Who can be my friend?

Anyone with beach access would be of interest, of course.

In Kenya, a local fellow and I became friends through weeks of working together.  We talked about work and life and family.  Along the way, he introduced me to his grandson, age 6 or so, and we took him along on some of our travels together. 

My buddy, Ali.  He gets to
go with grandpa Abdul
when he works,
sometimes.

He took me home to meet his large family.  Then, on a day off, we all visited a nearby game preserve.  He brought the whole family, and we had an exhaustively delightful day together.  He's Muslim and I'm Christian; no problem at all being friends, though.  

He explained how, in his community, Muslim and Christian folks get along, share goals and labor, doing their best to make a better world for their children.  They're not particularly divided except for where they go to church.

Egyptian friend and daughter. 

On another long trip, an Egyptian college girl was alone and struggling in the confusion of international travel.  I walked her through this and that, and we spent several hours together on a transoceanic flight.  She's a Rhodes scholar, and like my daughter, a school teacher; we found a lot to talk about, and we prayed together about some of it.  She's grown up now, married and with a precious little girl of her own.  We still correspond.  They're Muslim, too.

Young men on the beach in Djibouti, clowning for
the camera just one more time.

Over decades, career travel has pushed us up close and personal to our inadequately informed thinking.  Grouping folks into this category or that, 'them' instead of 'us'. I'd grown up in a town where there were two kinds of water fountains; white and colored.  White folks sat downstairs in the movie theater, colored people sat in a crowded balcony above where the seats weren't as nice. Fortunately, my mom and dad walked me through that nonsense early in life.  There's more than just black and white, of course.

Along the way, we're forced to ask if our faith is big enough to see others as part of the plan.  Is the "no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female," idea really working in the way we view ourselves and others.  More importantly, can we talk about such things among our friends?

Just a few steps away from the wealthy

tourist area, a Kenyan fellow tends his 

flock of goats.

On the city's edge, my friends live simply, like
 most of  the world.  Outdoor kitchen and a
little vegetable kiosk for selling produce.

Geography holds billions of people in its grip.  We are all born into natural and cultural environments that shape what we become, individually and collectively.

- Harm de Blij, The Power of Place: Geography, Destiny, and Globalization’s Rough Landscape, from Steve McCurry's photo gallery.

A NASA engineer 'tends his sheep'.

A kitchen, indoors.

From our “mother tongue” to our father’s faith ...  where we start our journey has much to do with our future.

Where you are born - what you are born into, the place, the history of the place, how that history mates with your own, stamps who you are, whatever the pundits of globalization have to say.  - Jeanette Winterson

So, how do we choose to understand the world we see, and the people issues it brings?

the mud-maker

Precious friends for many years.

Mom fans the coals, making coffee the traditional way from

 hand-ground beans that she roasted on the same fire.  Sis

 spread grass on the floor for their guest.  Everything they 

 own is in this 10 x 15 ft. hut.  The two candles light the    

home; there's no electricity here.                                   

Mom was blind and crippled for several years.  Thanks to
 a healthcare program and a little assistance, she can see

and walk now. She has a hip replacement scheduled that

that should complete her recovery.  She's a widow, and 
her kids, who've cared for her all through the ordeal,
 are thrilled, of course.                                         

Ethiopia, 2011.

He was walking and talking with his friends when they saw this blind fellow beside the road, begging for money.  The guys wondered why this beggar had ended up that way.  Did he deserve it because he had done something wrong? Or maybe his parents had?

He explained for them, no, this blind fellow and his parents hadn't done anything wrong, and that's the wrong question, looking for someone to blame.  This blindness is going to show something wonderfully good, and it will happen today while there's light, and before night comes and no one can see. He made some mud from spit and the dirt on the ground and put it on the blind fellow's eyes, then told him to to go wash at this public water place.

The blind fellow did as he was told, and went home seeing!  It caused a stir, of course.  His relatives and neighbors couldn't believe it and asked all kinds of questions.  They even wondered if he was the same guy. He explained the little he knew of what had happened, how this man had put mud on his eyes, and when he washed, he could see!  They wanted to know where the mud-maker was, but he didn't know.

The gathered crowd took the fellow to the local leaders who made a big deal of this mud-maker guy doing things like that during their holiday.  Lots of loud and emphatic words followed, and even the fellow's parents got dragged in to the melee, but he stuck to what he knew; I was born blind but now I'm not.  I don't know any more than that.  The politicos were pretty angry; it didn't fit their agenda, I suppose, so they threw the fellow out along with his story, dismissing the whole event.

Later, when the mud-maker heard about it, he found the fellow and explained things a bit.  It was a 'now you see, now you know' kind of conversation, and the fellow rather suddenly got it; he got it all and was so, so thankful to now see and to understand, too.

At the farthest far end of the road, children came cautiously out to meet us.
The fellow brought his school things, perhaps so we'd know he was a
person of substance and consequence. Nice kids, introduced us to

their parents and neighbors.
                     Djibouti, 2011.

Later, folks from the ruling party confronted the mud-maker about it all. Apparently he had made some comment about the blind seeing and those who could see going blind, and they asked about themselves; are we blind?  It was an argument-starter sort of question.

You have to wonder if he was smiling or wincing when he answered the question.  If you were really blind, he explained, you wouldn't be accountable for what you can't see.  Since you claim you can see, well, it's all on you.

The question continually pursues us all, I suppose.  Can we see what's in front of us?

... turning away is easier, but not the best way. It's kind of like tossing out the once-blind fellow along with his story.

Right and Left

A young refugee girl and her father near Faisabad, Afghanistan
(Image Afghanistan | Steve McCurry)

"War does not determine who is right - only who is left."

~ Bertrand Russell

Warfare has been offered as a noble conquest, a campaign against uncivilized or wicked people, waged by a great ruler and willing soldiers; the long march, the great battles, the magnificent heroes ....

Reality is harsh.  War reaches out to subjugate peoples, to capture wealth from the provinces, to rule the land ... or the world.

War is perhaps the ultimate expression of selfishness.  Every lesser crime, every sin, every moral violation, all are visible in the wake of advancing armies.  Beyond soldiers killing each other, war brings pillage, bloodshed among the innocent, theft, murder, years of deprivation, and  inconsolable anguish for the victims who manage to survive.

Leaders are the responsible agents.  Most among the soldiers and sailors hope to serve well, with honor and integrity.  In centuries of retrospect, we see many such good folks in the field doing their best, unknowingly serving an ignoble cause.  Propaganda and lies, deception and misrepresentation ...  Given the chance to understand what their leaders knew, most would have turned against the ruling elite.  Citizens would likely rise up in arms if they knew.

War is not a solution, it's the explosion that concludes an escalating competition.  At stake are lives, land, rule, and wealth. Characterized by violence, social disruption, and economic destruction, war should be understood as an intentional and widespread armed conflict, convened by political players, most commonly with an underlying economic agenda.

In the days of power players and their cronies who are willing to sacrifice a few thousand or million lives, how might the rest of us find a path that allows a good conscience?  Curious?

Hans and his foster daughter Liesel whom he came to love
dearly.  Caught up in a corrupted culture, Hans did his best
to stay on a path of good conscience.

Liesel and her dear friend, Rudy.  He
was swept up by the Hitler-Youth
movement and persuaded it was for
the best.  He couldn't have known
more than he was given.

Death himself narrates the best seller, 'The Book Thief'.  An extraordinary movie (and book) that illuminates the issue well.

Set in war-torn Europe, the focus is on regular people caught in the middle, struggling to hold on to what's right and good.  In Hitler's Germany, Hans and Rosa have taken in Liesel (the book thief) as their foster daughter whom they come to love dearly.  Hans spends his life doing his very best to be loving, kind, and wise.

Death himself recounts his task of collecting souls of persons in the story as they perish.  Of Liesel's dear foster-father, Hans, and others, Death says,

So we're reminded, even in the worst of times, in the veritable valley of the shadow of death, we can give ourselves to that which is right and good and even noble, thank you Father.  And we hope to bring a few or perhaps many along with us.  

Most Memorable

She didn't know she had changed the world.

The Afghan Girl; she was perhaps twelve years old and living in a refugee camp when National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry took her picture.  He didn't know her name.

Her picture was on the cover of National Geographic in 1985.  It became one of the most recognized photographs in the world; illuminating the conflict in Afghanistan and the refugee crisis around the world, but we didn't know who she was.  For years, no one knew.

Several attempts were made to find her and to perhaps hear her story.  Finally in 2002, a Nat Geo team found her and her family.  She was perhaps thirty years old, but remembered well the occasion of being photographed.  Even though he'd asked gently and she'd given him permission to photograph her, she was angry.  He was a stranger!

She hadn't seen the world-famous cover photo; she saw it for the first time after seventeen years when they showed it to her in '02.

Her parents had been killed in the Afghan conflict when she was about six. With her brother and three sisters, she followed her grandmother, walking through the snowy mountains to Pakistan, begging for blankets and hiding in caves along the way.  They entered the refugee camp in 1984.  She married at thirteen (no, you were sixteen, her husband insists) and later returned with her husband to her home village in Afghanistan.  They have three daughters; a fourth died in infancy.

When asked about her hopes for the future, she said she hoped they could afford medical care for her husband and to send her daughters through school.  She didn't ask for anything for herself.

"The reunion between the woman with green eyes and the photographer was quiet. On the subject of married women, cultural tradition is strict. She must not look—and certainly must not smile—at a man who is not her husband. She did not smile at McCurry.  Her expression, he said, was flat. She cannot understand how her picture has touched so many. She does not know the power of those eyes."

Reluctant at first to be photographed yet again, she relented when she heard how effective the first photo had been in focusing the world's attention on the plight of those in war-torn Afghanistan.

National Geographic told her story in 2002.  They set up an international fund to provide education for Afghan girls at first, then expanded to include boys.  They funded the family's medical needs and more, and they provided a pilgrimage to Mecca for them, too.  In a later interview, she actually smiled as she told of the progress her family had made and offered thanks for the help they had received.

"Names have power, so let us speak of hers. Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she is Pashtun, that most warlike of Afghan tribes. It is said of the Pashtun that they are only at peace when they are at war, and her eyes—then and now—burn with ferocity. She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30. No one, not even she, knows for sure. Stories shift like sand in a place where no records exist. Time and hardship have erased her youth. Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that has not softened."  

“She’s had a hard life,” said McCurry. “So many here share her story.” Consider the numbers. Twenty-five years of war, 1.5 million killed, 3.5 million refugees: This is the story of Afghanistan in the past quarter century. It's not the life she would have chosen.    ~from the Nat Geo article

Hers is a story like so many others.  Today, Pakistan hosts more than one and a half million refugees, most from Afghanistan.

Newly arrived Somali refugees wait in line to be registered by the UN office
Dagahaley camp in Dadaab, northern Kenya (Reuters).

According to the UN, the four active Dadaab camps were originally designed for a population of 150,000,
 yet are home to half a million refugees (80 per cent of whom are women and children), making living
 conditions difficult at best.  Twenty years in operation, the camps have been the only home for many.
It's not the life one would choose for their children.

Worldwide, more than 51 million people are currently refugees, displaced from their homes by conflict, the highest refugee number since WWII.  More than half are children, many unaccompanied.

Each one is a person like Sharbat Gula and perhaps has a similar story.  Each could use our help and prayers.  Perhaps we might take a moment to be thankful for our easier, safer lives, and give a little help where it might make a difference.



Update: 26 OCT 2016 -- Gula was arrested Wednesday in Pakistan for possession of fraudulent identification. She had Pakistani and Afghan ID cards in her possession, and both ID cards have been seized. We're told that more than 60,000 fraudulent IDs have been uncovered across Pakistan, and that eight officials so far have been charged with issuing fraudulent ID cards to foreigners.  Gula was arrested and released on similar charges last year.

Like millions more, she's a refugee. At last report, she is in custody awaiting her court hearing.  No information is available yet on her husband and daughters.  McCurry, the National Geographic photographer, said he is committed to helping her legally and financially. Her arrest goes to the heart of an ordeal confronting many Afghan refugees who fled across the border into Pakistan because of decades of war.

Pakistan has been pressuring refugees to leave, and has set a deadline for March. But Afghanistan remains a dangerous place — Taliban insurgents on Wednesday killed 26 Afghans abducted from the central province of Ghor. Nearly half a million Afghans have crossed the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan so far this year as a deadline approaches for them to leave.

Update: 31 OCT 2016:  Sharbat Gula has been released on bail.  She has two surviving daughters also in Pakistan.  Her husband died about four years ago.

Steve McCurry commented to Al Jazeera, "In seeing this current global refugee crisis, it's almost like people in Europe and the US are scared of refugees. Or they simply don't want the burden of hosting them. But we forget none are actually more scared than the refugees themselves. They are forced from their country, their homes. Desperate people do desperate things.

Sharbat is a widow trying to raise her children. She lost her parents, her husband, one of her daughters, and her brother. There is a lack of compassion for refugees.

Even though she's been offered to relocate to a safer country, there's no place like home. She wants to be near her relatives, this is all she knows.

If she had gone to another country, she would have had a very different life. But she chose not to. She remains humble to her life and to her struggle. We keep in touch periodically through my contacts on the ground.

The world sees the humanity in her. She wants the same things we do, but she lives in another part of the world."

BBC Viewpoint: Why Afghan refugees are facing a humanitarian catastrophe-

Us & Them

Dr. James Rohrer, "A couple of years ago I was teaching a college class on American Democracy. I sent my students to various political sites, including AlterNet, to get a range of viewpoints on the issues that we were discussing in class. I encouraged my students to share their own opinions online, to leave comments on any articles that hit a chord. One of my students, an eighteen year old from a small Nebraska town who was raised in the Catholic Church and a member of the Catholic student group on campus, responded to a post on AlterNet. The particulars of the article and the nature of her views are not relevant; her comment was thoughtful, polite and (unlike many thread comments) actually focused on an important point raised by the original article. Although I did not share her opinion, I thought that she had successfully raised legitimate questions, and of course I believe that she was engaging in a process that is fundamental to democracy.  

In response to her thoughtful comment, she received a stream of terribly hurtful messages, including “Catholics can fuck themselves.” 

In any moral universe, this is not rational discourse. It is simply intolerant meanness. To try to justify it by an appeal to freedom of speech is absurd. I am a member of the ACLU, and I will defend to my last breath the right of a fool to speak foolish things, just as the ACLU has defended the right of the Klan to spout hatred. But let’s not kid ourselves. It IS hatred, it is not moral, and I repeat my caution that such remarks do indeed harm the cause of progressive social change."

From an article by Dr. James Rohrer, Associate Professor,

 Colonial & Revolutionary America, American Religious History  

Read the article on A Gentleman's View.

Let's not kid ourselves.  The intent behind hurtful speech is not to inform, but to beat down, to cause harm, distress.  

Trying to justify it by an appeal to freedom of speech is absurd.

Such behavior, a remnant of playground bullying, illuminates not the issue but the character from which it originates.

Much of political speech today approaches that line, fanning the ideological flame of us vs. them, polarizing, ignoring the fact that we must share a country ... and our children, a future.  Perhaps we might learn and choose well for their sake.  

Trouble with the Western Mind

Rwanda village - Panaramio

(in Rwanda) "... we've had a lot of trouble with Western mental health workers, especially the ones who came right after the genocide."

"What kind of trouble did you have?"

"Well, they would do this bizarre thing," he explained. "They didn't take people out in the sunshine where you begin to feel better. They didn't include drumming or music to get people's blood going. They didn't involve the whole community. They didn't externalize the depression as an invasive spirit. Instead what they did was they took people one at a time into dingy little rooms and had them talk for an hour about bad things that had happened to them."(Laughter) (Applause)

He said, "We had to ask them to leave the country." (Laughter)                   
~ A Rwandan describes post-genocide assistance efforts; from the transcript of Andrew Solomon's TED Talk on Depression, the Secret We Share.

Dragging a Western mind into a non-western culture can be entertaining and perhaps unsettling, to say the least.  It's likely to disassemble much of our thinking.

Whose viewpoint is correct?  Is there clarity between what's right and what's just different?

What's right? Principles of right and wrong, generally universal (fortunately), the standard by which behavior is judged; e.g., stealing is wrong everywhere.

What's different?  There are standards of behavior within a given culture or social grouping; e.g., uncovering a woman's face in public is inappropriate (in some places and social groupings).

Bikini vs Burka:   Consider the tension.  The burka and bikini themselves are simply pieces of cloth, nothing more.

OK, we could have used a picture with a bikini ...

• Is the bikini an expression of the woman's personal freedom, or is it the imposed style of a male-dominated social norm?

• Is the burka an expression of the woman's personal choice of modesty, or is it the oppressive burden imposed by a male-dominated social norm?

To both questions, the answer is yes and sometimes, yes.

From an illuminating article on Beliefnet.com, 

 hijab tutorialCHOICE

"Many women choose burka freely, as well as lesser variations such as hijab or ridah. ... My own wife wears ridah full-time, even to medical school, though I was initially against the idea. But I supported her in her desire to achieve her modesty, and the result has been astonishing. But the benefits she derives from wearing ridah are a topic for some other time."

"Contrast the Qur’anic prescription of modest dress with the tribal custom of imposing oppressive dress on women. It’s not exaggeration to say that Islam, Judaism, and Christianity brought the first concepts of equality between genders to tribal peoples who at the time had decidedly primitive notions of gender roles. 

Afghan Taliban beating woman in Kabul

To take one self-aimed example, pre-Islamic customs of burying first-born daughters alive was stridently condemned by Muhammad SAW. Yet these practices still persist in modern times – for example in Nigeria, where a woman was sentenced to death by stoning for adultery. Also recently a woman was sentenced to be buried up to her neck in sand and again stoned, for having a child out of wedlock.

Violence against women fueled by patriarchal social values, lack of adequate laws and enforcement.  From UNICEF, the percentage of women aged 15–49 who think that a husband is justified in hitting or beating his wife under certain circumstances is as high as: 90% in Afghanistan and Jordan, 87% in Mali, 86% in Guinea and Timor-Leste, 81% in Laos, and 80% in the Central African Republic.[UNICEF]  A 2010 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that stoning as a punishment for adultery was supported by:  82% of respondents in Egypt and Pakistan, 70% in Jordan, 56% Nigeria, 42% in Indonesia.[PEW Research]

"These kind of barbaric decisions are always made in remote villages by a band of grizzled elder men, who invariably call themselves an 'Islamic court'. The truth is that these are immoral primitive tribal customs, which are used by the tribal elders as a power play of enforcing their authority. They are wrapped in poorly-argued Islamic reasoning, often bundled with some selective out-of-context Qur’anic verse, so that no one dares argue. But this is not Islamic, it’s purely a primitive cultural practice, with its sole aim as a power play of I-have-control-over-you."

"These tribal impulses of control are the root cause of the Saudi burka, and the absurd punishments in Nigeria and Pakistan, and the concept of honor killings. They also, to a lesser degree, are the underlying philosophy behind the bikini, which is the real subject of this essay."

"I am not saying that the woman wearing a bikini is immoral, though that opinion is shared by many, not just Muslims. We can leave that open to debate. But for the purposes of this essay, the manifestation of men’s control over women, is what I am labeling immoral. I am careful to only use the word “immoral” in the context of forcing women to wear burka, or the power play which makes (some) women (sometimes) want to wear a bikini to please men. The burka and bikini themselves are simply pieces of cloth, nothing more."       

~ see the original Article

Crossing cultural lines can be a bit of a minefield excursion, but there is much understanding that can come with doing so.  With understanding comes some clarity about right and wrong.