Quiet Days and New Friends

As I exclaimed during school this morning, this past week has been so exceedingly pleasant. Since nothing extraordinary has been going on, life has been fairly quiet. Pat, Joel, Jodie, and I spend long hours sitting on the bed in the one air-conditioned room in the house reading aloud from a book of Bible stories, a biography of David Livingstone, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and The Hobbit. I greatly enjoy reading aloud, supplying voices, sound effects, and accents where needed. When I don’t feel like reading, Pat takes a turn. While listening, we all work on our own cross-stitch projects, Jodie on one I brought for her as a present, Joel and Pat on ancient projects that have been dug out of piles of handy crafts. Whenever we feel like it, Jodie or Joel runs over to the kitchen to fetch soda or cookies or chips for us to snack on. It is supremely luxurious and edifying.

One day at a time, life here is good. We are always doing something worthwhile, for others or for personal enrichment. We have meals as a family, sometimes while watching a movie, sometimes while having conversation. We have family devotions every night in which we read from a devotion book and pray together. We go to Body and Soul Exercise led by Pat. Pat uses Theophostic Prayer techniques to minister to women who come to her and leads a weekly class on the principles of Theophostic Prayer Ministry. Once a month, Paul leads “English Worship”, a worship service for families who want to learn worship songs in English. And I am only scratching the surface of what goes on here by recounting what I’ve personally witnessed in the past week and a half!

When I’m not following Pat around, shadowing her in her errands and meetings, I am spending time with the families that live right around the Stock’s house. I have met one family that I care about particularly. There are many people in the household but two are my special friends, Razia, 19 years old, and Sunila, 22 years old. They are both gentle, gracious, and dignified. Both have a winning quality of brightness about them; they bring peace and light into a room with them. They are proficient at the chores necessary to running the house and they are leaders in the community of young people. They have shown me their skills with hena painting, hair doing, clothes sewing, etc. We have accepted each other like sisters. The few times I have been able to visit in their hut, I have enjoyed sitting with them, exchanging Urdu and English words, and just being together. Right now, I’m working with Sunila and Pat to write a Vacation Bible School program to be put on at a nearby church in two weeks. Razia came with me to the bazaar today and held my hand faithfully as we traversed the labyrinth of tunnel-streets.

Razia has told me of how she wishes she could visit America. I raked my brains for reasonable possibilities of how she could arrange such a trip but none came to mind. It was very clear to me that I, a rich American, had only been able to visit Pakistan because of the faithful generosity of those who love me and believe in my potential. How can Razia, a 19 year old who lives in a three room hut hope to finance a trip abroad? Razia patted my hand as I looked at her helplessly. The only way I could think of was if someone would want to bring Razia with them on their trip to the United States to watch their children or attend some sort of important event. Razia nodded her head graciously; she appreciated my concern, but to her, visiting America was just a dream.

Yesterday I went to work on English with Sunila. Sunila was busy helping her older sister Nasreen get ready to attend a fancy party in honor of the bishop’s birthday. Sunila sewed some fashionable bodice seams into Nasreen’s chamese (shirt) and then plucked her eyebrows with a circlet of thread. When Nasreen was done, Sunila motioned for me to lie down so she could thread my eyebrows too! I was a little ambivalent since I wasn’t keen on the discomfort of the process and I didn’t think my eyebrows needed any attention. Still, I eventually succumbed and lay down. If I had known how much it would hurt, I would not have been so obliging. Sunila would select a hair, latch onto it with the thread, then every so slowly drag it out of my head. Before long, my eyes were watering with distress and it was all I could do to keep from sitting up and leaving with the job half done. Sunila laughed and said that my hair was very strong. Then she called Razia to come and hold my hand. The process went on and on; I started to wonder if they were reducing my eyebrows to pencil thinness. When I inspected the work afterward, however, I had to admit that the end product looked good, even if the skin over my eyes was red and raw.

Today I will go to Razia and Sunila’s house again. They have invited me to come so that they can dress me up in tribal clothes, do my make-up, and take pictures. Nasreen has promised that she will put on music and the three sisters will teach me to dance! This pleased me greatly since learning to dance in the Pakistani way was one of my hopes for this trip.

Taking Stock

I am beginning to turn my thoughts toward the flight home and my return from Pakistan. It is hard to believe that I’m over half way through my trip and that soon my seven weeks will be over. Pat and Jodie have also expressed surprise that I will so soon be leaving. Jodie said that she thought I was staying until mid August, long enough to go with them on their family vacation in Hunza. I find myself quite sincere in assuring them that I wish I was staying. Though I well remember the intense homesickness and physical struggle of my first three weeks in Pakistan, now that I have adjusted into a level of comfort with the culture, lifestyle, and local people, I can truly appreciate being here. I fear that I will not be able, in the three weeks remaining before I fly away, to fully gain a sense of the Pakistan and the roles of missionaries here.

Most of the traveling and village visiting that I have experienced happened early in my trip while I was ill from jetlag and cocksacki. For the past week and a half that I have been feeling healthy and enthusiastic, my time has been spent helping out with the daily activities of the Stock home (home-school, cooking, going to the aerobics class Pat teaches, visiting the families who live nearby, going to the bazaar, etc.) It has been very comfortable and pleasant but I am eager to go to more rural villages, meet non-Christians, learn more of the local language, experience a celebration, and explore the various roles of missionaries in this location. I feel that this is a tall order for three weeks. I’m afraid that I will end up flying home with a sense of having leaving half undone the work I’d set out to do.

I wonder if I have accomplished my goals. I came to serve the Stock family and the people of the Sindh to the best of my currently limited abilities. I came to learn about mission work, the state of countries such as Pakistan, and my compatibility with overseas conditions. I came to explore previously unimagined (by me) applications of psychology so as to clarify my graduate school and ministry hopes. I came to quiet my fears about the future and to establish a precedent of placing God’s will and way as my priority.

Have these goals been met? I brought with me three text books to read. I’ve read one chapter of each. I brought with me one novel to read; I’ve read the whole thing. Have I used my time well? Have I learned enough while over here to be ready to make the decisions that will be facing me when I get home? Am I ready to choose an interim job, to choose a graduate program, to specify my desired specialty? Am I ready to trust God in the United States where life moves so much faster and where excess options confuse discernment? I don’t know. I will just have to spend these last few weeks in Pakistan as industriously and effectively as I can and trust God for the rest.

I feel now as though I could possibly bear to live far away from my family, if the perfect school or perfect program or perfect profession happened to be located across the country or in another country. I would only ever be a plane’s trip away from my family and modern communication is so good, I would never be out of touch. But I wonder how much of this confidence comes from the fact that I feel so at home with the Stock family? Perhaps this is not a representative situation since I already knew this family, they have welcomed me into their home, and they happen to be so compatible with me.

I have become very fond of the Stock family. Pat is amazing to me. She is so consistently cheerful, laughing when others would cry with frustration. She takes so much in stride, patiently pushing through until whatever needs to happen is accomplished. She has a happy way of staying peaceful no matter how off schedule her life becomes through unexpected demands upon her time. I am always amazed at how she can find strength and motivation to start cooking a dinner from scratch at 7:00pm after spending several hours at the bazaar or after spending all afternoon leading exercise class. She blesses me by how patiently she accommodates the requests of her children and treats me with the same earnest consideration. It is as though she cares about my hopes and preferences as much as I do. She is always up for talking and laughing together, watching a movie, helping me put into action my plans, or to pray with me.

I have also grown fond of Paul, Joel, and Jodie. Paul is full of fun, his laughter and smiles and dancing around fill a room. He has an exuberant and contagious love that overflows into kissing and hugging (to Jodie), thumping on the back, pats on the head, kind words, and warm smiles as appropriate. His music inspires joy and tears according to their content. He is full of light and love as he touches the hearts and lives of those around him. His sermons are stirring and I love to discus with him the questions of the faith that most trouble me.

Joel has a soft, sweet spirit. He has a tender love for animals. You should see him cradling the family’s cats in his arms like infants as he croons cutesy baby-talk to them. He is often quiet, reading a book or working on his school, but whenever he can get his hands on a musical instrument, he pours forth recognizable strains. He painstakingly works out complicated pieces of music by copying the electric piano’s performance. His parents gave him a plastic toy saxophone that has a piano keyboard on the side and makes sounds like a harmonica. They gave it to him as a joke but Joel plays it like a pro, even accompanying the family worship services! But what I like most about Joel is his gentle, compassionate humility. While playing a cranium-like game, he lost a challenge by being the first person playing to run out of complements for himself! He may not remember tons of nice things about himself, but he never forgets to say goodnight to me by name.

Jodie is the queen of the roost. She is under four feet tall but has the rest of the family wrapped around her tiny fingers. She can spell “ostentatious” along with other equally impressive Spelling Power words, but she speaks with the childish pronunciation of the “r” sound as “awr”. She has a sharp mind for figuring out which arrangements of seats or schedule would be best to her advantage, but has not yet matured into considering what would be best for the other people in the situation. Of all the family members, it took me the longest to come to terms with Jodie. I think she reminded me a little too much of myself at her age; potent personality, articulate but immature, strong-willed until convinced otherwise. I was irked by how her parents catered to her preferences and allowed her to, at times, monopolize their attention. I was especially intolerant since Jodie seemed to ignore me entirely. Over the past week or so that I have been more involved with Jodie’s home school, I have come to interact with her more as a person and to appreciate her fire-cracker sparkle. I enjoy how she sings to herself and gets so excited about little things like how many times a tea bag can be used before it loses its flavor.

One thing is sure, I will miss this family when I leave. They hold such a sense of home for me. I hope that I have contributed something of value to them and that they will keep me in their hearts and welcome me back when we meet again. I hope that I can serve them well for the next few weeks and that I can repay to them some of the debt of love I hold for them in my heart. I pray that my time here will leave a small, positive mark on this place and this family as it has made a large, wonderful mark on me and my life.

Cake Catastrophe a la Martha

Martha is quite a character. She is very pretty and very persistent, so she usually gets her way once she sets her mind to it. Though half the time she is poking fun at me in Urdu and leading the other girls in falling over themselves laughing, Martha has been my most consistent companion while I am at Pat and Paul’s house. Martha is about 14 and has a full yet slim figure and facial features similar to Catherine Zeta Jones. However, because of her relatively dark skin tone, she is not considered beautiful by local standards. For myself, I can’t see how anyone can resist the charm of her twinkling smile and doe-eyed pouting. Still, despite her feminine whiles, she was the main cause of the trouble we had when we tried to bake a cake.

It all started when Pat asked me and Jodie to bake a cake to bring with us to the English Worship potluck. Pat was busy with other things and so wasn’t able to supervise much. Pat gave us a recipe for chocolate cake that involved combining butter, water, and cocoa powder until it boiled on the stove, then mixing it in with flower, sugar, eggs, vanilla etc. It seemed simple enough.

Jodie and I both assured Pat that we would be fine. Neither of us realized that we were both counting on the OTHER one to know what to do! I knew that I was no wis in the kitchen but I didn’t think this would be a problem. Even if competent Jodie was a little young or small to know everything, the four other girls who were helping us, Martha included, would surely know what to do; they had been helping their mothers with cooking for years! This assumption seemed validated when Jodie was able to direct me in the way that is best to measure butter. Jodie showed me that by floating the solid butter in a measuring cup of water, one can compensate for air-pockets by measuring density, or something like that.

First, I told Martha to put “doh” (two) cups of water on to boil over the gas stove. Then, while Jodie was rummaging in the fridge to find the butter, I sent Martha to fetch two more cups for measuring the butter. That is when the first problems began. When Jodie was all ready to start scooping butter into a measuring cup of water, I turned around to see where Martha had gotten to. She was standing smilingly right behind me, her hands empty of the requested water. “Caw pani hey? (where is the water)” I asked. Her smile was replaced with a look of confusion. She pointed to the stove. Looking in the pot, I saw she had added the second two cups to the simmering pot. Hastily, I poured the two cups back into the measuring cup and handed it to Jodie.

While Jodie was dumping butter into the water, little by little the waterline rising to the four cup mark, I cast about for something for Martha and the other girls to do. I set them to scooping cocoa powder into the boiling water. “We need cheh (six) tablespoons” I said, indicating the number with my fingers. Eagerly, Martha took the bag from me, loaded up a heaping spoon full, and advanced on the pot. “No!” I stopped her, pulling her back. “Like this,” I said, showing her how to level off the powder in the spoon to make exactly a tablespoon. “Ahh,” she responded, with a knowing look. I kept careful watch and careful count as she and the other girls took turns measuring out the powder, occasionally missing the pot and dumping half the spoon full on the stove. Exasperated, I left them to stir in the cocoa to the water and turned back to Jodie who had finished measuring butter.

This is when the first real hurdle became evident. “This never happened before,” Jodie said, indicating the measuring cup. The butter had melted into the hot water used for measuring. Now we were stuck. We had used most of the cocoa powder getting six tablespoons into the two cups of water on the stove. We had used ALL of the butter, melting it into two cups of water in the measuring cup. But how were we to combine the butter and cocoa without having FOUR coups of water? It was like a brain teaser and made me wish Carlos was there to find a brilliant solution. We ended up calling in Pat. When she heard the story and saw the situation she laughed. “Pour out as much water as you can through a sieve and put the rest in the pot. You’ll get most of it that way.”

So we continued to work. The butter, water, and cocoa mixture had to be continually stirred to keep it from burning. Martha insisted that she would take care of this job while I saw to the preparation of the dry ingredients. With misgiving, I left her to it and turned to the other girls who were sifting flour into a big pan on the floor. After sifting the flour, we discovered that the sugar jar was alive with 10-15 tiny ants. I considered this a problem, but the other girls cheerfully waved away my fears saying that this sort of thing was not unusual. I ruefully watched them measured out cups of bespeckled sugar into the bowl with the flour and other ingredients.

That was when Martha made a squeaking noise that drew my attention back to her and to the simmering pot. She tipped the pot to the side to show me that white things were floating in the dark brown goop. Then she held up the spatula she had been stirring with. The white rubber tip had melted into the pot! Again Pat was called, again we were instructed to run the thick conglomeration through the sieve. Again I watched sheepishly while Pat laughed and threw her hands up, wondering what we would do next.

Pat stayed with us, supervising the remaining steps of the cake catastrophe, until we had the two pans safely in the oven. All went fairly well after that, except for a slight incident when one pan fell off the rack and to the back of the oven while I was trying to switch the front pan to the back. Despite this set back, the cakes both came out of the oven 30 minutes later in pristine condition. I was glad that the trial was successfully over. The girls had gone home and all was relatively quiet.

20 minutes before we had to leave for the pot-luck Pat was hurriedly cooking roties (tortillas) one by one in a frying pan. Pat asked me to make frosting for the cake. “Are we sure it needs it,” I asked anxiously. “My family never frosts our cakes.”

She looked at me skeptically. “We could leave the frosting off one of them, if you’re worried about the sugar.”

“Oh no, I’m just thinking of what would be a best use of our time…” I spluttered.

“Well, I think that the people at the meeting would enjoy icing, and it shouldn’t take too long. It just takes butter, sugar, and cocoa, right?” She said, checking the recipe.

Warily, I assented. “I’m willing to give it a try.”

I promise you, I followed that recipe to a tea. I combined butter and cocoa powder in a saucepan over low heat. I stirred with a wooden spoon to avoid another meltdown. I stirred and stirred as the butter boiled, at which point I turned off the flame. Stirring anxiously, I found that the cocoa powder simply would not combine with the butter. As the foaming bubbles died down, cocoa mud swam resolutely in yellow oil, all that was left of the ill-fated butter. I found myself making a squeaking sound very similar to the one Martha had made as she bent over the same sauce pan earlier that day. Helplessly, I called Pat to examine the concoction.

Pat shook her head and laughed. “Well, we don’t have enough butter or cocoa to start over. Maybe we will have cake without icing after all!”

“There must be a way,” I wheedled, prodding with my spoon at the thick brown muck in the pan, “it has such good ingredients, it seems a shame to throw it away. Maybe if we add just a little sugar or, or something, then maybe it would make a pudding or, or something else that might be tasty?”

“We could try,” she said, “but let’s just take a little bit out of the pan to play with so that we don’t waste all our sugar.”

I scooped a tablespoon’s worth of brown muck into a bowl. Pat stirred in a quarter of a cup of powdered sugar. I watched anxiously as Pat popped a finger-full into her mouth. “Not bad!” She finally reported. Smiling at last, I tried it myself. Not bad indeed.

I poured the oil that had refused to bond with the cocoa into a jar while Pat stirred several cups of sugar into the rest of the cocoa goop in the pan. “This oil must have come out of the butter when it boiled,” I surmised.

“The butter boiled?” Pat asked, surprised. Then she laughed again. “It was only supposed to simmer. Well, tonight we will have low-fat icing.”

Considering all the near disasters, the ants, the rubber, the removed oil etc. all things considered, the cake was a smash hit. Though it was a little chewy, it tasted very good. When Paul heard about the two uncalled for ingredients, ants and the rubber spatula, he was much more concerned about the rubber which might still be in the cake. The ants didn’t bother him at all; as the girls had said, bugs in the food is par for the course here. “Well,” I told him cheerfully, “if you feel any lumps in your cake, you can just tell yourself it is an ant.”

He who is faithful in small things...

As written in my journal June 19 2010:

I am trying to hear and follow God’s prompting but it is very difficult. I have identified two feelings which usually accompany and indicate that a leading is from God.

The first is a feeling of my heart lighting up with joy. When I feel honest delight at a prospect, feeling that this is the desire of my heart, my passion, something that makes me come alive, I understand that this is what God would desire me to do. He has placed talents and interests in me and leads me in ways that I can use these inclinations to serve him and the kingdom. When the inclination to follow the desire of my heart comes from him, then I feel no hesitation or suspicion of my motives; I simply feel blessed to walk in the way set before me.

There is a second feeling which just as reliably indicates that a possible action is willed of God. Alternatively to a thrill of delight, my heart seems to groan with inner resistance. If the option ahead of me seems abhorrent to my preferences, the exact and only thing I do NOT want to do, this option often seems to be the one that the voice in my head insists is from God.

For example, this morning Martha asked me to come and play dolls with her and the other children. I told her, no; I was about to have my quiet time. Yet, as I retreated to a back room to hide from their pleading, I felt an annoying reproof in my mind.

“Whatever you do unto the least of these, you have done unto me.”

Sitting on my bed with my Bible unopened next to me, I felt that familiar groan in my spirit. “Surely you aren’t saying I should give up spending time with you to sit and watch children play dolls in a foreign language when I spend 80% of my time with them anyway?” I responded, sure that I had the rational high ground and that the voice in my head was not from God but from my own moral neuroticism.

“If you are spending time ministering to the least of these, then you are spending time with me.” was the calm and obvious response.

“But don’t you also want me to take time to meet you one-on-one and worship you?” I wheedled.

“There is an English worship service tonight. You will sing praises then.”

I thought about it. The main reason I was holding out against playing with the girls was not because I had a burning desire to read the Bible. It was because I didn’t feel like extending myself emotionally so early in the day. This selfish motive did not take moral precedence over the demands of Godly character to be service oriented.

I thought to myself, I must comply because I absolutely need to learn to rightly discern and FOLLOW God’s voice. Knowing the scripture and knowing God’s character are helpful for discerning what God is likely to desire. But once I have an idea of God’s will, even in small things, willingness to follow through, is critical. If I don’t have an idea of what would be in God’s character, then it isn’t so culpable to make a decision based on my own judgment. But if I feel that it would be better to extend myself to the children and then don’t do it, it has a feeling of blatant disobedience. I so much want to be able to not only discern God’s prompting but to also be obedient.

I know there is a difference between taking initiative to live life in a way acceptable to God, and so within his will, and hearing an individual direction from God for a specific action. I want to be faithful in both, but I especially long to be able to receive and respond to the second kind of command.

I want to be someone God can rely on to obey. I want to be faithful and consistent in paying attention to God’s cues and to performing the indicated action. I want to be like a well trained dog that the master can rely on to follow commands with good grace. I want to be like an attentive and graceful dancer who understands the slightest leading movement in her partner and thus is able to dance with him, following his moves as though with one mind. I want to be obedient.

I want to be this kind of Christian for three main reasons.

Firstly, I know that this kind of obedience leads to a life of blessing. God’s way of life is generally the most blessed way. His wisdom leads in right ways that are worthy, righteous, virtuous, loving, and blessed.

Secondly, being trustworthy to obey opens up a world of possibilities for partnering with God. A well trained dog can be let off the leash, taken in public, and asked to perform important tasks like sniffing out bombs or competing in competitions. In the same way, a well trained Christian can be led into situations which are dangerous and/or important because God can trust them to obey without arguing or excuses even if they don’t understand the reasons behind his directions or don’t relish the prospect of what he is asking them to do.

Thirdly, to rely so completely upon the wisdom and benevolence of God’s guidance must forge a deep, personal connection to God. To trust him so wholly that you are willing to change your behavior, become vulnerable to disappointment, and experience personal sacrifice requires you to exercise your faith. It requires you to live in the reality of God’s existence, power, trust-worthiness, and personal involvement in your life. I bet this kind of obedience would take “the joy of salvation” to a whole new level.

I feel that this trip to Pakistan is an exercise in obedience. I was terrified by the prospect of traveling alone, going so far away (both geographically and culturally), and not having plans set up for what to do when I get home etc. And yet I felt that to NOT go for these reasons would be a step into a future ruled by fear, outside the providence and blessing of following God’s will. If I could not obey such a blunt and temporary direction as to spend two months abroad on a short term mission, how could I expect to put God’s will above my own in more subtle decisions? How an I hope to find his best will for my life if I rule-out actions that are outside of my comfort zone (like international travel) or that require trusting God to provide? For these reasons, among others, I have come here. I hope that this choice, this slice of eternity, is representative of my lifestyle. I hope that this action will set a precedent for how I will continue to live my life.

By the way, just so you know, I did pack up my quiet-time things in accordance to the nagging feeling of God’s leading. I moved back into the main part of the house, resolved to serve Christ in the little children by playing dolls.

At the Audio Visual Center

I am currently sitting in Paul’s work place, the Christian Audio Visual Center a few minutes drive from the hostel where the Stocks live. I sit in a room with bamboo walls surrounded by five or six flat, official-looking computer screens. With me sit Paul, several techies running the computers, a couple singers, and a woman who seems to have come as the chaperone of the one woman singer present. All day singers have been coming to record their solos, the finishing tracks for a new CD of village dance songs.

Right now, Paul is leading the young woman singer in a practice run through of the part she is about to record. She is beautiful, her long black hair contrasting grandly with her fair skin and shimmering gold outfit. She carries herself in a refined, almost disdainful, manner. Still, she looks nervous, stumbling through a few words since the song is written in a village language of which she is unfamiliar.

Paul has just waved her into the adjoining room where she stands alone at the microphone, visible from where the rest of us sit through a window. She looks small now, with enormous headphones clamped over her ears. But now her voice is coming through the sound-system larger than life. She blends well with the under-tracks of drums, village flutes, and children echoing her lines. One can close their eyes and almost see the girl dancing through a village, trailed by children scattering flowers.

And so the process starts. This singer is the fifth to sing today. Every time so far, the singer has had to sing problem area over and over, fine tuning pronunciation, tune, or rhythm. Only Paul seems able to pronounce every kind of sound. He is also always on pitch and beat. Paul patiently gives instructions and models the correct pronunciation to the singer in the other room through a microphone which occasionally shocks him. His voice fed through the sound-system is so musical and accurate that I wonder why he isn’t singing all the parts! One singer could not seem pronounce a “k” sound correctly in the context of the song no matter how many times he tried. Paul explained that this isn’t a problem, though, because the tech guys can take the recorded “k” out of isolation and stick it into the context of the rest of the song over top of what he really sang.

The computer technology being used here is amazing to me. You can see all the different sounds streaming across the screen, all able to be manipulated by the man at the keyboard. Other men work on editing videos; one a Pakistani music video depicting a Bible scene, on a video recording of one of Paul’s concerts. Each video is spread across two screens each. Chords, speakers, and knobs are scattered all over the room.

Uh oh! The main computer, the one mixing the sound, just died. People are bustling around, trying to figure out how to conserve enough power to run the computer without losing the lights or fan. The singer has come back into the room to wait under the fan. She is wiping sweat from her lovely face and meets my eye. “Very good!” I say. “Two days, very hard.” She responds wearily. Ah, they have gotten the computer running again; the lights are dim and keep flickering threateningly. Now the girl is back in the recording room, back at it, gruelingly working through each phrase until it is right.

A girl who sang earlier is back. I like her but don’t know her yet. She has an open, accessible expression, often smiling at me. Her name is Sabah. She is also very pretty, dark hair pulled up in a bun but still curling in wisps on her fair neck. Her suit is pale turquoise with highlights of violet and white which go well with her costume pearls. Though she looks little older than me, Paul tells me that this girl is studying to be a doctor. I hope she stays for exercise tonight. I would like to know her better; she has a kind face. Oh, she is going away now. I hope to see her again soon. Sabah…

The other woman, the chaperone, sits next to me now reading a book. She is not fair like the other two girls. She is darker skinned and dressed in the tribal colors of heavy kelly green and magenta with bright orange trim. Her face and features are round, her eyes so dark they look black, and her lips are colored dark pink. Her ivory teeth shine when she smiles. Her finger and toe nails are painted pale metallic pink. All in all, she has a simpler beauty than the other women who came to sing. But she is still beautiful in the prim of her youth and sweetness. Eventually she, I, and the other women that the world considers lovely, we will all be weathered and wrinkled with age. What matters more is the kindness and wisdom that we might have inside. It is through actions prompted from gentle and compassionate motives that we might achieve lasting beauty.

The men here are also nice to look upon. I stray into dangerous territory to even mention it, but I have been sitting here listening to snatches of Urdu tunes repeated ad infinitum for several hours and my mind naturally wanders. One piece of advice I was given most often before arriving in Pakistan was to never look a Muslim man in the eyes. As part of my orientation to Pakistan, Pat explained that I could never sit next to a man that was not “family” (or at least a member of our party). I should also take care not to accidentally touch men in passing or while handing them a cup of tea. It was these warnings that kept my eyes glued to the floor for the first couple weeks just in case a man might walk by. When men were in the room, I ignored them bashfully.

But as time has gone by, I’ve found that I am the only one exercising such complete discretion. Pat interacts face to face with shop keepers, village men, male church members etc. She treats these men as equals and as friends, when she knows them. Ashley, the Stock’s daughter who is roughly my age, seemed perfectly comfortable around her male peers around the compound etc. Also, some interaction with men is culture mandated. I incline my head to older men as well as older women to let them place their hands on my head in blessing. In other circles it is expected to shake hands and Paul greets everyone, females included, with a light hug. While I was sitting here, politely ignoring all the men in the room, one of the men offered me his camera to look at his pictures while meeting my eye with a friendly smile. A young woman who is working with us here is sitting between two men!

I don’t get it. Why are the strict social rules relaxed here in the Audio Visual Center? Are the rules more relaxed here because we are among friends or because we are in a Christian context? Is it ok to make I contact with someone who is not a stranger, or when you have business with them? When I visit my friend Rajia in her home, is it ok to interact with her brother? What about the Canadian boy who is staying with us now? Is it ok to interact with him in front of Pakistanis? I just don’t know. I have so much to learn about this conglomeration of cultures before I can be entirely confident.

Tea has been served. Tea is served every few hours or so. It would be an ideal situation for me if it weren’t for two things. First, the tea is saturated with sugar. Second, one is already sweating from the heat before being handed the steaming cup. So close and yet so far. : ) Oh well, I’d better get off the computer and go be sociable! ;)

Once Upon a Time in this Land Far Far Away...

Paul calls her “the movie star” because of her striking beauty. This woman who hosted us for dinner this evening of June 16 has thick, lustrous hair that rises and falls in dark brown and auburn cascades down her back. Her frame is tiny or opulent in all the right places, like a Barbie only shorter and softer. Her face is made of straight, elegant lines. But you hardly notice any of this compared to her eyes. Her eyes are unbelievably large and they alternately smolder when she sings and then light up when she smiles. Her smile reveals gleaming white, straight teeth which go perfectly with her silky complexion. Ask to see a picture when I get home, I have taken several so that you all will believe me when I praise her. On top of it all, she has a perky, bubbly personality, sings like an angel, and cooks like a gourmet chef.

Unfortunately for the friends who have asked me to bring them home a few Pakistani wives, this woman, 23 year old Abana, is already taken. When Abana was 16, she declared that she wanted to marry Khurram, a distant cousin of hers. There were a few problems, though. Khurram was 8 years older than she and had never shown any particular interest in her before. Incredibly, when Khurram heard of Abana’s announcement, he admitted to feeling the same way about her. Thus started an 8 year tug of war in which they struggled to gain their families’ permission for them to marry.

His family was so stubbornly against his union with Abana that Khurram even offered to defy his family and run away with her, but Abana never gave up that her future mother in law would eventually concede. Khurram’s mother was dead set on him marrying his cousin, insisting that she would be a more suitable choice and that Abana was too high spirited, not suitably respectful to her elders etc. Eventually, Khurram broke down and, just to keep the peace, agreed to become engaged to the other girl. But as the years went slowly by, Abana never let go of her insistence that Khurram would be her husband. Eventually, because he was so miserable, Khurram’s mother allowed him to break off his engagement and to pursue Abana.

Three months later, in December 2010, Khurram and Abana were finally married. As I saw in the two albums of wedding pictures, Abana was a fairy princess in a white western wedding dress and a gypsy temptress in her red and gold tribal outfit, hena curling from her finger tips up her arms. Khurram was every inch the man, uncharacteristically tall and broad, like a great bear next to her. It was quite a spectacle, a true “love marriage” as a non-arranged marriage is called.

Now they live like characters in an Indian soap opera. Unlike most newly married couples, they have not moved in with the husband’s family. They have their own home in a former missionary’s house which is several rooms large and is made of finished walls and roof. The interior is furnished in a tastefully modern style with wicker furniture, glass coffee table, and seashell-themed decorations. The have a large backyard of green grass, a vegetable garden, and a large aviary full of parakeets and love birds. The far corner of their yard is fenced off to contain goats and three baby deer. As I gaped at the elegant luxury of their home, Pat explained that they belong to an upper class family and that 30 year old Khurram has recently taken over as the head of a None Governmental Organization (NGO) called SSEWA-Pak which does development work in rural areas. Their marriage sure seems to have a happily-ever-after ending. One thing is for sure, when a romantic-comedy/bollywood movie comes out based on their life, I want to see it!

By the way, I should point out that their experience is as uncommon here as the plot of Sweet Home Alabama is unusual in the states. Usually girls are married when they are 13-16 years old and the boy isn’t much older than that. Most people here cooperate with marriages arranged by their parents to people they’ve never met. In fact, one tradition at weddings is to weep and wail as the car takes the poor newly wed couple away. Usually the new wife moves in with her new husband who is still living with his parents (and the rest of the rest of his extended family who share the house.) Usually the girl is so homesick that she travels back to her family’s home every week or so for the first year while she tries to adjust to a new place, new family, and a new man. Khurram and Abana are a happy exception to the general rule. Hopefully they will stay happy and not follow in the footsteps of the domestic unrest and divorce that is so rampant in the US.

How to stay clean in a dusty country: Have help

There is an interesting dichotomy here between squalor and cleanliness. The streets are full of trash (mainly plastic bags), discarded parts of fruits, and splatters of tobacco spit. Also, dust is everywhere. The streets are made of dirt, which is disturbed by tires and hooves, and the wind is continually depositing a layer of dust over everything! Inside a given shop, however, the shopkeepers maintain immaculate cleanliness. They slap at the floor, benches and counters with their version of a duster made of a rag attached to the end of a stick. They constantly polish and wipe their wares free of dust. The homes are also kept very clean in spite of often having dirt floors, thatched roofs, and wood-fire cook pits. They carefully maintain their work and living environments with more success than many westerners. Despite living in a situation which necessarily contains dirt, trash, and smoke (from burning trash and cook fires), these people are not dirty.
The Stock family mops their concrete floors every day in addition to daily dusting of all surfaces with a wet cloth. Electronics and bookshelves are covered with plastic when not in use to keep out the dust. They wash clothes every other day and would never wear something without ironing it first.
Pat is able to keep up with all this housework by employing a local woman to help. Every day a woman named Zivi (meaning “life”) comes to help wash dishes, clean, prepare lunch, iron clothes on the floor etc. The Stocks also help to support a man, Padri Emmanuel, who comes on Fridays to receive guests who call on the Stocks asking for medical help and advice. Another man, Babu, is employed to help with buying groceries and transporting villagers who come to the Stocks for rides. One other man, Unice, helps out by running the water pump and fixing things around the house.
Pat explained to me that in the west it seems strange to have a maid and that only the rich employ “servants” but this is because the “servants are included in the products”. Western families don’t have to boil water to wash dishes, boil their buffalo milk and scrape off the cream every morning, make most all of their meals from raw veggies and spices, make their own cat food from rice, chicken liver, and chicken feet, and bake their own tortillas one by one everyday to go with each meal. In the west, milk and pet food etc. come ready to use, already prepared by other hands. The Stock also must work around unexpected power-outages and empty water tanks. With a little help from the local people who need employment and are eager to help, Pat is able to keep up with daily cleaning and cooking while still having time to home school two children, lead Bible studies, attend village events, and receive village visitors etc.
It is currently after lunch. I am tired. Meals here spaced out in time (breakfast at 8:00am, lunch at 2:00, dinner at 8:oo or 9:00.) When meals do come, they are often relatively starch heavy. Veggie and chicken curries are served as garnishes to the tortillas used to scoop them up. Sweet snacks are available between meals in the form of mangos and sweet tea. All these factors combine to make me feel fairly light headed throughout the day. Thankfully, I am usually in a position to rest a little after lunch.
I don’t know how Pat does it. She works conscientiously from when she wakes at 7:00 until she allows herself to go to bed at midnight. She serves the family often without thanks, making people individualized breakfasts, cleaning up, reading aloud the children’s lessons to them etc. Pat’s way demonstrates impressive endurance and sacrifice but it is not likely to be my way when I have kids. If it were me, I would let the children toast their own toast for breakfast or make one meal for everyone. I would also have the children take turns reading the lesson aloud to each other while I cleaned or vice versa. And I would definitely institute a household siesta after starchy meals!
I am not likely to get to rest this afternoon, however. I am with Paul at his place of work, the Christian Audio Visual Center. Soon Pat will be coming here to lead aerobics class and then the whole family is going over for dinner to the house of "the movie star". More details on that in the next blog!