God was there... (Faith Journey pt. 2)

 

Wow. It's been 20 months since I published part one.  Perhaps I can finish part three in a more timely manner. Or not. On with the show!

Nepal is a country in which Christians are a very small minority. In the early 90s, they made up less than one percent of the population. [All of my numbers on this come from the Nepali Census, the latest of which was in 2011.] Now it is approaching two percent (1.4%), but the vast majority of Nepalis are still Hindus (81.3%) with some Buddhists (9.0%) and Muslims (4.4%). During the two years that I lived in Nepal, I never went to an organized church service. I organized a few small ones myself, attended by maybe half a dozen fellow volunteers, but never set foot in a church building.

In our training, and in all the promotional materials for Peace Corps, it was strongly emphasized that we were not allowed to proselytize. The Peace Corps has to maintain a strictly secular image in order to be effective in countries where it is against the law to preach other religions. We did learn that it was acceptable to talk about our religion if asked, but that we shouldn't push it. So I didn't.

I know. To my Christian friends, this sounds like a spiritual desert, which in some ways it was.

But there was spirituality everywhere. I boarded with a Hindu family. I woke every morning to the smell of incense (to attract good spirits) and the jing-a-ling of a little bell (to scare away bad spirits). I know that some families acknowledge God every day though prayers, but this family offered a very multi-sensory appeal to their gods.*

*In the Old Testament there is a recipe for incense that is only to be used in the Temple at Jerusalem, which people are not to use in their homes, or anywhere else. I'm pretty sure this family bought theirs at the little store in the village.

The men in the family wear a Janai (holy thread) under their clothing, looped over one shoulder and under the opposite arm. It was a constant reminder of their faith, hidden from public view most of the time, but always there. And I'm ashamed to admit that I don't remember a lot of details about it, even though Ramesh, the father of the family I lived with, wore one and explained it a bit to me.

When I first met Ramesh, his head was shaved completely. He was nearing the end of a year of mourning the death of his father. Some of my scholarly Christian friends may argue that these death rituals are not acceptable to God, but one cannot deny the spirituality of his actions. Such a visible alteration to one's body for a year would be a reminder to oneself, and everyone who sees it, that life encompasses more than just the span that we witness. This daily physical act of removing part of one's body must have prompted him to ponder the loss of his closest teacher.

Ramesh's family rarely ate meat, because you couldn't just go to the store and buy meat: their village was too small for a regular butcher. Killing an animal for food was a process involving anointing the animal with milk, burning incense, and having it chanted over by a hired holy man.* I could not understand the words, but this was a religious service held in order to put meat on the menu! Most Americans consume meat without making any connection outside of their wallet. It is just food, like any other purchased from the grocery store (except that it tastes super delicious). From a Christian perspective, you can easily argue that God gave Man dominion over the animals, which frees us to not make that connection. But you could also argue that believers in Biblical times rarely ate meat without being aware of it on a personal level (being an animal that they had raised and tended), and often a directly spiritual level (if the animal was being offered as a sacrifice to God).

*An expensive process for sure. And sharing two pigeons among a family with nine children, three adults, and myself meant that no one actually consumed very much meat. By the time the dog finished gnawing on the heads, all that was left was a pile of feathers a pair of beaks, and a few chirps.

I even occasionally met Christian families who had their little home shrines set up with pictures of Jesus in them. Often just a nook in the wall, with incense, strings of flowers, brass lamps, and sometimes little offerings of food or coins.

This is large scale. Imagine a medicine cabinet sized version
with flat pictures, and maybe a couple of action figure-sized statues.

 

The pictures of Jesus are in the same style as the pictures of Shiva and Vishnu and the rest of the Hindu pantheon.

This is somewhat representative of the style of art seen in these shrines.

Sometimes alongside them.

I never saw this one in Nepal. Jesus usually had his own frame,
like the other gods. But Mom always told me that Jesus
wants us to share, so maybe he's setting an example here.

Whatever you may think of this mixing, you have to admit that it would be cool to go back and add "blue" to the song "Jesus Loves the Little Children."

     Scarlet, orange, green and blue,
          Jesus loves them, you should too!
     Jesus loves the little children of the world!

To return to my point (and not a moment too soon), Nepal was not so much a spiritual desert as an uncharted spiritual ocean, filled with a strange liquid that was not the water I was used to. If I had prayed every time I witnessed something with a spiritual connection, I would not have had time to do much of anything else.

Rather than drowning, I felt like I was scooting along on the surface, like a water bug. In hindsight, I could have attempted to "dive" into Hinduism, even with my meager language skills: I've met many westerners who have. But my curiosity about Hinduism (and Buddhism for that matter) never ran very deep. So in essence, I used my time in Nepal to practice Christianity without much influence from Christian institutions. Like a castaway. And that was good, because everyone needs opportunities to fail. Perhaps even to shipwreck.

I know, I know. It's time to scuttle this metaphor, before I start talking like a pirate.

Mistakes are important. I tell my students very regularly that I require them to make mistakes: it's my number two rule in class, right behind "Speak English." I tell them that mistakes are the best way to learn English, which is true. I also tell them that they should learn to not fear mistakes, in language and life both. I hope that my students to learn to accept themselves as worthy, mistakes and all. I suspect that some of them take it as a license to do the minimum work necessary to pass, but I consider it to be a worthy trade-off for the students who are freed by this directive.

In Nepal I made my share of mistakes, but the 26 months I spent there were not completely dry (Avast!). I read completely through my Bible for the first time in my life. I had read a great deal of it up until then, but never a cover-to-cover reading. So that was a good thing. And... again, without consulting my journals it is difficult to assess my spiritual journey during that time, but I suspect that it was stagnant. I was living without a church, and in a kind of long distance relationship with the capital-C Church. I don't remember any other faith landmarks.

My lifestyle alternated between long slogs of living in the village, and brief intervals with other volunteers. In the village, I had no contact with other foreigners. I did my job, engaged in the very limited conversations I was capable of (no doubt the roots of my "make mistakes rule"), and played lots of solitaire (with actual cards!). I read whatever books I could get my hands on, wrote almost weekly letters to my parents (which are the direct ancestors of the Roblog), and hiked to Phidim every week or two. It was very easy to focus on the difficulties.

Phidim, the district center: a four and a half hour trail hike to my village the first time. My record a year later was less than half that.* Phidim had electricity, was on a drivable road, and was full of people who I didn't see every day. Phidim is where I could get a cold beer or two, a little plate of chicken with my rice, and my mail from home. Phidim is where I learned to drink instant coffee mixed with whole buffalo milk and enough sugar to make the Starbucks mermaid blush. Phidim is where I could maybe get a phone call from home, if we had arranged it in letters previously and the phone gods weren't being vindictive. Phidim's appearance would have made you think "third world," even as that phrase was becoming less socially acceptable.** But at that time, for me, it was very easy to focus on the comforts.

*I believe that my record was around 90 minutes. I wish I knew how far it was and what the total elevation change was. Even with Google Maps it is impossible for me to trace that trail now.

** Third compared to what? By what metrics? Let me guess, a country run by white men who also decide the metrics.

On the rare occasion I got together with large groups of other volunteers, things got crazy. Weeks of tension from isolation were released in just a few days. Lots of drinking, a legendary party or two, once or twice waking up stoned, and the kind of conversations that help you to discover and solidify who you are, what is important to you, and what life is all about. With other volunteers, it was very easy to both have fun and to open up completely.

A quick aside, too large for a footnote: I know that my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers sound like a bunch of trouble makers, but many, if not most of them, were like me: they wanted to make a difference in the world. They wanted to experience the world in a way you couldn't in your home country. They were all college graduates, some with higher degrees. As a whole, they leaned very strongly liberal, somewhat atheist, and were one of the most likeable large groups of people I've ever met. Including church congregations. I have not seen most of them outside of Facebook since we were in Nepal together, and my life is poorer as a result. Shout-out to my RPCV peeps! Aside sockeyo!

Hardships. Comforts. Fun. And squeezed into the cracks, a myopic awareness of God. Maybe someday I will find a way to tell those stories with neither condescension nor glorification. The further in the past they recede, the more they seem like a story I read a long time ago.

Nepal wasn't rock bottom, just a kind of low point. I was turning the volume way down on God, but God was there. In part three I'll hit on another low point, and some high points. Just give me a few months to work it out.

END OF PART 2

Peace Corps 1: The Other Path not Taken

Applying for the Peace Corps was in itself a kind of trial.  A long application, hunting down documents and references, medical check up, background checks, essays, an interview.  My current job actually had a similar process, but at the time I was convinced that I was going through a kind of gauntlet to test my endurance, like a weed-out class: if you can't hack the application, you don't have the determination to be a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV).  Determination and patience, that is.  It was almost a year between when I applied and when I left.  It could have been sooner, if I had known then what I later found out.

My interviewer was a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) who projected the Peace Corps vibe from her frizzy hair and ethnic shawl to her tanned, Birkenstocked toes. At my interview I was asked what sort of position I would like, and I asked what she thought would be best?  She told me that more than half of PCV positions are in the education sector, so that was the best way to get in quickly.  She was correct, in a general sense:  For most people, with non-related degrees, education is the best avenue into the Peace Corps.  But for specialists it is different.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had no interest in doing engineering at this point.  I assumed that doing engineering would be like taking engineering classes, many of which I had not enjoyed.  One reason is that I am not a detail-oriented person, and engineering seemed to be very dependent on having every detail be absolutely correct.  The consequences for failing to do this could be catastrophic, and I couldn't imagine putting myself under that kind of pressure to do something I'm not really that good at.  So I didn't bring up engineering in the interview, and didn't even imagine trying for such a position.  I don't remember her bringing it up, either, but that could easily be my brain remembering myself in the best light.  I remember it as playing the percentages: 50% of postings are education, 5% are engineering.  Lower chance of getting one of those.

Once I was in country I met the group of PCVs doing engineering work: urban design, and drinking water supply systems.  The people doing these programs were in a program parallel to ours, occasionally in the same training facility, but mostly elsewhere.  When they found out that I had a degree in civil engineering they wondered why I wasn't in with them.  After all, the Peace Corps needs all the engineers it can get, since very few people with such a high potential income generating degree volunteer to go overseas working for $150 a month, plus travel expenses.

I made some connections.  I found out a bit about what they were doing, and sort of wished that I had taken that direction.  But once you are in a program, heading in a certain direction, it is difficult to make a change.  Unless you cheat.

At the end of my first full year I was in Kathmandu and spent some time talking to Ed, a fellow PCV who was working on a manual for designing downhill drinking water supply systems for delivering water from springs to distant villages in pipes to avoid contamination.  The old manual was very old, and needed updating, and he had taken it upon himself to do so.

He easily convinced me to help by just showing me some of the chapters of his book.  Ed was a good engineer, but a terrible writer.  I had taken classes in water systems design, so I knew the basics of what he was doing, but I found it very difficult to understand his ideas.  I knew that I could help him to improve his manual, even though it wasn't in my job description.  In fact, staying in Kathmandu wasn't in my job description.  So I was careful not to be seen by my manager.

Chastise 1996 Rob all you want, but he can't hear you.  Or me.  I wish that I had tried to do this in a more appropriate manner, but I'm not sure if it would have worked.

As it was, I helped Ed for about three months at the beginning of the year.  I was discovered when my manager showed up at my district center (my official posting) with a case of beer to help me celebrate my birthday.  I understand that the PCVs in the area had a good party.  Not my proudest moment.   Ambika Joshee, if you are reading this, please accept my most humble apologies.

Though I was not doing what I was supposed to be doing, I was doing something that I became very good at: editing a tech manual.  I was putting in full days in front of a computer and consulting with Ed, trying to make the ideas and procedures in his head comprehensible.  Sometimes I could figure it out from the context, but at first I had to have him explain in person before I understood well enough to pass the idea on to another.

After a few weeks of working a funny thing happened, though it didn't seem funny at the time.  I opened up the first chapter I had worked on to reference something and was shocked at what I found. Somehow the original version had been saved, rather than the complete edit I had worked on!  I took it to Ed, and we did some digging into the files.  We eventually figured out that no work had been lost.  The original was still there, and the version I saw was my final edit.  But in the intervening weeks of working with Ed, both of us had improved so much that our original writing was unrecognizable.  Ed's current output was on a par with what I was originally doing, and my current standards were so high that my original work looked incomplete.

It was the first time that I remember being seriously impressed with my own improvement.  Our dedication to the project and honest feedback had taken both of us to higher levels of performance.  It was hard work, but I was having fun, and producing something that I could see being more useful than any of the teacher trainings that I had not yet organized or participated in.

That's when Ambika came back from my birthday party.  I pleaded my case, Ed and his manager both asked to have me reassigned, and I went back to my post.  I simply was not up to openly defying my manager, especially after doing it in such a sneaky way.  He had a point, that I was not doing the job I was supposed to be doing.

It is so hard to write this without blaming Ambika.  Looking back, I am sure that if I had played my cards differently I might have been able to work with Ed, maybe while marginally participating in some education objective.  But I had made him look like a fool, and made his job harder, as well as doing work that simply couldn't be accounted for in my file.  The only way to make it right was to go do the job I signed up for.

I later heard that when I left Ed was really brought down.  He had only three months left, and that was after extending his service six months.  He finished the manual, but it was never really finalized, and as far as I know never published.  It was some of my best work, and one of my most ignominious failures.

Time to play "What if...?"  Where would I be now if I had made that project work?  I don't play this game very often, as it tends to sow regrets.  But it can also provide a crop of lessons, so I will attempt this crop, just this once.

December, 1995, I talk to my supervisor, Ambika, and convince him that I need to change jobs.  I work full time with Ed to produce a water supply manual for use in Nepal.  We successfully complete the writing just as Ed leaves the country, and I usher the new manual through publication, dissemination and training from June through December.  I am having such a good time with it that I extend my service for six months (after a break in Thailand, of course) to produce a revised edition.  This is based on feedback from Nepali and Peace Corps engineers using the manual, and my own observations after visiting projects in different parts of the country.

I mail Ed a copy of the revised version, to follow up the first that he took a year previously.

When I COS (Close Of Service) I still visit Andy in Korea, and have a great time, but the prospect of finding work as a tech writer/editor in the Land of Plenty is too strong to resist.  I return to America and get a job at (an engineering textbook publisher?  a tech firm?) earning good money while getting better and better at doing what I do: writing.

Would I take that path if I could choose it now?  Of course not.  Sure it would be nice to have a nice house and job in The States.  I'm sure I would have still met interesting people, as they can be found anywhere.  I probably would have been happy, as well.  I might have met someone who was as perfect for me as Horyon, and I might have had children as amazing as Maxine and Quinten.  But I think part of me would not have been satisfied staying in America after experiencing Nepal for two years.  I would always have been hungry for something more, something different.

Or worse, I would have learned to ignore that hunger.

On Moving to Korea

Today (March 24^th) I spent about an hour and 40 minutes talking with my new coworker, John Bocskay.  He is doing research for a book about the experience of Americans who move to Korea, and asked some very insightful questions.  It occurred to me later that it would be worth my while to sit down with the same questions and compose some slightly more thought-out answers. A friend also been recommended that I should set goal lengths for my posts (Thanks, Kendra!). This time I tried for 1,000 words (Total=1,006. Feel free to ignore your choice of six words.)  The Roblog is not usually this goal-oriented (or obsessive compulsive), but I am trying to be more so (goal-oriented). As always, your comments are appreciated. Here we go!

I am an American living in Korea.*  It doesn't seem strange to me, because most of the people I work with, and go to church with, and hang out with** are also from other countries.  My friends and family back in The States haven't asked about this decision for a long time. I assume this is because I moved so long ago that they either know, have forgotten, or just assume that I've always been here. The truth is, that like any other object in a place, there is a story that put me in mine.

I do not come from a family of travelers. My parents and grandparents are all from the Midwest: Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma. You have to go back to my great-great-aunt Maxie, my Maxine's namesake's namesake to find a traveller. Grandma Euler took me to visit her when I was very young, probably not more than five years old. I only remember Aunt Maxie as a thin, frail woman, older than anyone I had ever seen, with wispy, snow-white hair and soft, liver-spotted hands, the bones clearly outlined. We would feed her ice cream because Grandma said it was her favorite. I remember her smiling a toothless yet cheerful grin, but not saying anything that I could understand. My generation has spread out a little, but I'm the only one who has ended up living in a foreign country.

It took me a long time to make the connection between the ancient woman in the nursing home and the young woman who lived in China back in the days when it took weeks to get there, and there was no Lonely Planet.*** By the mid 1990s going abroad was a matter of applying for a passport, getting a visa, and going. This idea had crossed my mind once or twice, but it hadn't really left tracks until the fall of 1992.

[I probably didn't make that connection because that woman was not my great-great-Aunt Maxie, she was my great-grandma, Becky Stewart.  Thanks Erin Sack, Bob Euler and Becky Duncan!]

As I look back from this vantage point, two days short of being 45 years old, the Rob Sack of 1992 seems like a different person. I remember him, I was him, but he and I are not the same.

He was going to graduate in the spring of 1993 with a degree in civil engineering that he thought he was incapable of using, but had pretty much paid for by virtue of being good at taking multiple choice tests (the SAT and PSAT). He didn't know what he wanted to do, and was not trying very hard to figure it out. But he was starting to realize that he was very fortunate to have been born where and when he was. Maybe it was the “Women in World Religions” class.**** Maybe it was just being on a college campus where people talked about such a wide variety of topics. Our home town, Leavenworth, was somewhat homogeneous, but Fort Leavenworth brought in a few people from around the country and world. Our college town, Lawrence, had an even larger and broader international flavor, with many students from all over the world. Maybe it seemed logical to experience international directly? Whatever the process of his thinking, he decided that it was a good idea to pass on some of those blessings and find out more about the world.

When you think of helping people who are less fortunate, and getting out to see the world, the Peace Corps should come to mind. It came to his, and he latched on to it.

Of course, I knew nothing. Absolutely nothing. Twenty-three year old me had tasted variety for the previous five years, and thought that it was time to plunge into some seriously new experiences. He was right, but for the wrong reasons. After all, a broken clock is right twice a day.

And so he filled in application for the toughest job you'll ever love. After that the story gets boring. But then it gets exciting and excruciating and exhilarating and way over 1000 words.

To be continued.

* The name of my home country is The United States of America, and I find it somewhat annoying that citizens of the USA are referred to as "Americans".  Other denizens of this fine continent must take exception to this.  However, I am loathe to type "U.S. Citizen" instead of "American", because I don't want anyone to stumble on this site and believe that it is a dot-gov.  It's even more awkward to refer to us as "Unitidians" or "Stations", and "Usians" sounds too much like a cross between Russians and Asians.  So I am an American, by virtue of linguistic momentum.

In a similar vein, I am now living in the Republic of Korea, a.k.a. South Korea, not to be confused with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a.k.a. North Korea.  (Confused?  Just remember this handy rule: the longer the name of a country, the more repressive the government, but only when “Korea” is in the name.)  So when I refer to "Korea", it means the not crazy one.

** I hang out on average twice a year.  In a good year.

*** I don't have much on great-great-Aunt Maxie right now. Perhaps later.

**** He would have been uncomfortable in any conversation involving female genitalia, but adding the word “mutilation” took uncomfortable to new levels.

A Special Meal

It's been a while, I know. This past weekend was Solnal, the Lunar New Year, popularly (outside of Korea) known as the Chinese New Year. In Korea it's not anywhere near as cool as in the Wikipedia article I've linked to. It's more like Thanksgiving, with lots of food, meeting family, and traveling to visit relatives. As you can see in the photo above, we all got dressed up, even Maxine.

We had family over all weekend, and I cooked a big pot of chili con carne (very entertaining article about this popular food) for one meal.
It went over very well, complete with shredded cheddar cheese to mix in. I thought it was pretty good, too, though I deliberately made it a bit mild. Koreans always seem to think that Americans don't eat spicy food, but they have a hard time handling TexMex style spicy. I don't even like my chili as hot as some people. According to Wikipedia, I should have used some chili peppers instead of the Korean chili pepper paste that was available. Maybe next time.

Maxine, unfortunately, was not allowed to try it.
She had her usual fare: porridge. Not too hot, not too cold. She did get to try my dessert, though.
It's a very simple combination of different Jell-o and pudding mixes, layered in clear coffee cups, but it was a huge hit. Tae-ho ate two of them, and Maxine seemed to like it, too. It was impressive because Jell-o is one of those products that hasn't made it to Korea yet. This was the almost-end of my stash, which was originally intended for Popsicles. (Did you know that "Popsicle" was a trademarked name? God bless Wikipedia!)

Since moving in with Horyon's parents, I have cooked a few times. It's one of those things that connect people together in a unique way. Horyon's mother usually does all the cooking in their home, and she is a fine cook. Of course, Sookmo is a good cook, too. We made dumplings again this weekend, along with all the other foods customarily served for the New Year.

But this post is not about the big meals, it's about a small one.

When we moved in here, I was a bit worried about cooking. You see, I enjoy cooking from time to time, but cooking in someone else's kitchen is always kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's kind of fun to use the gadgets, spices and stuff that you don't have. On the other hand, it can be hard to figure out what's available, where things are, and what is acceptable to one's host. Add the language barrier like the one that exists between me and my mother-in-law, and it can be a daunting prospect.

Usually in situations like this, I tend to stall, but at this time I had a chicken from the grocery store that had been in the fridge for three days, and I wanted to do something with it before it decided to rise from the dead. So I braised it in some pepper steak sauce that I had recently bought. It was ready to eat around 7:30, too late for Maxine to eat it. Horyon and my father-in-law were both out, and Maxine had just eaten, so I sat down with my mother-in-law and we ate together.

It was nice. It's been two or three weeks since that meal, and as I look back, I can see that it was the beginning of the two of us getting into a comfort zone.

When I joined the Peace Corps, part of our training was a home stay: two weeks living with a family, sharing meals with them, practicing language with them, sleeping in their home, and learning how to live immersed in a very different culture. It didn't seem like an insurmountable challenge at the time. I had been through training with the other volunteers in both culture and language. It was my first time being in a foreign country, and I had no reason to think that I was unable to live up to it. Funny how bits of memory like that come up sometimes. I stayed in Gyansham Poudel's home almost twelve years ago, and don't think of it very often. I can't remember what town it was in, or the names of his wife and children, but it was such an important experience at the time, because we all knew that the family stay during training would foreshadow (in some ways) our entire Peace Corps experience.

I've been in Korea so long now that I had long ago given up on having a meaningful "cross-cultural experience." (To forestall those of you who would bring up my marriage to a Korean woman, I would simply suggest that any marriage is a sort of cross-cultural experience which is almost by definition meaningful.) I got off to such a rough start with Horyon's parents that I had become comfortable with the wall between us. I am ashamed.

Now, on the eve of our departure, the walls are starting to come down. And in my mind, one of the first bricks knocked out of that wall was the braised chicken that I shared with my mother-in-law, with rice and small talk.