Being granted hope

Today was THE day, THE day of annoucing to the local staff we stop operating as a Design Center on the 13th of December.
Last evening we all had a bit of a crying breakdown, well the girls at least.
Nabid's thirteen year old son wanted pictures with me and Palwasha and suddendly when he was taking these pictures we both broke down a bit.
Then I went to Ryan's office-turned-living-room, Nasreen came in and I just broke down bawling like a 5 year old.
She then followed, and then Lima, and Palwasha and then we were all crying like mocosas.
So today came, we'd already cried our tears and over breakfast at Kabul Coffeehouse Ryan broke down the 2-week's notice, and no one was surprised, no one acted too upset, we all just ate, cracked a joke or two...
All along I've felt my time in Afghanistan was not over.
And today I got a spark of hope.
Wendy Summers, a lovely lady I met throught eh BP's organization emailed me, I had already told her what was happening with our design center and how it looked Iike I would cease to work in Kabul.
So she emails me today asking me to give her a rough idea of what the cost would be for us to have an office and continue the work we have been doing so far.
I am soooo excited.
We'll see how it all continues to develop but for today I have been granted hope.

Living with Heartbreak

I've been craving watching the movie, "Something's Gotta Give". If you haven't seen it, watch it.
I keep going to the scene where Erica Berry(Diane Keaton) tells Harry Sanborn(Jack Nickolson, "Can you feel this? Can you feel this? This is what a heartbreak feels like."
This scene just keeps replaying in my head over and over and over agin.
My time in Kabul is almost up.
And this is what a heartache feels like.
This is what real ache of the heart feels like.
And I have never felt this way.
Leaving Vietnam I knew I would go back. I knew it was my home and that it would always have open doors to me. It did not feel like closure and I left at a good time.
Kabul doesn't feel the same.
I fear for Afghanistan.
There are no promises, no assurances, everything is uncertain.
And me coming me back, it all feels very distant.
Can you feel me? This is what a heartbreak feels like.
I am living it.
We are a week away from telling the local staff they have two week's notice. And I leave in ten days.
And the people I love, I don't know how I will tell them I am not coming back.
And me, my heart, I don't know how to tell it it is not coming back, it is not going to beat physically next to the hearts of the people I love so much in this place...

Amidst Chaos

Today was a major moving around day. This is the week to set up everything for our famous Holiday Market.
I barely slept last night, can't figure out why exactly but today being the first crazy day I couldn't feel more tired with no sleep
and running around like a crazy chicken with no head.
I also have this heaviness in me knowing that after the Hols market I have 10 days in Kabul and it could be the end of my life here.
So far I can't seem to grasp what that means. How will I cope? How will we tell the amazing women I work with that we must leave and that our design center will have a major shift?
Maybe that's exactly why I couldn't sleep.
Guess that's what blogging does to you, clears things up for you.
The generator is about to go off so I better head out the door.
More blogging coming up...

Giving Thanks

Today is Thanksgiving day (according to Afghan time ) and I want to give my thanks.
I'm thinking, reminiscing on all I have lived and I am so full of gratitute for the people I have come across in
my life as I have travelled so many roads in so many places.

I am thankful for Victoria, my dear friend, you have filled my life with wisdom and real experiences.
I am thankful for my Vietnamese kids, Lisa, Chi Hoa an her girls, Loan, Julie, Chom Chom, Chi and her family, Chung, Dung, Lucky girl, Thao-Al frescos girl, Malou, Bora, Sara, Ning Ning, Ate Neph, the Jing's, the whole small group, and on and on and on.
Though I don't email you often, you must know I carry you all in my heart. My heart is full of pockets and each pocket holds you pinned close to my heart. What I lived in Vietnam has made me a stronger, more loving person, a woman who understands other cultures and so enjoys the differences and similarities from culture to culture. Thank you for walking with me all the years I was there and for continuing our walk even though I am physically distant. Spiritually I walk with you every day from the start of the morning, and I see you in my memories all the time.

Now, living in this new place, encountering new people, cultures and places I am filled with gratitude for the people who have embraced me as their own.
Nasreencita and her family, Dani, my latin sister, Asif jan-yes I have met my match when it comes to teasing, Ryan and all my wonderful women-lions(Soraia, Baknazira, Shaima, Hanifa, Mariam, Nassima and Jaya).
Life in Afghanistan fills my cup even though I am so far away from my family and the friends I was used to having around me.
Lonely nights in Kabul are worth every sigh because when the morning comes I get to be with you all.

Then there is my family. I've spent a lot of time thinking about my father and my mother while in Afghanistan. I am so thankful for my dad's dedication as a father, he tried his best to have us be responsible, smart, ethical adults. My mother devoted her time to developing our spiritual life, and teaching us how to draw near to God. Between the two I receive so much support. They are my cheerleading team. I know you did your best.
Mi Karlita, Dan, Dahlia and Emilia, you are the family I admire, the kind of family I hope to also have.
My nieces fill my cup to no end.
Laura, Gonzi and upcoming niece, you fill my life with grace, you teach me that God's grace endures forever.
Gonzi you are the little boy that has filled our family with so much pride, and now you get to be a big brother, I am so thankful for your beautiful heart.
Cavi, I can't wait to hug you. I want my bear hugs as soon as I arrive. Two years away from you has been to long and I dream of seeing you, I have missed you so.

Belkis, mi amiguita del alma, we keep walking. Thank you for your love all these years I have been gone from Honduras.
Mis tias, Marta y Pia, las amo. Thank you for being involved in every single thing that happens in our family.

You are all loved, and I know I am very very loved because all of you fill my cup with blessings, experiences, grace and love.
I can't wait to see each one of you whenever God allows me to be with you once again.
Until then continue celebrating the joys of life, the daily blessings we encounter and pass them on, never cease to pass them on.
My heart full of pockets is bursting at the seams on this thanksgiving day.
May the peace, grace and love of God abound in each of us.

Blogging and Loving it: Reminiscing upon my last Five Years of Existence

I have the writing bug cause I just blogged last night and here I am back.
How much could have happened between last night and today...hmmm.
Plenty, plenty.
Karla and I are planning our coming up family retreat.
We have not been together as a family for exactly five years.
And plenty, plenty of water has run past us since then.
I'm reflecting on what has happened between then and now as far as I am concerned.
The last time we were together was Christmas 2001. I had broken my crazy engagement to
someone I was nowhere near in love with, I had quit my job, and I had moved back home with my
mom.
Karla flew in with Dan and Emilia who was just a baby of 2 months or less, and they'd come with their friend Brett.
I was broke and had no idea what I would do next.
Then in 2002 I got my beloved job as field coordinator for Aid to Artisans, and boy did this job turn my life around.
I gained all my self-respect back and I proved to myself what I had been born for.
The same year I went to New York for training and got to be with Karla in Philadelphia for the first time.
A couple of months later, October I received a scholarship for a ceramics workshop in Taiwan. This opportunity opened my horizons greatly as I had never seen myself travelling to Asia at any given time in my future.
I knew our project would end in 2003 so I began to explore the possibility of working abroad.
So I applied for an MCC volunteer position working with artisans. Bangladesh and Vietnam MCC both invited me.
I accepted Vietnam. And so, on August 2003 I went for training at MCC headquarters in Pennsylvania. I again got to spend time with Karla.
I flew back at the end of August to Honduras to finish ATA's Honduran project. We closed down on the last day of September.
In October my mom, Laura, Gonzi and I drove down to Costa Rica so I could see my family before moving to Vietnam.
I had made a three year commitment.
At the end of October I flew to Philadelphia, spent a few days with Karla and on November 2nd flew to Vietnam.
I arrived in Vietnam on November 3rd, 2003.
Vietnam turned into almost four years of my life. And it turned into the best time of my life so far.
It became my home.
Now, 2007, my time in Hanoi came to an end and my life in Kabul began.
I've been here three months now and I feel very much at home. I guess people are what makes a place feel like home.
And I have very much been treated as part of people's lives here.
I found myself fitting in faster than I could have imagined.
So, this is in a nutshell my past 5 years or at least where I've been. To go further in depth would leave me typing for days and It's time to get packing, I'm heading back to Kabul tomorrow morning.

In Herat

It's 11:26pm, Nov. 9th.
Time does fly. It flies when you are busy not just when you are having fun.
Though I've had plenty of that too.
My trip to England was lovely. The Nguyens are great to hang out with, Quan made me laugh a lot
and Maria made me reflect a lot, it was a great combination.
Time went so fast. Before I knew it it was over....And then....

Then came India. And nine women put together on an educational journey. Six afghan business women with artisanal small businesses, 1 young Afghan woman, staff of the design center, then Jaya, a young Indian textile designer and me, the Honduran, Vietnamese and now Afghan student of life.
If there was ever bonding then we were it.
We travelled in New Delhi, then Rajasthan: Udaipur and Pokharan.
We visited social businesses making handmade products, specially textiles.
We heard story after story of how each business began, their struggles, how they finally reached the market, how they
developed standarized systems of production, how they have grown, and where they are now.
It was amazing, at times overload. We visited about 9 of such businesses. Each one unique in kind of product and location yet all united in the same theme: QUALITY GOODS.
Then came the evenings. It all started innocently. Me dropping by Nasreen and Baknazira's room to have some tea, chat a bit, have a laugh. But Hanifa was there and then came Soraia. We got to talking, I got to asking.
I knew the women who'd come on the trip a bit, but I had never really asked about their lives.

And then they opened the door to their lives. And I walked in.
And I took a look, and I saw what they showed me.
It happened on a night just like this, at a time just like now. Late evening.
We were just talking. First Hanifa talked of her marriage.
Of how it came to be. An older man, her family married her off.
She never learned to love him. He beat her, mistreated her, all her days, up until now.
She told her life with an expressionless stare. I asked her, "Do you love him?"
And without any thought and with an immediate reply she said, "Ne."
It was just the beginning. It was the first night.
She left after a while.
Then I started asking Soraia about her life.
She was a widow, married a 2nd time she said.
Then I had to ask, "What happened to your first husband?"
She spoke, resigned, just matter of fact.
He was an educated man. She loved him. He was a good son.
One day he was taken away, and the second day he was in pieces, thrown on the grown in front of her house.
In the same week his other two brothers were killed. Within days, her sisters-in-law and herself were three widows and the mother-in-law was just that, in-law, mother no more.
I couldn't help crying, I sobbed. Soraia maintained composure, a few tears fell on her cheeks as she kept talking.
She was eager to tell, she went on telling me more.
Her husbands friends helped her get her three children out of the country, they sent them to schools in Russia.
So within the blink of an eye lid she was a mother-less widow, left all alone.
After five years she remarried, she was lonely she says.
She also went to jail. The Taliban put her there for having gone with a male neighbor and not a male family member which was the law for women. But she got herself out, she didn't become one of the many thrown in by mistake but overlooked and left for years in there.
She spoke like a lion. She is a fearless woman.
When I told her I saw her as a lion, she said, what was I to be afraid of? Everything had been taken from me.
And so on and so on and so on.
Not one of the seven Afghan women I travelled with left without letting me walk into their lives.
We have come back, and our time in India is over.
But the most amazing part is they either forgot to close the door or purposely left it open for me to come in whenever I want.
So I do.
We have continued to meet. We are getting ready for a holiday market, we are eager to sell. I sure hope all of it sells.
They so deserve it. They have worked hard.
Today I am in Herat. I flew here two days ago. I came to follow up on the samples being made for Holiday Market.
The embroidery is superb. I am amazed.
Being in Herat gives me a break, to stop, think, write, analyze.
But I can't wait to get back to them.
They left the door open, and I want to go back inside. I want to continue learning from them.
I leave you for now with the biggest lesson they have given me: Don't become a survivor when suffering breaks you in half, LIVE LIVES TO THE FULLEST!
Afghan women do so every day, so why on earth do you and I not learn to do the same?

In Lincolnshire

7:10pm-12:06am

On Afghan Suffering

I'm with Maria and Quan. Lovely British town.
Amongst beauty, centuries old art, buildings, sites.
A castle. A cathedral. Boutiques.
A family. A home. Coziness.
Garden. Flowers.
Walks. Talks. Inner peace.


Then there's everything I came with, everything Afghan.
I came to take a break, to get away.
Is that really possible?
Isn't it just like trying to cover the sun with my index finger?

Afghan suffering.
People suffering.
Women suffering.
Children suffering.
Men suffering.
A nation suffering.
Ruins, so much in ruins.
Indifference. So much indifference.
All heavy like syrup. All heavy and sticky.

I just watched an amazing documentary on life in Afghanistan during the Taleban time as well
as Post-Taleban.
It breaks me in half.
Brings me to my knees.
Makes me taste my own tears.
Makes me run to God, weep in God's arms.

Have I been too comfortable in Afghanistan?
Am I overlooking what's real?
Have I secluded myself in a bubble?

How do I focus on seeing life as clear as a water drop?
In Herat I got to see first hand villages of returned Afghan refugees who'd been living in Iran.
In Kabul I have gone out to work with associations with women members full of grief in each crease of their faces and hands.
Each wrinkle folds a story of pain and despair.
Life is truly so harsh.

Where do I come in?
What does it all mean?
What does it mean to be amongst a suffering nation? Me the outsider, the one who can always run away to a better, safer,
cleaner, spacious place?

My Father keeps me still.
He claims I am there to walk amongst them.
But who am I to get the priviledge to walk amongst those who suffer the most?
What entitles me? How dare I?

I am painfully aware of how undeserving I am to walk amongst the suffering.
I am painfully weak and easily broken.
Do my good intentions matter?
Am I part of something that provides healing?

My hope.
That is all I can bring.
That is all I can give.
Yet it seems so hard to keep it.
So easy to lose it.

So I turn to my Lord. I plead, hold my hands. Steady my steps.
I cannot carry this burden by myself.
Lead me to share. Take me to the place.
Give me peace. Keep your fire burning in me.
Let me return and be with them.