floundered for words as they asked me–ME, of little faith–to pray for them. I found words, but they stuck in my throat and I hated the way they sounded as I voiced them.
Later, I cried unstoppable tears because I couldn’t help them. I didn’t have money to buy the purses they were selling. I was so overwhelmed by what I saw and what I felt that I did not learn a single name of the women I had met. I took not one photo while I was there.
Still, the images are burned in my mind.
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This is not the first time I have told this story on the blog, so why am I telling it again?
First, I tell it again to myself so I can remember.
When I came home from Kenya in 2015, my worldview was shaken. I was no longer unaware of the needs in the world. I had seen them firsthand.
But what could I do?
Part of me wanted to save all my money and fly back to Kenya. The culture shock upon our return to the States was unexpected. I was tempted to yell at shoppers at Costco who didn’t walk their carts back to the corral because it was raining. I was aware of just how MUCH stuff we had. I wanted to give everything away, to live more simply.
Was that really going to help?
Then, I connected with a refugee resettlement agency in our city and for the next couple of years, I helped welcome refugees to our community. I sat with them in classes and tried to explain things they would need to know–like how to budget their money and how to practice good hygiene. I drove refugees to the grocery store and to medical appointments.
It was so far outside of my comfort zone but exactly what I needed to do at the time. Those years of volunteer service are some of my happiest memories of our time in Lancaster, and I still don’t feel like I was doing enough to help.
In 2018, about the same time that the U.S government was scaling back its refugee admission allowances because of a xenophobic administration, I got a part-time job, working at a school. My availability to volunteer with refugees dwindled and fewer refugees were resettled. At a time when refugees needed my advocacy the most, I spoke for them less and less. I had not forgotten them, but I lost hope that there was anything I could do for them when the government of my country was so opposed to their very existence.
Working in a school, though, is one of the results of my time in Kenya and volunteering with refugees. I would not have thought myself capable of such a step if I hadn’t had those experiences. And because of those experiences, I’ve had the opportunity to work with children of immigrants, students learning English for the first time, homeless students, and students who just need someone to believe in them.
I count this one of the many returns on the investment made in my trip to Kenya.
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Again, though, none of this is new information to be shared. If you’re still with me and haven’t tuned out yet, please stay with me.
A few months ago, I bought a book written by a former refugee, Omar Mohamed, a man who now lives and works in Lancaster and who has started an organization to help refugee students in his former camp. My daughter and I both read the book in January, and on Saturday, we joined a Zoom meeting live from the Dadaad Refugee Camp, the largest refugee camp in Kenya. This camp is situated on the other side of the country from where I was in Kenya, near the border with Somalia. I could not pass up the chance to see it with my own eyes and hear from students who are striving to get an education in conditions we would not tolerate for a single second for our own children.
I think most of us can agree that educating our children in the last year has been difficult, to say the least. Teachers have had to make accommodations like never before. As someone who sees every day what they’re doing, I can say with confidence, they’re doing an amazing job. The challenges facing educators and students during a pandemic have required vast amounts of creativity.
They are like nothing, however, compared to the challenges facing educators and students in refugee camps.
Let me pause here and say that I do not wish to overlook the sacrifices educators here in the States have made in order to teach this year. I love my co-workers and see the stress they carry and I wish things were different. What I saw from Dadaab, though, makes me grateful for what we have here and compels me to find a way to assist.
We heard from real students who gathered at their high schools for an extra FIVE HOURS on a Saturday, just so they could tell us firsthand what the challenges are that they face. Usually on Saturdays, their schooling ends at noon. When they spoke with us, it was edging toward evening. They told us how in one school the classroom is 5 meters by 4 meters, walled on four sides, and hosts 86 students every school day in a room designed for 30. These 86 students–64 boys and 22 girls–create a lot of noise and heat and body odor because of the heat and lack of air circulation. These students WANT to be at school. They WANT to learn. And in order to continue with their education, they must compete with students from the entire country of Kenya (most of whom have better resources) in order to secure scholarships to Canada. There are no computers in the classroom, and they only have textbooks when there are extras the government can give them. Many of them do not go home for lunch because within the hour they are allotted, they cannot walk to the village and back in time. Water lines in the village are only open twice a day for an hour–from 7-8 a.m. and 3-4 p.m. If a student waits in these lines, he or she might be late for school (or have to leave early).
Let’s sit with this for a moment. These students spoke to us clearly and articulately in English, which is not their first language. They are desperate to continue their education. They are learning in spite of these conditions. Lack of food and water, lack of books and other learning resources.
But wait. There is more.
We also heard from a Somali girl. (Many of the refugees in Dadaab are Somali.) Education for girls is especially difficult because families are eager to marry their daughters to a man who can provide for them all, even if he is uneducated. Early marriage is a common practice in these cultures. Girls want to learn, too, but they are grossly outnumbered. For every 8 boys who receive a scholarship to further their education, 1 girl receives a scholarship. Add to that the need for basic hygiene products for girls, who often miss school while they are menstruating, because they do not have access to sanitary pads. (Ladies, can you imagine having to miss work or school for one week every month because you are having your period?)
This is one initiative Refugee Strong is taking on for 2021.
Students from the next school told us that four students share one desk (meant for two students). There are 100 desks and 400 students in the school. Because there are not enough textbooks for everyone, students must rely on the notes the teacher writes on the board. They must study before the sun sets because they do not always have enough oil to burn to provide light after dark. (There is little to no electricity in the camp.) And those 400 students? They share two latrines, which are in danger of collapsing during the rainy season.
There are no nurses or school counselors at the schools. Some students sleep in a “dorm” at the school because they are serious about their studies in the last year of schooling and at their “home” in the villages of the refugee camp, there is no space to study. To secure a scholarship to Canada, students must earn at least a B+. Earning a B or a B- does not cut it.
Because of COVID-19, food distribution at the camp happens every two months. It used to happen every 15 days. So, every two months, families are given their share of the food rations: maize, beans, oil and rice. And it must last them TWO MONTHS. (Confession: I have complained about the pandemic reducing my trips to the grocery store. We still go once a week.)
In some places, a family of 10 (a mother and 9 children) share a two “bedroom” dwelling that is four meters square.
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If you’re like me, reading all of this makes you feel overwhelmed. And probably a little bit helpless. Maybe you’re thinking things like:
“I can’t fix this.”
“This problem is too big to solve.”
“What can I do?”
Omar, the founder of Refugee Strong, addressed this.
“The need is too much,” he said, “but we help what we can.”
This has been a loose mantra of mine since coming back from Kenya. What can I do? Where can I help? Sometimes it doesn’t feel like much.
But I’m excited about the mission of Refugee Strong because Omar hand delivers to the students in Dadaab Refugee Camp. He is aware of the corruption and of organizations who come and make big promises without delivering. When questioned by one of the students about what he was going to do to help them, he said, “We cannot promise anything, but we deliver to you whatever we have.”
This is a man who spent 15 years of his life living in a refugee camp, caring for his brother, searching for his mother. He could have taken his good fortune at being resettled in the United States and never looked back. But he not only looks back at Dadaab, he offers us a way to share in the way forward for these students.
If you want to know more about what it’s like to live in a refugee camp, get a copy of Omar’s book: When Stars are Scattered. It’s a graphic novel, and it’s a beautiful way to tell his story. (If you’d rather read a traditional non-fiction book, I recommend City of Thorns: Nine Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp by Ben Rawlence. The subtitle is outdated, though. Dadaab is no longer the world’s largest refugee camp.)
You can find Refugee Strong at www.refugeestrong.org and on Facebook and Instagram for updates and ways to help.
These words are me doing what I can right now. What can you do?