free burma rangers.

Waking up every morning to have coffee overlooking miles of palm forest, sun glinting off a thirsty lake, horses rolling around a soccer field and a gentle haze of Thai steam rising off the mud is one of the most peaceful ways to begin a day. And then the hurricane that is the Eubank family hits.

The Eubanks were kind enough to host us on their massive ranch outside of Chiang Mai, and this is what you get with your morning coffee if you stay with this generous family: detailed conversation regarding whether or not the term "genocide" is correct for the Burmese political situation, slide shows of children who have been shot, and stories of land mines and dying babies and incredible courage. But it's all in a day's work for Dave, who runs what is quite possibly the most intense operation I have ever seen in real life.

The Free Burma Rangers is a covert (ie. illegal) guerrilla relief and humanitarian force aiding refugees fleeing the Burmese Army. It's hardcore relief work that runs like the army, if the army operated with the ends of wholeness and healing. It has succeeded in creating a network of radios that inform villagers of pending attacks so they can escape, but also so world news sources can stay up to date on situations that the Burmese government would otherwise never give them access to. It's dangerous work, and the strength it requires for them to work daily with 5 year old gunshot victims and 8 year old rape victims and murdered infants is honestly beyond me.

When the family isn't on the ground in Burma, they use their home in Thailand as Grand Central Station (to paint a picture, we shared a visit with a British couple and their two tiny boys who run a development program in Afghanistan; an MIT grad student who does communications work for FBR, an FBR soldier on injured reserve, and next week a California Congressman is on his way with a delegation. Quiet? Never). And although it would be more simple and peaceful to watch The View with your morning caffeine, there is something so encouraging and strengthening about spending time with people who have deep faith and who are passionate-- for excellence, for love, for justice and for others-- that a few days hearing some of the darkest stories in the universe somehow wound up feeling like a bigger story of hope being woven throughout hopelessness.

Here's the FBR website, which can explain this incredible project better than I:

http://www.freeburmarangers.org/

please don't stand in front of the dear leader.

He may look like your fun hipster grandpa, but trust me, you do NOT want to mess with this man.*

At this point in my life, the closest thing I've come to experiencing Communism was drinking vodka with Russians in Prague almost exactly two decades after the end of the Cold War. I won't say it was really heavily focused on the relative merits of democracy, either, so in terms of a cultural experience it was more theoretical than anything. That changed on Friday, when Mom and I headed north-- but not too far north, because that would involve getting shot on sight.

"Nothing normal happens here. EVER."

To set even a pinky toe on the border of North Korea, here is what we had to do: wake up at 5 am, take the subway for an hour to the USO office, take a bus for another hour and arrive at the edge of the DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), switch buses and go through a kind of "indoctrination" into the UN-- "No pointing, no waving, no gestures that North Korea could interpret as hostile, no bags, no photos unless we are in specific zones." We signed waivers that declared if we got shot or kidnapped, the military wasn't responsible for whatever we did wrong. Then we took another bus through the Joint Security Area and became aware that we were suddenly in the weirdest place we'd ever encountered, and it was only 9:30 am.

"We're watching you, you Western capitalist pigs." (please note the man with a camera, trying to be sneaky in the lower left window)

As our baby-faced military guide recounted 60 years of Korean history in ten minutes, I was pretty much losing my head with excitement because how many times have I sat in a foreign policy class trying to figure out how to save the world and never actually pictured the front lines of where all the negotiation happens? I almost peed from excitement and nerves. The DMZ is the most heavily militarized border in the entire world, and one of the most fascinating stretches of land I have ever set foot on, as it's a line that divides two completely disparate worlds that share a name. It's the difference between a swiftly growing Asian economy that's connected with the rest of the world and a socialist, totalitarian police state with one of the world's strictest (ie. craziest) dictators. You heard it here first, people: Kim Jong-il is CRA. ZY.


Left foot in democratic South Korea, right foot in nuts-as-all-getout North Korea




The stare-down that is border patrol.

Let me expound. In brief, North Korea is absolutely batshit, and the people there think they are the only country in the world that has it all figured out. They are 100% utterly convinced that Kim Il-ung is God and that they are living the dream. I could fill a book with all the bizarre things we heard about the personality cult that keeps North Koreans in line, and how juvenile it is (in a super-deluded and dangerous playground bully kind of way), and how hell-bent the regime is on keeping North Korea isolated from just about everything that exists. Here's a sampling:

1. The negotiation room that sits on the border, evenly split between North and South, has to be cleared out by two armed soldiers before tourists can enter. They used to only have one, until two years ago, when the soldier securing the back entrance was ambushed from the north side of the building by NK military, who broke through and tried to drag him across the border. Now ROK soldiers have to hold onto each others holsters or link arms when securing the area. To this I say, "what the hell?"


2. In an effort to avoid the land-mine-ridden DMZ but still sneakily invade South Korea, North Korea dug a bunch of tunnels, one of which was later uncovered with the help of a North Korean defector who had helped build it. North Korea then denied having built the tunnel, like a dumb kid standing in front of a broken lamp holding a baseball bat, despite the fact that the dynamite blasts were pointing south and water was draining north. Finally, they admitted having built it, but claimed it was an old coal mine (in an area that's almost entirely made of granite). So, in the most believable cover-up in the history of mining, North Korea PAINTED THE WALLS BLACK. "Nothing to see down here but some old coal! Run along!"

3. Checkpoint Charlie: Shane from Vice Magazine said something about this spot being one of the most dangerous places in the world, since you're standing surrounded on 3 sides by a totalitarian dictatorship, but I found it just pretty eerie. I mean, technically we aren't looking at Kabul or Mogadishu here, but the possibility of massive war is, I suppose, what made the Cold War so quietly powerful in the first place. Here's a shot of the sham town Kijong-dong, with the tallest flag pole in the world to show everyone how awesome and powerful North Korea is and designed to lure South Koreans across the border to join this utopia. But it's a lonely town-- these buildings are all empty; a facade created to give the illusion of bustling prosperity. And you can't see it in this photo, but there are wave blockers lining the southern border to prevent any outside information from entering the country. Our guide told us that "recently, Chinese airwaves have been infiltrating, and that's a really good thing for North Koreans." How do you know your country is in huge trouble? When getting media from CHINA is a step up.

North Korea has a bad thing going. Development is stunted and the standard of living is, relatively speaking, quite low. This photo is a snapshot of the Korean peninsula by night-- there's China on the left, and Seoul glowing like a firefly, and an eerie void in between. That's North Korea, a state that allows its denizens zero control over just about everything (including their own thought processing capabilities) and recently demanded 65 TRILLION DOLLARS from the US as reparations for damages incurred since the Korean War. This is why I never would have succeeded in my original plan to be a diplomat: how do you not laugh when Dr. Evil asks you for a million dollars in all seriousness? It's too much!

Kim Jong-il is a character begging to be made fun of, but when it comes down to it, this is a huge tragedy. This man holding razor wire kind of says it all-- his family was split down the middle and the two paths they took could not have been more disparate. The scariest part about North Korea is that their citizens have no clue how bad it really is-- they think they're experiencing utopia when it's actually more like hell on earth.


Here is the Vice Guide to North Korea-- pretty much the most fascinating 45 minutes you could spend today, I recommend you getting involved so we can experience the mind warp together.

*Amy mentioned that if I post this entry, my blog may get blocked from her computer since South Korea is pretty into censorship when it comes to issues of the North. Everyone is sooo sensitive around here about brutal dictatorships! However, the free press shall conquer yet again when we land in Bangkok on Thursday!

Travel Short- Sarajevo Taxi

"We are so thankful for you," our acid-washed denim-clad driver, who could not have been more than 18 or 19, gushed to us. At that time, our three faces, dusty from the bus ride from Dubrovnik, represented the US State Department circa 1995. "Bill Clinton, yes! But..."

He trailed off, lost in thought and deeply concerned for his poor country. He wanted to defend it, to share the righteous indignance at what little Bosnia had seen, wanted to express the injustice of the war to this carful of women who had not ever seen or touched real injustice. It's not our fault that we don't know what war really means, who, for all our well-meaning curiosity, could not and most likely would not know what it was like for those four years in the city as it was bombed, what it was like to lose family members and friends, smell the sulfur as a thousand years of literature burned to the ground.

"But why not more?" his flat palms tapped the steering wheel with the restrained frustration of someone trying valiantly to maintain politeness in front of new friends. "Why not sooner? Where were you when the Serbs were-- how do you say it-- firebombing us? and our history?"

A raised pair of shoulders looks remarkably like a passive shrug, but we didn't know what else to say. It was the raised shoulder of solidarity, of wishing that decisions made deep within the state department were not determined by the skin color of the people at hand, or the trade options to consider, but the fact that little kids were dying on the sidewalk somewhere and we had the money to make them stop it. We didn't feel equipped to articulate our thoughts on this to our young driver, who was probably dodging mortar shells while I was searching for conch shells on a Hawaiian beach.

I think one of the most interesting and important aspects of arriving somewhere is to find out where your reality intersects with others, and to keep building on those little points of light until you find some semblance of the truth. But sometimes it's also important just to be quiet.

-July 2007

Travel Short- WC Priču

I was locked in a bathroom in Sarajevo, and my travel buddies (one of whom had given birth to me) seemed to have completely forgotten about my existence. Thanks, Mom!

I knew what was happening outside of my tile prison. Mom was lying down on the bed in our cabin-style hostel room, flipping through the thin copy of Oscar Wilde children's stories I had just finished. Lauren was outside, dealing with round two of the drunk Finn who had spotted us on the porch earlier. He watched us conduct an unproductive conversation with the sweet desk manager who spoke no English, and, buoyed by cheap beer and unwarranted confidence, he wandered his way into the hostel foyer, ready to grab our asses and fight with anyone who wanted to stop him. Earlier, we had played along lightheartedly with his inebriated attempts at flirtation. Now, worn out by exhaustion at finding decent accomodation, his middle-aged slurriness was not quite as cute.

This is when Emir entered our lives. Oh dear God. Emir. This is what he did: he woke up that morning, he put on a tight t-shirt, he re-Biced his head till it shone, he lit a cigarette and showed up in my life and dammit Emir, why must you be a chain-smoking, espresso-guzzling seductive Muslim from the former Yugoslavia while I am stuck, STUCK I tell you! in this lame life as a white girl from American suburbia? Why can't I have an addictive personality, leather pants, at least one dark secret that gives my eyes a hooded quality? Why can't I have stories of my days as a traveling busker, when I lived off of the kindness of strangers? Emir had the relaxed cool of someone who knew that, scars and all, they were the absolute shit and didn't care if you didn't agree. He also had flawed English, a confident chuckle and the ability to make me shy just by looking in my general direction.

I loved him.

Emir came blazing into the hostel and argued furiously with our Finnish suitor and quite literally tossed him out by his collar. Oh, the testosterone, how can a maid in waiting not swoon? Dusting himself off, he shuffled some papers behind the counter and explained that "he needs to stop drinking, it's not attractive. And he also needs to get the fuck out of here." I felt childish that moments before I had been amused at the old guy's antics. A more worldly woman would not have taken the time to laugh.

Earlier that day, a rickety bus took us up the side of the hill where we had heard a wonderful view of the city awaited us. An old woman, holding her groceries fresh from the market, wriggled her way around in her seat and gazed at us, telling us a story in Bosnian while smiling serenely. She paused. "Zlatkas," she grinned, gesturing to her face in the way Santa Claus did for the deaf girl in Miracle on 34th Street. "Golden Girls? Golden Child?" Our limited vocabulary clued us in to "zlat," but the rest of her meaning was lost. We got off the bus together, the old vehicle kicking up dust as it made a three point turn to head back down the hill. Last stop! And beautiful it was, yes. But also surreal to stand on an isthmus between two valleys and imagine the Serbs standing, crouching, lying in the grass around us and using their massive guns to entrap the Sarajevans. We stood alone, sharing the view with an abandoned crane ("Volim te, Tito!" declared in bold, spray painted contrast to the fading yellow of an unused machine), the city's beauty holding a bitterness that we wanted to touch gingerly.

"The tunnel? No, no. I don't want to go near the tunnel. I have seen the tunnel. I have seen plenty of the tunnel, and I never want to see it again in my life."

Emir had spoken. At this point, his word was pretty much law. We had asked him about the locations one expects to see in Sarajevo-- Olympic stadiums, the Holiday Inn (Lauren's suggestion-- the exact location in which so many journalists had been confined during the war held a strange attraction, although by the time we got there, it was hardly worth the trip, since no one was willing to acknowledge that anything of the sort had ever occurred), Baščaršija. They were all met with an aloof disdain, but at the mention of the escape tunnel, we were firmly shut down. I again felt sheepish.

They say that the escape tunnel, which was the only entrance to or exit from the city for the thousand days of Serb attack, was used by every person living in the city at one point or another. Despite the fact that, much like Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam, it is a major draw for tourists in Bosnia, Emir saw it as dragging out the past, not to mention a little disrespectful to treat what once was a lifeline as entertainment for an afternoon. Isn't it too soon to go near a place that holds such bone-deep pain for so many?

Maybe. But if no one sees the tunnels and the houses and the mortar shells that represent what man can do to each other, then it will keep happening.

I had a lot of time to think about this before Emir rescued me from the bathroom with a laugh. Yes, I think I'm in love.

(July 2007)

Just Because It's Painted Over...

doesn't mean they don't feel it.


"All Blacks Out"-- this is graffiti on both ends of my neighborhood in reaction to the two Zambian families who moved in this year. Eli and I met the 14-year-old daughter in one family, Ngoma, who told us that she has never liked Belfast because it is too difficult for minorities and, upon hearing that we're American, proceeded to call her friend after we had gone inside and squeal, "AMERICANS! In MY neighborhood!" Her dream is to move to America someday, and quite frankly I don't blame her.
Malia's newest blog post (maliabuskirk.blogspot.com) got me thinking again of one of the other problems that permeates Belfast, but one that is generally sidelined or overshadowed by the sectarian wars: the quiet but deadly cultural malaise of serious racism. Belfast was recently dubbed with the unappealing moniker of "racism capital of Europe," and all I can think when I hear that is "Thank God it doesn't get worse than this; thank God this isn't status quo." The thing that makes her story difficult to stomach is that it came from middle-class, suburban kids who were being educated in some of the best schools in Northern Ireland, indicating that the working class isn't the only one with seriously backward ideology.
Though I constantly hear stories of minorities yelled at on the street and other sickening treatment aimed at immigrants, it wasn't until I starting spending time with North Belfast teenagers that I began to realize how palpable and blatant racism can actually be. Growing up in a time and place where any kind of racism is looked at as a personality flaw, I was amazed when I went out for coffee with one of my tougher girls, Jolene. She was cooperating with my usual game of Twenty Questions when, seemingly out of nowhere, the subject of Chinese people came up (Josh, cover your ears, because I wish I could have). It was like opening Pandora's Box of racist ideology. I had to interrupt her torrent of negativity to ask about African immigrants, the Middle Eastern population, and a variety of other minorities. She had nothing but glowing reports on all of them, but somehow had chosen Belfast's Chinese as the butt of her ignorant, hateful opinions.
Other people are different, claiming to "love" the Chinese population for whatever reason and wishing that all black people would "go back to Africa." A few weeks ago, I met a group of kids playing football behind the church and walked with a bunch of them down the Crumlin as I made my way to the Vine (the community outreach center). The mild conversation was broken when one of the boys suddenly yelled “N*****!” across the street. In shock, I glanced over to see a black guy getting into a car with a white friend after throwing the fingers at the boy I was with. “What did you just say?” I asked, trying to keep from roaring at him. The boy was flippant. “It’s ok. He knows 50 Cent.” "Never ever say that word again, especially in front of me,” I roared while thoughts of throttling him (or his parents, or peers, or whoever taught him that things like that were okay) ran briefly through my mind. My dilemma then became this: I can’t be mad at the kid. He is surrounded by ideologies that tell him it’s ok to do things like that. But Belfast, especially north Belfast, is drowning in a tide of racism that can’t be stopped unless small incidences like that can be stopped first (or is it the other way around?). The Zambian families with mega-watt smiles living amongst "Blacks Out" signage, the glaring lack of minorities in the city center… things like this make me uncomfortable. The fact that Belfast cannot stop its ethnic conflict, let alone incorporate a racial conflict on top of it, is evidence of a city deeply wounded. If BandAids aren’t working, I wish we could apply stitches, but it’s difficult when the injured aren’t entirely aware of their wounds and don’t want to see a doctor anyway. And as much as I wish I could say that I think things are getting better, I don't. Not only is the sectarian conflict being aggravated, racist attacks are increasing as well, and I just shake my head and wonder, What is going on here?

What It Is!

Sometimes all it really takes to feel like a normal person again is a really long laugh with someone you love... and since I am so lucky to have had Schlosser visit over the weekend, I am reminded of who I am and what it's about. I was a bit nervous to have her come to my little corner of Northern Ireland after she had spent so much time seeing all the glamorous places in Europe, partying in Italy and drinking beer in Munich. To come to a place like this was going to be a shock to her system, and I didn’t really know how to explain everything, let alone justify it. But Aimee showed up, nearly a month into her European adventure, with a totally expanded worldview and willingness to become a part of wherever she was. She really impressed me, actually. I am reminded of how much I love her heart.
Schlossmo showed up late from Dublin and we headed straight to the Crown Saloon, her huge backpack in tow, and had Stella in hand within ten minutes of her arrival. When in Rome, we say. Before I had even gotten back from the bar, which took a bit longer because I had to bitch to the bartender about how they didn't pour Harp (this is BELFAST... what do you mean, NO HARP?), Aim had discovered the two guys in the bar who were under the age of thirty. So Madrileno Faro and Salzburgite (not a word) Thomas became our partners in crime for the night, which was an interesting choice to say the least. On the plus side, I got to speak Spanish, we got free passes to a "trendy" club, and despite lacking a bit in the English department Thomas completely got us and actually thought we were funny so of course we loved him. On the down side, there was some really ugly dancing at said club and Aim and I were unsuccessful at explaining the meaning of "that girl," which apparently doesn't translate (side note: after a long discussion on the meaning, Aim and I decided to be walking examples and in fact became "those girls").

Throughout our lovefest of a weekend, I spent a lot of my time translating for her, especially at YF when she was surrounded with “the craziest bunch of teenagers” she had ever met in her life. I had to laugh when they informed me I must be losing my American edge because her accent was so strong. She did really well though, for being thrown to the wolves, and they loved her. But I can’t wait to see their faces next week when we tell them she’s Catholic… for being so world-wise, they really are sheltered in so many ways. Alison mentioned to Aim that they all think I’m crazy because I walk to work through Ardoyne, because I get coffee at the Toasted Soda, and now to have Catholic friends who they actually LIKE… it’s going to blow their minds! It’d be funnier if it weren’t so sad!
On Sunday, as Aimee and I tooled around Belfast looking at murals on both sides of the peace line, I think it all became real when we spotted a massive Home Depot-type building that was completely collapsed and charred from a firebomb a couple weeks ago. Apparently it’s the work of the Real IRA, a radical offshoot of the Provos (Provisional IRA, which from what I can tell is getting increasingly united with Sinn Féin, its political wing, and naturally has become much less violent in the process). So members of the RIRA don’t agree with the talks that are going on in Stormont right now to create some kind of workable power-sharing Northern Irish government, because they don’t think the Sinn Féin (via Gerry Adams) should be trying to cooperate with Protestant leaders. So instead of peaceful demonstrations against the negotiations, they’d prefer to firebomb buildings. Not surprisingly, the US has the RIRA categorized as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Since the Good Friday Agreement, they have supposedly agreed to ceasefire, but still are pretty into planting car bombs, bombing rail stations in England, etc., including a couple places in Belfast in the last few weeks. Kathryn, who was driving, told us that that particular shop most likely had 50 or more Catholics working there, ie. the RIRA just put dozens of their own “people” out of work in the name of revolution, in an attempt to spur Catholics toward a more hard-line stance against what they consider political acquiescence. The logic is so absent it’s astounding.
Seeing Belfast through Aimee’s eyes revived my fascination with the history, the personality, and the people of the north and west ends of the city, and I remember why I wanted to be here in the first place. Everywhere you go you are walking on ground steeped in historical conflict and potential turbulence. There’s an edge to it, and it’s unreal sometimes. It was amazing to have someone to remind me of what a dork I am and laugh at nothing for way too long! I waved goodbye as her bus pulled away, we both tried not to cry, and I realized that it’s much easier to be the one leaving than to be the one left…

Innocent Intern and the Series of Events (Unfortunate and Otherwise)

Alright, I am going to come right out and make a confession here. I made it through the third grade epidemic without getting lice but I didn’t make it through age 22. That’s right, since I last wrote, a major event has been the unwelcome acquisition of nits. As I write this, I realize that a lot of my friends hate kids, always thought it was annoying that I loved them, and they are probably getting the last laugh right now at the thought of me paying the price for hanging around grubby primary schoolers all the time. (They’re gone now, by the way. The lice, not the kids.)
Other inconveniences include the arson of our church minibus, which, along with a few other cars in the neighborhood, got torched down to a piece of charred scrap metal last weekend. When the church copy machine broke the same morning, I honestly felt like we’d been left with just our four walls! Since there is no way we can afford to buy new stuff, I’ve started to devote my energy to researching and applying for grants for just about everything, because we are totally broke.
But Belfast is, bit by bit, becoming home. I have thankfully been hanging out with Mark and Steve a bit (the male half of the Woodvale Four from Deputation) and they are the kind of friends where, even though it’s been two years, it’s like nothing has changed. There aren’t many people who make me laugh as much as they do, and it’s really nice to have people you don’t have to start from scratch with. I also started my course at Union Theological College, which is AMAZING and it really makes me happy to still be in school in some way.
The old people at Crumlin Road continue to impress me. They all call me “That Big Girl” until they learn my name (I am seriously considered a giant here), and the language barrier apparently is still a problem: “I overheard Laura talking with Jean and Marjorie yesterday and it literally sounded like Chinese. But they just kept nodding their heads like they understood her!” --Direct quote from an elder in the church. I think I should have gone to some kind of manners school that teaches you how to speak properly, because even my own family tends to struggle to understand me, which would indicate that I have created my own strange little dialect. Other harassment includes abuse such as “Hey Star Spangled Banner, what’s up with Americans coming over here and eating all our cheese?” (This kind of thing is usually said within ear shot, but not directly to me, so as to up the humor ante, which usually I think is quite clever of those wee old men).
There are a few funny stories that stand out to me from the past weeks:
1. I am doing a literacy program at a primary school and working with a homework club as well (Mathilde, who runs the program, says that most of the kids are just plopped in front of a TV everyday, and their imaginations and communication skills are really stunted—one kid knew the word for machine gun, but not butterfly!). Today I was handing out fruit for snack time and telling the kids, “You better eat these apples, you don’t want to get scurvy. You know what scurvy is? Pirates get it when they’ve been at sea and don’t eat any Vitamin C. You’ll start talking like one. Eat the apples.” So this one kid absolutely refused to take an apple and kept saying, “No thanks! I want to talk like a pirate! ARRGHH!” And then all the boys started squinting one eye and walking around talking like Blackbeard. So much for my nutrition lesson.

2. Again, don’t judge me for this, but I hate coming home to an empty house, and since Peter and I live in a terraced house that’s three stories, I always hear noises from the neighbors and think they’re coming from upstairs. I wish I could say this next part is a joke, but it’s not. I was so scared one night that I grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen and tromped around the entire house, peeking in every corner and ready to clobber anyone who would dare come into my place uninvited. This is why I don’t watch scary movies- my imagination is already active enough. Anyway, even though it’s always the girl who opens the closet who gets killed in scary movies, I’m not blonde and I’m not running through sprinklers in my underwear so I figure I’m ok. And I’d rather go find the robbers than let them come find me. Thinking I may have a future in home security. Just me and my knife, going into business.

3. Let’s talk about Olive, an old lady from around the corner who always yells at me for living in such a ghetto house (sample conversation: Me: Morning, Olive! How are you? Olive: Get those windows clean!). I think she likes me because I am willing to commiserate with her (“I know Olive, the place sucks. TELL me about it!”) Northern Irish people love when people will bitch with them, so I humor her! Anyway I am getting a serious history of the neighborhood from this woman, most of which I don’t want to hear, like how the club on the next block is owned by the UVF (big paramilitary in North Belfast), how some guy got both his arms broken in the alley I walk through to the grocery store (ten years ago, but you’d think it was last week the way she talks about it), and every minor flaw in the pastors in the area. I can only imagine what this woman says about me to my neighbors. If you come to visit, Olive is a must-meet.
(Side note for Dad: I did some research and Belfast has one of the lowest crime rates in the industrialized world. So don’t worry, really I’m much better off now…)

4. My bike. A hand-me-down from Alison, this bike is older than Belfast itself and the tires require pumping if I’ve ridden it for more than twenty minutes. It’s missing its kickstand, has a makeshift left pedal from when the old one fell off, and let’s just say it’s not NOT rusty. True story: Malia and I saw a homeless guy riding his bike downtown and it’s an understatement to say it was much nicer than mine. Rock bottom, or a great conversation starter? On the up side, when kids laugh at me and want to try to ride it, it’s the easiest thing in the world to make friends with them (“We thought all Americans had pools and three-car garages! What the hell is she doing with scrap metal!?”)

5. I tried to type out the story of how our neighbor Mark exploded a raw egg into Peter’s car after squeezing it “all morning” trying to break it, but it just makes no sense in real life, let alone written down. Moral of the story: my neighbors apparently spend entire mornings trying to break eggs in unconventional ways, but don’t succeed until the egg’s trajectory is aimed at a car interior. Such is life for your average strapping male citizen of North Belfast, and one of the reasons we need social workers STAT!

Life is interesting.

Showing my teeth in Ardoyne

So the past week has flown; Graham came to visit in between London and Budapest, and Eli Grindstaff got here too. So Malia and I wanted to take them up Cavehill to show them the coolest view of Belfast, but of course neither of us has a very keen sense of direction. What was meant to be a fun afternoon walk turned into a survival-of-the-fittest escape drama, during which we got caught in what we affectionately referred to as a "squall" (the boys got acquainted with Northern Ireland's special sideways rain), completely lost the trail, and slid on our asses most of the way down. Oh, and Eli and I ran into some kind of vicious plant that felt strangely similar to poison ivy. They never saw the summit, unfortunately, but we're alive.
There's a group of hilarious people at Crumlin Road who are all in their 20s and 30s, and I don't know what I'd do without them, because they let me tag along to the bars and they feed me really well. Alison, who's a social worker and is about 13 at heart, made me dinner last week and we spent the whole night laughing and solving all the world's problems. She's a realist, but she's an awesome encourager as well, and as I told her how strange it was for me to come into a program that is essentially whatever I want it to be, she said, "Laura, you are absolutely the best person for the job. The kids were drawn to you from Day 1, you made friends with the teenagers really quickly, and you have enough initiative to make this job a success on both ends. Just you being excited about this place makes other people sit up and think, why is she excited? Why shouldn't I be excited too?" I felt a little better after that :)
Since we still haven't wrangled bikes, walking has been our main mode of transport (good thing, too, because somehow I've become the girl who doesn't stop eating), and Malia and I made the trek from the Drennans' to Woodvale for the kids' camp every day last week. It's about a 45 minute walk, and we didn't think anything of it until Alison mentioned that we should watch our backs walking through Ardoyne. At that point I didn't even know what Ardoyne was, but we quickly learned that to get from one Protestant area to another (Ballysillan to Woodvale), we'd had to walk through a Catholic area (Ardoyne), and one in which Alison claimed we would never see Protestants walking or doing business. I don't think I've mentioned how little business actually goes on in my little corner of northwest Belfast- whereas the Shankill is full of life and people and businesses, Crumlin and Ballysillan are dead zones- a byproduct of poor city planning as well as cultural and economic depression. Malia and I have been dreaming of finding a coffee shop with WiFi in our area and came across "The Toasted Soda" on our way to Woodvale. I asked Alison if she'd ever been in there, and she laughed and said, "No! And I never will, it's a Catholic business, just like all the others on that row." I was actually stunned into silence. "And you'll never see a Protestant so much as walk through that area either... too dangerous."
Of course, being the nerd that I am, that night I got on Wikipedia and looked up the Shankill, the Falls, Ardoyne, Ballysillan and Woodvale, just to compare. All of them were flashpoints during the Troubles, and my innocent jaunts through Ardoyne were actually, unbeknownst to me, mini historical tours of the Protestant "no-go zone." Peter even pointed out the police camera that still patrols the main roundabout in case of trouble. But the consensus is that we will be fine no matter where we go, since we're Americans. And whenever we ask how they can tell before we talk, most people say, "You have perfect teeth." I say, thanks, my parents paid a ton for them! And figure if I try to show them, no one will think twice about us wandering naively in random locales.
So just a little background to Woodvale: it's the reason Malia and I were so passionate about coming back here. At the top of the Shankill and filled with kids who are more than willing to love you and let you love them, the short time we spent there on Dep made us laugh louder and cry harder than anywhere else. We were so broken for the community during our short stay that we knew we needed more time, so that's why we were more than happy to help out with the club last week. We were so happy to be spending time with Kaitlyn, Andrew, and a few of the other kids we had bonded with, but I still hadn't seen Chris, though I didn't really expect to. Chris was a 16 year old goth kid we made friends with two years ago. His dad is in the UDA, he was always hanging out in the park when we were there, always critical of everything we did, and for some reason I just really wanted to get to know him. This was the kid who idolized Marilyn Manson but thought the church was one of the scariest things he could think of. I think half of the stuff he said was meant to get a rise out of us, but by the end of the week he was getting into the football tournament we were running at the park and even came into the church on the last night ("You guys really don't act like any of the Christians I know..."). When we look back on the people who really defined our experience, Chris is one of the names that always comes up. On Wednesday, as we walked past the teenager room, Malia grabbed my arm and whispered, "Laura, CHRIS is in there!" Needless to say I was thrilled to see him! He's lost the piercings, gained a few tattoos, and wants to be an actor. We spent most of the day on Thursday hanging out with him and talking more about his life, and it was by far the most interesting conversation I've had since I got here. Even though Chris doesn't want anything to do with the paramilitaries and is actually blacklisted from the UDA and UVF, it is so evident that he was raised with a separatist mentality that strongly borders on hate. He reaffirmed the idea that he would never be able to walk from his house to my house because the Catholics in between "would leave him for dead." When we asked if he would ever support a more integrated Northwest Belfast, he just laughed, "And let 'them' come into our neighborhoods and take our jobs? As long as people like me are around, that will never happen." I couldn't help but wonder what it was he was so protective of... to me, an outsider, not only did everyone look the same ("Oh, but you can tell a Catholic by his jersey/haircut/accent"), but the streets were just as sad in both areas. But the line has been drawn.
Which brings me to what else has taken up a lot of my thoughts this past week: The Peace Wall. It separates the Catholic Falls Road from the Protestant Shankill, and it's much easier to think about abstractly. I kind of wish I were living on the Falls side: the accent is prettier, and the street signs are in Gaelic as well as English. Yet history makes it so these are two apparently irreconcilable worlds, separated by a wall that does little more than remind people that "they" are on that side and "we" are on this side, and that it should stay that way. I asked Peter if we could pull a Reagan/Berlin Wall-style coup and just start tearing it down. He said that he thinks it mostly does more harm than good, but that when things get touchy and people start throwing petrol bombs over it, he's not so sure. So the wall remains.
Just when I think I am starting to get comfortable with living in a place that has so much turmoil ingrained in its personality, I'll think twice about something small and it will strike me as unusually bizarre. This happened in my trip through Ardoyne situation and again when we drove past the Mater Hospital. Jack jokingly mentioned that if we're going to get shot, we're in the right place, because Belfast hospitals are the best in the world at treating gunshot wounds. It's quite the paradox for me to think that we are living in what used to be one of the touchiest war zones in the world and now claims to be the safest city in Europe.