A Mindful List

Going cold turkey is not working.  List-making is a multi-tasker’s charm, and its results admired by those a safe distance from what it takes to pull off. Not admired so much by those closer. As one teacher/author said, “My husband wants to know where that centered, soothing voice is that I use in my books?” Was he noting her high-shrilled calls for help around the house, impatience with roadblocks at work?

How to ease out of the tyrannical clutches of my To-Do list?

A canvas bag loaned to a college student friend was returned recently during her whirlwind visit. When I later noticed there was something in the bag, I found a copy of Mindful Living with Awareness and Compassion. Gift?  Mistake? I didn’t ask, but now that I’ve read it, don’t have to. It is a gift. It describes one way out of my list-making obsession in the column A Mindful Calendar by Janice Marturano. The writer suggests we pay attention to sensations in our bodies while looking at a single calendar page from our schedule. If we’re able to notice how our bodies are reacting with tension, we start asking questions.

I’ll substitute list for calendar and concentrate on sensation in my jaw while asking

• is this what I want to do
• what are the consequences of not doing this
• will it bring joy
• does it square with my beliefs about how to live

The questions will change over time. I’ll make mindful choices. The list will shrink. One item is not a list, and  surely I can remember one thing I want to do.

Can You Eat This? 2

I had lunch last month with two Afghan college students at an eatery that can challenge anyone’s open-mindedness, the dining hall. The conversation more than made up for the shortfall in the food’s freshness and flavor. Turns out both knew well the prejudice in their culture against Indian food, even its flat bread.

“It’s not Halal, you know,” my practicing Muslim friend said smiling at the idea..

“The only Afghans allowed to eat Indian bread are children with a speech impairment,” her  friend added. “For them it is said to be a cure, and many Afghans still believe this.” We sat in awe of a practice that had come down through the centuries carried on the tide of suspicion and a need for magical healing .

“But my Afghan friends love to join me at the local Indian restaurant and order the garlic naan,” I said breaking the spell. Sure, they agreed, it’s delicious food and our favorite place to go too. From the distance  a college campus insures, this incongruity amused us.

Can You Eat This?

An Afghan student friend joined me at a local Thai restaurant recently. It was her first time in such a place. After studying the menu pages, which include many Japanese, Chinese and Indian items as well as traditional Thai ones, she said she would order something new to her. With questions to the waiter, who was bouncing on the balls of his feet that busy Saturday evening eager to move on, finally with some trepidation she choose the hot duck salad. An adventurer.

When our entrees arrived, I requested chopsticks. Her large dark eyes opened wide as I unwrapped them. Looking down at the slices of duck, onion and other vegetables encased in a large cabbage leaf, she asked as politely as she muster, “Now I have to eat it with a stick?” Then she gave that a go.

She finished the small portion with the fork provided and was ready to experiment with dessert. That’s fried ice cream in the photo, not duck salad, and we discovered its creamy vanilla encased in a fresh donut dappled with chocolate sauce is delightful. Now what shall we try together as we explore each other’s family, ethnic and cultural boundaries?

List No More

I  inherited the make-a-list gene from both sides of my family. Like a lot of other afflictions, listing was  an adult-onset disease. At college I realized no one was managing my time outside of the few hours a week in class or in the dining hall. Dismal grades at the end of the first semester brought on the lists. While my grades improved significantly, I was not yet a slave to lists.

That came with managing a teaching job I was dedicated to and needing a life of family and community. 9 or 10 items to deal with each day was my average, and I checked them off methodically. With the  emphasis on re-use and recycle, my lists shifted from bright-white paper fresh off the stack to toast-size sheets with something else on the back. Yet, number and intensity remained. Lists turned my multi-tasking into something friends and foes alike marveled at.

I’ve retired from that and rebelled. My husband has never written down a thing he intended to do, to buy, to make, or to pay, and his happiness index looks good. I began by tearing up the tiny sheets if the items were not dealt with in a few days. I developed an antidote to them, a sense of empowerment to change my mind about doing some things. Now that I’m my own boss, I set the rhythm of deadlines and time off’ for each project, and I switched to ICal for items time-sensitive.

Next thing on my list, stop making mental lists and silence the nagging voice of regret heard at the end of my afternoons.

Obi-Wan Kenobi Lives

Do you remember the dignity and courage of the character who mentored Luke Skywalker in the epic Star Wars? Perhaps you too met him in a theater filled with parents and kids when it premiered in 1977 as I did. I was caught up in the  romance, the fantastic images, the humor, and the morality at least  as much as my son and mourned the day he came home without his Star Wars figures, having left them buried in a friend’s sand pile. Then I was into Luke, Princess Laia, and the fisty Han Solo.

Today it’s Jedi master Obi- Wan.  I’m one of the mentors for the young Princess Laias, the Afghan women developing their leadership skills and furthering their higher education, at a small institute in Kabul called the School of Leadership Afghanistan (SOLA). My Millennium Falcon is Skype, which transports me to a place, while clearly not a different galaxy, vastly different from rural Vermont. The mission is to provide opportunity both for positions of leadership in ongoing development projects in Afghanistan and access to higher education in the U.S. so that these bright young women will assume leadership roles in the future of their country. Learning English is the most obvious challenge and one relatively easy to assist them with. Less obvious but as real are their challenges of coming of age in a society torn apart by ethnic rivalries, desperate living conditions, the presence  of foreigners in enormous numbers, and the uncertainty about the viability of professional, public  roles of women.

I’ve got dozens of new stories from our conversations about customs, politics, history and the media from our sessions for which I am thankful. Gratitude is another gift of mentoring.  I gotten to know students who with or without the support of their families, community and country are certain there is a better way and that they will play an important role in that  change.

I can’t get cable where I live, so I won’t be tuning into the cartoon channel on Friday for the next episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars season 4, but I’ll shop for the other seasons and get back in touch with Obi-Wan now that I’m old enough to heed his lessons.

Recipe for Peace

• Basmati rice
• chicken thighs
  

  Qabuli Palow

• onion
• raisins
• carrots
• cumin seeds
• almonds
• pistachio nuts
• tomatoes
• olive oil
• salt

A few families from Vermont and Massachusetts brought their fond memories of home-made Afghan palows and the ingredients to a January  gathering, and the Afghan students their cooking skills. Time at the end of a day of study or work for enjoying simple acts of peeling, dicing, sauteing, and all the talking if not a recipe for world peace, surely one step toward it.

The New Pox

WHAT IS IT?  Acid burns on faces of Afghan females Recent attack on Nov. 28, 2011 in northern Afghanistan, far from border with Pakistan Delivered by male members of the same community at night by force inside girls’ homes Such attacks are not an everyday occurrence, but the negative the fear they create spreads broadly and cannot be measured Counterattack – new law, Elimination of Violence Against Women, makes chemical attacks against women in Afghanistan illegal Can we unite across borders and over cultural barriers to eliminate violence against females as we did against smallpox?

WHAT WAS IT? Smallpox scars on faces of Afghan children, women and men who had survived the attack, mild or horrific, of the disease Smallpox killed thousands of Afghans, blinded and deformed thousands more Last case in Afghanistan, Sept. 1972 from incidental but direct contact in a hospital Traditional prevention was to place dried smallpox scab under the skin to bring on a mild case and the resulting immunity. This method helped spread smallpox World Health Org. made eradication of smallpox a priority in 1967 and 5 years later last case in Afghanistan 1980 eradicated worldwide

Stop Signs into Yield Signs

When I was in college in the late 60′s, I knew my generation, those under 30, were going to make a better world. How hard could that be the way the WW ll generation had sold out to materialism and was drafting student-age guys to fight in Viet Nam? I thought I’d get started with that by joining the Peace Corps. I applied and got in, made it through de-selection of trainees and got assigned to northern Afghanistan.

The job mostly consisted of motivating a small group of Afghan men to do their job in ways more like the way we’d go about mass vaccinating in rural areas. Our notions of how to do this was based on – what – how we structured our approach to writing a paper, finding a summer job, taking care of the family dog? Theirs was based on training from the Afghan Ministry of Health and the cold reality of working without resources like transport, fuel, pay, supervision, etc.

There were clashes and attempts to re-structure the teams. Still muddling along, resolving situations like getting out of the mud and into the village, as they came along with whatever was around was the way we got by. Our idealism for reaching everyone in a given area in a timely fashion got tarnished.

After Peace Corps, I began teaching, without any coursework, in a public high school. In a program for “students at risk,” I knew there would be plenty of call for my compassion, tolerance for differences, and idealism about how far they would go. These traits did not qualify me for the position, and I may have done more harm than good, but it certainly satisfied my desire to work long hours for little pay and make a difference, tiny as it was.

I’ve retired after years of teaching in various programs and I miss the kids. The nice ones. I don’t miss trying to convince large groups of kids to read, write, and think while sitting still for long periods of time, for days in a row, most months of the year. And I have found a quick way to get over obstacles, to take the brakes off forward progress, and ignore the “rules” of the majority. I’ve taken up road biking and learned from fellow bikers that a STOP sign is yellow and has the word YIELD on it. So liberating and so satisfying.

Leaving the Jell-O World Behind

We left behind the late summer’s chores in Vermont for a week of high humidity among the nation’s landmarks. It was the Peace Corps’ 50th. We don’t party five nights in  a row or stay up past midnight any more, so it was both exhilarating and exhausting.

I had dinner at D.C.’s Jewish Community Center on Tuesday with Susan Barocas, director of the Center’s Jewish Film Festival, and fellow Returned volunteers Allen Mondell and Philip Lilienthal. The first question was how did we garner an invitation to show video excerpts and be part of a discussion at the heart of Jewish culture in the capital? You could guess the answer.  Susan had plans herself to serve in the Peace Corps after college but never did. There’s a world out there of people like Susan, smitten with the dream, who remain loyal to the idea. I’ve heard this over and over at screenings of Once in Afghanistan. She wanted to hang out with us, if just briefly, and provide JCC’s venue for a discussion of our work since Peace Corps.

Allen Mondell, documentarian from Dallas and RPCV Sierra Leone, presented a glimpse of his work in progress, Waging Peace The Peace Corps Experience. I was drawn into the lives of the four Returned volunteers Allen has chosen to explore. Allen’s hell-bent on raising enough money to complete a movie that illustrates the commitment of volunteers to service. Philip Lilienthal grew up summering at his father’s camp for kids and was asked to start camps as a Peace Corps volunteer years ago. His only credential was having been a camper himself and, for a couple of summers, a counselor. After retirement, Philip was able to connect that experience, his own childhood at camp, and a commitment to Africa to found Global Camps Africa for kids in South Africa. The project is about bringing HIV awareness to the youth along with all the fun of camp.

The excerpt from Once in Afghanistan began with “culture shock,” a shock you never get over. The women speak of ways in which they floundered and then found ways to continue the adventures and misadventures of trying to serve others. One member re-joined Peace Corps after visiting Kenya on her way home and worked for another 8 years or so teaching medical technicians.

It was easy to spot Returned volunteers between the gathering places last week in Washington. For one thing there were an awful lot of couples in their 60′s and 70′s. There was also about the RPCVs an eagerness to take in whatever came next. What did we find, learn, take away?  One surprise for me was experiencing the curiousity and respect given our movie excerpt about a Muslim country.  The audience greeted our group’s training director Kristina Engstrom and smallpox vaccinator Barbara Runyan with enthusiastic applause when they were introduced. This is a momento I’ll long cherish back in the Jell-O world when the excitement fades and I catch up on my sleep.

Afghan Rugs

On my way home from Orleans on Cape Cod, I stopped in our Ellisville cottage to use the toilet and say hi-goodbye to my nephew Christopher, who is living in the cottage these days, before I started the longer drive back to Amherst. I did the cottage stuff, left about 10:00 am, was about to turn onto Route 3A from Ellisville Road, when I saw a Tag Sale sign that listed “Rugs from Afghanistan”.

Now, if you’ve been to Ellisville, you may recall that Ellisville is a rural village and has no store, post office, gas station, or any other enterprise. Ellisville Road is not very long, doesn’t have a lot of houses, no traffic, and is definitely not the first, or even 200^th, place you’d think of when you think of rugs from Afghanistan.

So, I just had to turn around and find this Tag Sale. It was in a house that had been converted from a barn originally built by Ernest Ellis, just down the road from the cottage. I dashed into the house, saw a beautiful large Afghan rug hanging from a stair railing near the entry-way, and fell in love.  I told the owner David that I had been with the Peace Corps in Afghanistan in the late 1960s and loved Afghanistan and Afghans, and he told me that he had been with the Army as a soldier in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2010 and loved Afghanistan and Afghans. He brought me upstairs to see the 15 or so rugs he had spread out on the floor.  I took off my shoes and started looking.

While I was absorbed in the rugs and by the rugs, he took a shawl hanging on a peg on the wall and said “I want you to have this.”  The shawl, black – brown in some lights – with embroidery, had been made by a woman who worked in a women’s cooperative that his team had helped get started near the base in Bagram. The Army had set up a bazaar on the base where craftspeople could come and sell their stuff to Americans and other harajees.  The bazaar was managed by Afghan entrepreneurs, who among other things decided who could sell stuff there and who couldn’t. He said that controlling the bazaar was a little bit like controlling garbage collection in northern New Jersey (not everyone could get into the action).

David had traveled all over Afghanistan, doing what, I didn’t ask, and bought the rugs in Ghazni, Mazar, Charikar, Chagcharan, Herat, etc. When I showed interest in the most spectacular one, he withdrew it from sale, saying, “My wife will kill me, but I just can’t let this one go.”

So I picked out two rugs, a prayer rug and a larger one, but couldn’t pay for them – cash and checks only. I proposed several solutions, one of which was going back down the road to ask Christopher if he could float me a loan.  He had been expecting a guest, and I wasn’t sure he’d be home, but he was. He had just said goodbye to me 30-45 minutes before and naturally assumed that I was already on the Mass Pike, so seeing me at the door was a bit of a surprise. He said afterward that he knew that nothing awful had happened because I was wearing a black shawl that I didn’t have on when I left – ?.

He had a checkbook and was willing to write a check, so the three of us, including the visiting Sarah, went back to the Tag Sale house, where I announced that I had found a man with a checkbook and was ready to do business. David said that, by rights, we should have tea and bargain. The tea wasn’t forthcoming, and the bargaining went like this: I said nothing. David said, “OK, I’ll drop the price by $130.”  I said, “I’ll take it.”  Christopher wrote the check.  Sarah smiled.

Later after saying our goodbyes to David and Audrey when Christopher, Sarah, and I were parting, Christopher, who is in his early40s, said, “You know, as far as I know, I’ve never met a soldier.”

I’m sending David Once in Afghanistan on DVD, and he’s promised to tell me what he thinks of it.

Kristina Engstrom