Yezidi displacement, priestly callings, and a difficult reminder

Over the weekend we traveled to Dohuk, the third-largest city of Iraqi Kurdistan, to visit with local partner organizations and see firsthand the situation of Yezidis displaced from Sinjar in August.  We traveled beyond the city into the mountainous northern areas of the province that have been partially overlooked by larger aid organizations.  One community we visited was camped out in an abandoned hotel that had its heyday in the 1970s-80s.  In another location, 130 families were living in tents set up on a hillside within the grounds of one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces.  The whole view was a gloomy and evocative parable of Iraq in miniature—a nation of the displaced camping in the shadows of a dark and tortured past. 

 

Through an organization called Zakho Small Villages Project (ZSVP), which is a long-term MCC partner in agricultural development, MCC is currently distributing food to Yezidis in both these locations.  But as the people there desperately reminded us, they need much more, including more food, fuel, and winterization items.   

The caved-in remains of the palace sit just out of view atop the hill on the lift, above the tent encampment.   Photo credit: Gordon Epp-Fransen

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 A day later, I had one of my most delightful days yet at St. Peter’s Seminary, where I teach English every Monday and Friday afternoon.  The previous Friday I had asked all the students to write about their decision to study for the priesthood.  I was curious, and it seemed like a useful exercise.   Most of them mentioned a desire to serve the church in difficult times, a commitment to God, and formative experiences as children.  One student had decided to enter seminary after his parish priest in Mosul was assassinated several years ago.  But I was most surprised when one of the students turned the tables on me and asked for the story of how Kaitlin and I met, and why we came to Iraq.  Another student had just summed up his calling by drawing a heart with an arrow sticking through it and “[his name] and Jesus forever,” so the analogy between marriage and the priesthood seemed to be clearly in their minds.  Judging by their reactions, my account of meeting Kaitlin through friends at EMU, dating, and getting married, was probably a bit more boring than they were hoping.   (One said, “next time we see Kaitlin we’ll get the real story.")  But their interest in my life and their openness has helped create a comforting sense of camaraderie.  I'm not yet sure what kind of English teacher I am, or how useful our presence really is, but most of time--unless I've really bombed the lesson--I feel good when I walk home from the seminary. 

...

Seminarians in the middle of a minor construction project on the grounds of St. Peter's Seminary in Ankawa.

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In more somber news, on Wednesday a car bomb exploded in Erbil, killing at least five and wounding almost thirty.  This is the first attack of this size in Kurdistan for more than a year.  We are hopeful that it will be an isolated event, but it was a crack in our idea that Kurdistan is the "safe" Iraq.   At the same time, most people I spoke with were pretty unfazed by the bombing.  (Then again, most of these people were from Baghdad, so their sense of normalcy is not totally comforting.)

   

What was comforting was going that same Wednesday evening to Mar Elia, a local church compound hosting 150 Christian IDP families to help teach English Christmas carols to the children at the center.  I had, of course, selected good, traditional English carols with lots of "thee's" and "yon's," but the priest in charge of the events had already taught them "Last Christmas."  I didn't feel great about contributing to the spread of American pop culture with my token volunteering for the week, but the kids definitely liked it better than "Silent Night."

Kaitlin's work

I am MCC's Program Coordinator for Iraq.  This means that, unlike Nathan, I'm not doing direct work -- instead, my job entails either working with MCC staff or working with Iraqi partner organizations, who are in turn doing the direct work.

Most of my work is on the computer.  I primarily communicate with my MCC supervisors (who live in Jordan) via email and Skype.  I also communicate with MCC staff in the U.S./Canada, and I contribute reports, photos, finances, and other project-related information to MCC's databases.  That's all one half of my job -- the half oriented toward MCC.  The other half is oriented toward our local Iraqi partners.

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Interlude: MCC's partners in Iraq

Lots of the partners we work with are churches and church institutions.  For example, there is a primary/secondary school and a seminary that are both run by the Chaldean Catholic Church.  We have two MCC Global Family projects---a kindergarten and an orphanage---each run by a different order of nuns.  There are also individual priests who we help to do different projects, like sponsoring a medical clinic for IDPs living in Ankawa, or helping implement a series of trauma training and recovery courses.

Two participants share their personal stories of recent displacement during the trauma training and recovery course implemented by the Chaldean Catholic Church in October 2014.  MCC provided some funds and logistical support for the course.

The rest of our partners are Iraqi non-governmental organizations (NGOs).  These are secular organizations that work at improving Iraq through peacebuilding, development, and relief projects.  For example, we have agricultural development projects with different partners in several areas across the country.  We also have projects that encourage dialogue between groups of people (specifically between religious and ethnic groups, of which there are many in Iraq).  In the past six months, all of these NGOs have switched gears to provide emergency relief to people who have been displaced by the current conflict in addition to continuing their ongoing work.

An MCC-funded agricultural project with REACH turned a section of the desert in Suleimaniya Province into an irrigated rice paddy that provides increased crop and profit yields for the twenty-five farmers who collectively manage it.

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Much of my communication with these partners is also via email (or text), and there's more computer work, such as editing/writing reports and matching up Arabic/Kurdish receipts with English financial reports. The daily routine of my desk job is contrasted with the need to always be on stand-by for the unexpected. Business hours are a pretty loose concept (or at least I don't know them): I get work-related texts or Skype calls at 10 pm, and conversely I interrupt people's naps by calling them at 2 pm.  Important meetings are often set up less than 24 hours in advance, and people will stop by the house with anywhere from five to thirty minutes' notice.

All of this more or less describes a work situation in which I thrive; it's a combination of detail-oriented, specialized, mundane, time-sensitive, and varied work that I can tackle in my own order and at my own pace, with a mixture of human interaction and uninterrupted alone time.

This is a typical daily line-up: my to-do list, two cups of Turkish/Arabic/Kurdish coffee, and my email inbox.
The MCC Iraq office is the front room of our house, which means: (1) I can wear yoga pants to work, (2) When people do drop by I can quickly make tea and pull out cookies; (3) Sometimes I don't step outside for 48+ hours.  Oops.

The hardest part of the job for me is the responsibility to think proactively and envision what MCC could do in Iraq.  I'm a doer, not a dreamer: if you give me a ship I will keep it afloat and stay the course, no matter how big or unfamiliar or close to a war zone it is.  But imagining a different ship design or tacking a new course?  That's daunting.

Highs and lows

Our first couple of posts have been carefully crafted reflections.  But we’re realizing that we don’t have the energy for that and if we want to post more often than twice a year it is going to need to be more low-key.  That’s probably what most people are interested in anyway.  So, here are some snapshots of the last month: 

• As a warm-up conversation activity in the beginner’s English class I teach at St. Peter’s Seminary, I asked students to each say a place they’d like to visit.  A few students said Germany or Brazil or Italy, which was more or less what I expected.  About four of them said, “Someday I want to visit my home in Qaraqosh.”   ....Oh.  Right.  Displaced people are everywhere, and even though their homes are less than 100 miles away, it's possible they will never see them again.

•  Two weeks ago it rained every day for almost a week.  We were extra busy because of an MCC-sponsored trauma-training course.  One evening we came home and the electricity was off. This happens regularly, but this time it seemed like it was our problem, not the grid’s.  Then the neighbors who just moved in began some minor remodeling late at night.  All of the stress of the last three months poured in over us.  Our inability to do anything that felt significant in the situation was matched by our inability to even manage our own house.  And yet the more we felt bad about our own situation, the guiltier we felt about our privilege, given the people enduring the rain in tents down the road.  There was some crying.    

When my spirits were at their lowest, there was no solace except frozen cookie dough straight from the freezer, an arrangement that shows how good we have it.  Photo credit: Kaitlin trying to be sneaky.

• In the early morning two weeks ago on my way to an MCC-sponsored trauma training, I saw two kids carrying a wooden pallet down the street.  Half a block behind them I saw a middle-aged man doing the same thing.  They must have been a displaced family living at a camp nearby.  It had been raining heavily, and their condition had undoubtedly gotten even worse in the last few days and nights.  The pallets, I assumed, were intended to lift mattresses or goods off the ground a few inches in their tents. It made me feel terrible.  At the same time, it was also a reminder not to view the displaced entirely as powerless victims.  They look after themselves, something that is surprisingly easy to forget.   

•  As a part of an MCC learning tour that just passed through Iraq, we visited some MCC-supported projects in rural areas to the east of us, in Suleimaniya Province.  In what felt like one of the most remote and desolate landscapes I’ve seen, we visited a small village where REACH, an MCC partner organization, had helped villagers construct a large dam to retain winter water runoff from the mountains.  The reservoir can last all year long and provide water for agriculture and drinking to surrounding villages, as well as boost the water table for local wells [picture coming soon].             

• We’ve gotten to know a young man named Ali who sells roasted sunflower seeds by the main road in Ankawa.  Ali is from Kobany, Syria, but he left 7 months ago, which was well before the most recent fighting there.  He has a BA in French, but can’t find a job using his degree. 

• I sang a solo in Sureth (neo-Aramaic) in choir at Mass!                                                                    

The stories we tell

I find myself repeating a single line when people ask me about Iraq, particularly about the security situation: “the Kurdish region is very safe.”  And this is true: living and working in Ankawa and occasionally visiting partners in other cities within the Kurdish region, we are not in danger.  

In this case, our safety is represented in the form of homemade chocolate chip cookies.
Please note that Nathan is reaching for one from the rack with his right hand when he already has one in his left hand.

By emphasizing our personal safety, though, I discard an opportunity to share the impact of this violence on the many people who are not safe from its danger.

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You may remember Chimamanda Adichie, a Nigerian author who gave a TED talk on the danger of a single story in 2009.  Adichie critiques the human tendency to quickly summarize another’s experience through a single story, stereotype, or perspective.  MCC uses Adichie’s lecture in its orientation for new staff as an example of what it tries to do in every place it works: look for and tell the myriad alternative stories that complicate and deepen our (North American) single-story understandings of places, peoples, and problems.

This spring, I heard a speech by EMU student Seth Stauffer in which he turned Adichie’s critique back upon MCC: sometimes MCC combats the danger of a single story with its own alternate single story.  We downplay the violence in locations known for little else in favor of highlighting the complex and beautiful life that is being lived in the midst of—and in spite of—that violence.  Both sides are true; one emphasizes the darkness, the other emphasizes the light breaking through.  But neither is the full story, and both miss the spectrum of stories in between.

Remembering this, I felt convicted.  Two months into an MCC term, and I’m already slipping into dualisms of light-and-dark instead of hanging out in the gray area, which I invariably claim to prefer.  Here is my first attempt at combating my own single story of Iraq.

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You already know the plot of the dominant single story: daily airstrikes that kill forces of the Islamic State as well as Iraqi civilians; terrorism and attacks that kill Iraqi soldiers and more civilians; the escalating conflict in both Iraq and Syria as more players jump in.  Another part of this story chronicles the millions of refugees and internally-displaced people (IDPs) across Iraq and Syria.  It’s a familiar and heart-wrenching tune.

At camps where IDPs are living, a generally-accepted tent size for a family of 6 is about 10 feet by 10 feet, although in reality an area of that same size---tent or no tent, as shown here---often houses twice that many people.  Look at the room you're in right now and do some quick measurements for comparison (Photo credit: Salar Ahmed).
Now remember that in Iraq the summers have an average high of 110-115 F and an overnight low of 85-90 F, and these people lived outside, without electricity, through the worst of it.  Some people fled Ninevah eight weeks ago, and some people fled Mosul almost four months ago.  Others fled Anbar in February, and others fled Syria two or more years ago.

There are over 1.8 million people living like this all across Iraq.  That’s more than the entire population of Philadelphia, and it’s just as diverse: doctors, street sweepers, grandparents, lawyers, pregnant women, electricians, high-schoolers, architects, people with cancer.  Whole towns and cities left their homes and livelihoods behind overnight and have been living in miserable suspension ever since.

Last Wednesday, Nathan and I were approached by three Syrian beggars asking for money—all Muslim women with small children—over the course of 15 minutes.  Hands to our hearts, we said “no, my dear, I am sorry” in Arabic and turned away.  These three, in quick succession, overwhelmed me with the parallel to Peter’s denials before the rooster’s crow.  What can we do differently?  Always give a set amount when asked and then try to disengage?  Avoid the part of town where beggars congregate?  Learn their names and some of their story before going on our way?  The options expose us to varying levels of others' pain, but none of them fix anything.  When we've given change to beggars in the past, they (rightly) insist on more; they need hospital visits, rent, jobs; not five dollars. 

War is awful.  We avert our eyes because it is grotesque and too painful to comprehend, let alone explain.  The numbers are numbing, and the pictures have saturated our capacity to empathize.  What can we do differently?  As I write it I know this rings hollow, but I can’t get away from it: we have to expose ourselves to the pain.  We have to keep showing—to ourselves and to others—the myriad grays instead of combating the story of darkness with one of all light.