Today’s Gospel reading from The Lectionary brings up so many questions! Jesus gives a parable, a story to help explain what he is saying, but what, exactly, is the parable saying?
Luke 19:11-27
11 As they were listening to this, he went on to tell a parable, because he was near Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. 12 So he said, ‘A nobleman went to a distant country to get royal power for himself and then return. 13 He summoned ten of his slaves, and gave them ten pounds,* and said to them, “Do business with these until I come back.” 14 But the citizens of his country hated him and sent a delegation after him, saying, “We do not want this man to rule over us.” 15 When he returned, having received royal power, he ordered these slaves, to whom he had given the money, to be summoned so that he might find out what they had gained by trading. 16 The first came forward and said, “Lord, your pound has made ten more pounds.” 17 He said to him, “Well done, good slave! Because you have been trustworthy in a very small thing, take charge of ten cities.” 18 Then the second came, saying, “Lord, your pound has made five pounds.” 19 He said to him, “And you, rule over five cities.” 20 Then the other came, saying, “Lord, here is your pound. I wrapped it up in a piece of cloth, 21 for I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.” 22 He said to him, “I will judge you by your own words, you wicked slave! You knew, did you, that I was a harsh man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? 23 Why then did you not put my money into the bank? Then when I returned, I could have collected it with interest.” 24 He said to the bystanders, “Take the pound from him and give it to the one who has ten pounds.” 25 (And they said to him, “Lord, he has ten pounds!”) 26 “I tell you, to all those who have, more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. 27 But as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them—bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.” ’
We know, by his own words, this was a harsh man and we know many of his citizens – not slaves – did not want him to rule over them. Why did Jesus use this man to illustrate his point? What about the other seven slaves who were given the money; how did they invest or protect the money? When I look at this parable, I am not so sure I would want to be one who was given more to administer over; the master is harsh. Perhaps those who protected the talent and kept their heads down fared better in the long run under this harsh man’s rule? What if one had taken the money and used it to make the lives of the people better – provided medical care or built a safe-haven for abused women? I shudder to think what the harsh ruler might have done with a slave who used the funds for the good of the people.
June 10, 2015
Posted by intlxpatr |
Bureaucracy, Cultural, Experiment, Financial Issues, Lectionary Readings, Living Conditions, Money Management, Poetry/Literature, Quality of Life Issues, Social Issues |
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They sign up for Hunger Games and get domestic drudgery and uber-control:
From Associated Press via Huffpost
PARIS (AP) — When three British schoolgirls trundled across the Syrian border; when a pregnant 14-year-old ran away from her Alpine home for the second time; when a sheltered girl from the south of France booked her first trip abroad — they were going to a place of no return.
Only two of the approximately 600 Western girls and young women who have joined extremists in Syria are known to have made it out of the war zone. By comparison, as many as 30 percent of the male foreign fighters have left or are on their way out, according to figures from European governments that monitor the returns.
In interviews, court documents and public records, The Associated Press has compiled a detailed picture of European girls and young women who join extremists such as the Islamic State group — a decision that is far more final than most may realize.
The girls are married off almost immediately, either in Turkey or just after crossing into Syria. With an estimated 20,000 foreign fighters — among them 5,000 Europeans — in Syria, there is no shortage of men looking for wives. That number is expected to double by the end of the year. Once among the jihadis, the women are not permitted to travel without a male chaperone or a group of other women and must remain fully covered outside, according to material published by Islamic State and researchers who follow the group. Otherwise, they risk a lashing or worse.
European women who blog about their lives under Islamic State tend to be chipper about the experience, but reading between the lines of an e-book of travel advice shows a life that will be radically circumscribed, with limited electricity, lack of even the most basic medicine, and practically no autonomy. Women do not fight, researchers say, despite the Hunger Games-like promises of recruiters.
“The lives of those teenage girls are very much controlled,” said Sara Khan, a British Muslim whose group Inspire campaigns against the dangers of extremist recruiters. “I don’t think that discussion ever comes up. It’s so romanticized, the idea of this utopia. I don’t even think those young girls have necessarily considered that there’s no way back now.”
The two exceptions to the rule of no return are perhaps most revealing in the very paucity of details about their journey — driving home how murky life is behind the Islamic State curtain.
Sterlina Petalo is a Dutch teenager who converted to Islam, and came to be known by the name Aicha. She traveled to Syria in 2014 to marry a Dutch jihadi fighter there and managed to return months later — apparently making her way to the border with Turkey, where her mother reportedly picked her up and brought her back to the Netherlands. Back home, she was immediately arrested on suspicion of joining a terror organization.
Her family, lawyers and prosecutors refuse to discuss the case. She was released from custody last November and has not been formally charged.
The second woman known to have made it out of the grip of Islamic State reconsidered after just a few weeks. The 25-year-old Briton, whom police have not named, had taken her toddler son all the way to Raqqa, the group’s stronghold, when she decided she had made a mistake and called home. She made her way back into Turkey and her father met her there. How she was able to travel the 250 kilometers (150 miles) from Raqqa to the Turkish border city of Gaziantep is not clear. Back in Britain, she was detained and is now free on bail pending formal charges.
Without knowing how the two escaped, it is difficult to say whether other girls and women could follow their path out of Syria, said Joana Cook, a researcher at King’s College London who studies the links between women and jihad.
“There are clearly many human smugglers working within Syria right now, helping Syrian civilians escape the violence, and I wonder if there is a similar, perhaps even growing market, for those trying to escape after joining ISIL,” Cook told The Associated Press in an email, using one of the acronyms for the Islamic State group. “There is great disillusionment for many who have traveled to Syria to join ISIL and you’ll find many stories of those who went abroad noting ‘this isn’t what we signed up for.'”
The question is whether the girls understood from the beginning how limited their choices would be once they crossed the frontier.
The case of a 15-year-old Avignon girl exemplifies such doubts. The girl hid her second Facebook account and Islamic veil from her moderate Muslim family, thereby managing to join a jihadi network, according to the family’s lawyer. Once within a unit of the al-Qaida offshoot Nusra Front, she was not permitted to leave, according to her brother, who went into Syria to fetch her and was turned away by the extremists. A French boy who joined the group around the same time was allowed to go home.
“I think they understand the premise of that, but not that they understand it in reality,” said Melanie Smith, another researcher at King’s College ICSR.
The networks that bring the women into Syria are increasingly organized around the extremists’ dream of building a nation of multinational jihadis, meaning European girls are particularly prized. Each new Facebook post, each new cheerleading Twitter account — and they pop up by the hour — helps them subvert government efforts to prevent young people from radicalizing and leaving.
The doggedness of jihadi methods for recruiting girls can be seen in the case of Amelia, a 14-year-old girl from France’s Alpine Isere region.
Amelia was first contacted on Facebook by a French fighter on Jan. 14, 2014 and within a month agreed to go to Syria and marry the man, who identified himself as “Tony Toxiko.” After she was turned back by airport border police in Lyon on her first attempt, “Tony Toxiko” persuaded another French adolescent girl to join him in Syria.
Amelia, meanwhile, ran away from home to Belgium, where an imam performed a religious ceremony that wed her to a different man, an Algerian jihadi. She returned to France homesick and pregnant, just long enough to speak to investigators building a case against a middleman who helped her run away. This winter, Amelia managed to deceive her family and left again — making it to Syria with the Algerian fighter, who is more than twice her age.
“It’s particularly difficult for these families. For them, radicalization is happening on the Internet and outside the family sphere,” said Sebastien Pietrasanta, a French lawmaker working on a program to de-radicalize young people. “For a girl of 14, I believe we can clearly save her from herself and save her from these barbarians.”
A French journalist got dangerously close to jihadi recruitment methods by creating a fake Facebook account that attracted a marriage proposal from a fighter in Syria.
Under the pseudonym Melodie, the journalist shared a video on the account, almost immediately getting a message from a man identified as Bilel, who asked how she’d liked the montage of him showing off in a 4X4 and with his weapons.
“I passed myself off as a 20-something, not stupid but a little lost, who suddenly found a huge response from a man in Syria,” said the journalist, who wrote a book “In the Skin of a Jihadist” under a pseudonym.
Bilel’s doubts about her began to grow as her reluctance to join him became clear. She ended up getting threats that she said would likely frighten a bewildered young woman into submission. As it was, the journalist, who never met Bilal in person, remains under constant police protection a year later.
“We’ll find you, we have the best operators here, you don’t know what you’re getting into, you’re messing with a terrorist group, you and your family will pay,” the woman said, recounting the litany of threats she received after returning to France. “If they were speaking to a 20-year-old, it would be very hard for her.”
___
Associated Press writer Mike Corder in Amsterdam contributed.
May 28, 2015
Posted by intlxpatr |
Adventure, Bureaucracy, Community, Cultural, ExPat Life, Faith, Family Issues, Generational, Living Conditions, Marriage, Mating Behavior, Middle East, Political Issues, Social Issues, Women's Issues | IS, ISIL, ISIS |
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“As Sallam wa alaikum!” I smiled at the Sudanese women coming in to their jobs in our hotel.
They stopped still in their tracks.
“You speak Arabic!” they said, astonishment clear on their faces.
“Only a little!” I smiled back.
I had a whole squad of new friends.
Now that financial times are easing, many hotels we have visited over the last few months are renovating and getting new mattresses. This was a real bonus for our Sudanese friends, and all of their friends.
Have you ever tied a mattress on the top of your car and tried to drive? It is a wild and dangerous adventure; the wind lifts and pushes the mattress toward the back as you drive. Unless the mattress if firmly and thoroughly tied down, you are in for a wild ride.
And then again, if you are new in a country, and in need of a mattress, a wild ride is a small price to pay.
On our way back to the hotel, we see protestors in red shirts at every corner. This is not protestors Ferguson style, these are Seattle style protestors, making a big demonstration for fully funding public education, and all the signs are grammatical 🙂
We are so full from lunch that we just want a small dinner. We find a good Ethiopian restaurant listed near our hotel, and head there, but when we arrive, there is plywood over two windows and a sign saying “Sorry, dear customers, but due to car accident our restaurant is closed until it is fixed.”
We end up at Ivar’s Seafood Bar, which is quick food, but not cheap food, and very very good food. We are greeted by an older man as we enter, he says “Welcome to Ivars! I hope you have a great meal.” We thought he might be an official greeter, but no, he was a customer like us. We ended up sitting in a booth next to his, so he stopped on his way out to see what we had ordered (halibut and chips, smoked salmon chowder, Dungeness crab cocktail) and just to chat. It’s an Edmonds kind of thing, neighborliness and civility.
May 24, 2015
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Adventure, Civility, Community, Cultural, Customer Service, Eating Out, Education, ExPat Life, Family Issues, Hotels, Interconnected, Living Conditions, Political Issues, Quality of Life Issues, Renovations, Seattle, Social Issues, Values | Edmonds, education protestors, Ivar's Seafood Bar, Sudanese immigrants, Washington |
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I’ve never seen this before in the United States. We used to go through checks like this in Germany, in Doha, in Kuwait, but not in the United States. This trip, we went through several, all across our southern border.
All the trucks, and all the cars, pulled over to go through security checks, dogs sniffing the cars, men going through an entire truck here and there, or having a family stand to one side as they thoroughly inspect the car.
I love our retired military id’s.
The sign on the left tells us they have caught more than 7,000 illegal immigrants so far this year, and have confiscated more than 12,000 something. . . dollars worth of goods? Individual goods, like cars? I know if you get caught doing something illegal, you lose your property, even if it is a car or a house.
April 15, 2015
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Adventure, Bureaucracy, Counter-terrorism, Doha, ExPat Life, Germany, Kuwait, Law and Order, Living Conditions, Road Trips, Safety, Social Issues, Travel | Homeland Security, Security |
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This is a difficult post to write. I’m a patriot. We served our country many years, Cold Warriors. We believe in the United States of America.
What I saw on our southernmost border on the Rio Grande makes me uncomfortable. We have put a lot of money into making sure illegal aliens don’t get through.
I can see a lot of good reasons for good border security. And having said that, what I saw stepped right over the line of “good border security” and teetered precariously on “oppressive.”
One of the Benson-Rio Grande Valley Park employees told us that if we want to see the Rio Grande, go to (some restaurant that has a view of the Rio Grande) or to this County Park called Anzalduas Park, and he told us how to get there. We drove and drove, couldn’t find it, but there was a cop parked on the road, so we asked him and he told us we were almost there.
As we reached Anzalduas Park (which is right under the Anzalduas Bridge, which goes over into Mexico; no, we didn’t have our passports, so we didn’t cross, maybe next time) and approached the park, it was a very odd park. It’s all excavated out, with a very very bare landscape, and some steep climbs. At the gate are some really heavy duty sliding guard gates. It’s not a very welcoming park.
We got down into the park, drove down to the boat landing, and there were about twenty cars parked there, and they were all security vehicles. There was a big party going on, it was a Friday and some families and children were playing and the loudspeaker was all in Spanish. I couldn’t see any Homeland Security guards, only the cars, maybe the guards were sitting inside. Maybe they were at the party 🙂
The Park employee at Benson – Rio GRande Valley Park had told us that on weekends, across the Rio Grande, is a swim club, and the Mexicans are swimming all the time, just feet away from the American side, but there are all these signs saying the waters are dangerous. The waters seemed very calm, but sometimes there are dangers that are not so obvious.
That’s just a lot of cars providing border security in this park.
You can see the Mexican side swimming club; just yards across a very narrow Rio Grande:
Here is another view of those heavy gates that bar the park in off hours.
We had been told this is a very popular park, full of people all the time. I am glad to hear it, glad that people are not intimidated, and use this beautiful little park for parties and celebrations, just as we use parks all over the USA.
April 14, 2015
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Adventure, Beauty, Bureaucracy, Community, Counter-terrorism, Cross Cultural, Cultural, ExPat Life, Family Issues, Law and Order, Living Conditions, Local Lore, Quality of Life Issues, Road Trips, Social Issues, Travel | Anzalduas Bridge, Anzalduas Park, Homeland Security, Interdiction, National Security Issues, Rio Grande |
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A Saudi Arabian historian trying to justify the nation’s ban on female drivers sayswomen who drive in other countries such as the United States don’t care if they’re raped and that sexual violence “is no big deal to them.”
Saleh al-Saadoon claimed in a recent TV interview that women can be raped when a car breaks down, but unlike other countries, Saudi Arabia protects its women from that risk by not allowing them to drive in the first place, according to a translation posted online by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
“They don’t care if they are raped on the roadside, but we do,” al-Saadoon said on Saudi Rotana Khalijiyya TV.
“Hold on. Who told you they don’t care about getting raped on the roadside?” asked the host, a woman who is not named in the transcript.
“It’s no big deal for them beyond the damage to their morale,” al-Saadoon replied. “In our case, however, the problem is of a social and religious nature.”
Two other guests on the show — a man and a woman — appeared to be in shock over his comments. Al-Saadoon said they were out of touch.
“They should listen to me and get used to what society thinks,” al-Saadoon said.
Since the rape argument didn’t seem to be convincing anyone, al-Saadoon tried another approach, claiming that women are treated “like queens” in Saudi Arabia because they are driven around by the men of the family and male chauffeurs. That led the host to ask if he wasn’t afraid that women might be raped by their chauffeurs.
Al-Saadoon agreed.
“There is a solution, but the government officials and the clerics refuse to hear of it,” he said. “The solution is to bring in female foreign chauffeurs to drive our wives.”
That caused the female host to laugh and cover her face with her palm.
“Female foreign chauffeurs?” she said. “Seriously?”
Saudi women face serious penalties if they are caught driving, including lashing. Two women who defied the ban on driving last year, Loujain al-Hathloul and Maysa al-Amoudi, are being tried in a court that handles terror cases.
February 15, 2015
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Bureaucracy, Character, Civility, Communication, Cultural, ExPat Life, Faith, Generational, Interconnected, Leadership, Lies, Living Conditions, Mating Behavior, Quality of Life Issues, Saudi Arabia, Social Issues, Values, Women's Issues | female chauffeurs, Saleh al-Sadoon, Saudi women, women drivers |
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Sometimes, out of nowhere, comes a wallop, even a good wallop. Yesterday came such a startling change. The itinerary looked ordinary, do-able, nothing inspirational, but all get-the-job-done.
My group had a great weekend. They got to sleep, they got to walk on the beach, they got to eat a great meal or two. They had fabulous weather, a chance to chill and to integrate all the information we are piling on them, and a chance to walk away for a little while. They love Pensacola. Who wouldn’t, when the weather hits around 70° and the beach is white and the sky is blue?
First, we hit our volunteer experience, working at Manna to sort donations, making sure all the items were within acceptable expiration dates. At first, I wasn’t sure this group was going to “get” volunteering, but in a very short time, they were all focused and working hard, and working efficiently. As they sorted, other volunteers drove up in SUV’s, in big cars, in vans and we all helped unload. By the end of their experience, the warehouse manager said “You have processed enough food for over 1,000 people!” and complimented them. They glowed. None of them are from countries with a tradition of volunteerism, and this was a new – and thrilling – experience for them. It always gives me a thrill to see that light go on, to see oneself as part of something larger, organic, to see how connected we all are and to love being a part of something good, sharing. It thrilled my heart.
We ate lunch together downtown, and talked about events going on in each country, about the weekend, about their experiences. We bought coffee – oh! the universal need for caffein! – and headed on to our next appointment, which featured environmental issues and complex ways governments interact to combat the problems and enforce the regulations. It was a tough slog. These relationships are so complex that most of us don’t even think about it. These delegates have work to do; they are here to solve problems in their own countries, and they are persistent and dogged about getting solutions that they can apply in their own bureaucracies. It is a delight to see people so committed to solving problems that seem . . . almost unsolvable.
It is also inspiring, to me, to learn so much about Pensacola, in this job. When I was working on my Masters, I studied heroism, among other things. What I am loving about these office and field visits is that my education continues, and I see heroes at every level of bureaucracy, holding back the evil forces of laziness, corruption, and cronyism. And, sustaining my initial findings about heroes, heroines and heroism, they don’t even see themselves as heroes. They say, as all heroes do, “I am/was just doing my job.” They think anybody would do it. (They are wrong.)
At our very last appointment, I was thinking I would probably cut the day short. The speaker had given out information, the delegates had bags to pack, and all of a sudden, a spark, and an explosion! The good kind!
One delegate could not believe the head of this agency could maintain an important list with integrity. He kept drilling down on the structure, the details of how things worked (all the delegates were keen on the details of how the structures of organizations and bureaucracies worked to accomplish their missions) and where there were openings for corruption.
She was explaining how her employees were constantly trained, and how the agency was monitored to ensure fairness and an adherence to procedure. The delegates, all from countries where bureaucracies function differently, kept pressing her. Is there never anyone taken out of turn? Never?
“If I did that, I would lose my job,” she replied.
What followed was one of the most exciting hours of discussion I have ever experienced, as delegates from five different countries frankly compared their own challenges and experiences, and with great intensity tried to figure out how bureaucracies could function without corruption.
We tried to explain that we, also, are not immune from corruption, and cronyism, but that the combination of training and monitoring helps keep agencies within the boundaries, as best it can. Transparency doesn’t come overnight; we are still trying to achieve it.
As I listened, I could not stop grinning. These are young leaders, and the leaders of tomorrow. They admire what they see in our country. They want to bring trust into their own governments, but how do you create trust? How do you build trust? How do you maintain trust?
I don’t know those answers. And yet the process is working; the discussion was so inspiring, so heartfelt, and they had built enough trust in one another to share their challenges, without having to maintain that artificial facade that lack-of-trust builds.
Their liaison said “You will each have to find your own path; it won’t look exactly like the US path because it has to be a fit with your own culture.”
When I left the group, I told them “You are the best group I have worked with, ever.” There is a part of me that wanted to be a part of that discussion, because they were still deep in that discussion as we parted. My role had ended; I had done what I do.
And today, I am still grinning. I love this job, I love the people it brings me into contact with, international and local. I feel so blessed.
February 10, 2015
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Africa, Character, Civility, Community, Counter-terrorism, Cross Cultural, ExPat Life, Gulf Coast Citizen Diplomacy Council, Interconnected, Living Conditions, Nigeria, Pensacola, Political Issues, Quality of Life Issues, Relationships, Social Issues, Tanzania, Values | Belgium, Colombia, Manna, Ukraine |
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From today’s AOL News via Associated Press comes this analysis of the production of the recent horror video posted by ISIS of the death of the Jordanian pilot. They also published names of targeted Jordanian pilots.
Go after them. Go after those producing these slick, disgusting, violent videos. A truly religious person wouldn’t kill a dog by burning him in a cage.
When a person produces a product, they leave a signature, they can’t help it. If I blogged under a different name, someone reading the other blog would find phrases and words that would help them recognize me from this blog. We can’t help it, we are who we are, and we leave signatures. Figure out who the tech geeks are who have been producing these videos, who scripted these repugnant beheadings and burnings, and get them. First, though, publish their names and their photos. Let them feel the target on their backs before you take them out.
BEIRUT (AP) – A video of a Jordanian pilot being burned to death was exceptional in its brutality, even for the Islamic State group, and also was a sign that the militants intend to raise the stakes in their propaganda efforts, experts say.
It also offered confirmation to the belief that the airman was killed days or weeks before its release.
The 22-minute clip that appeared on websites Tuesday was a complex, extravagant work that would have taken a significant amount of time and organization to script, stage, produce and distribute, they said.
It also suggested that the demands last week for a prisoner swap for the pilot, Lt. Muath al-Kasaesbeh, were a cynical charade to increase the drama around his killing, because he most likely was already dead.
Jordanian state TV had said al-Kasaesbeh, who was flying missions for the U.S.-led campaign of airstrikes, was killed as long ago as Jan. 3, shortly after his F-16 came down in Islamic State-controlled territory in December.
“The more gruesome the executions are, the more attention they get,” said Brigitte Nacos, a professor of political science at Columbia University.
“When President Obama responds to each of their killing videos … that gives them the feeling of being a powerful political actor that legitimate actors have to deal with,” she said.
The video featured production techniques used in other clips from the militants. But unlike those that showed beheadings in which the hostages or their killer delivered a message before being killed, the pilot video is longer and involves a story-telling narrative and at least four cameras, along with advanced editing techniques.
It bore the logo of the Islamic State group’s al-Furqan media service and included footage of Jordan’s king committing to the fight against IS and meeting with U.S. officials. The pilot was shown explaining his mission on the day his jet crashed. Finally, he was seen in an outdoor cage as a masked militant ignited a line of fuel leading to it. It also included a list of purported Jordanian pilots wanted by the group.
“This is simply the most horrific, disgusting thing I have seen from Islamic State in the last two years. It is shocking,” said Shiraz Maher, senior fellow at the International Center for Study of Radicalization at King’s College in London.
Nacos said the video is “cleverly shot with different camera angles.”
“They’re basically rejecting everything that is Western, yet they’re borrowing – in their media management, staging, directing, choreography – everything that you can learn from Western filmmakers and media people,” she said.
Nacos said the video’s brutality risks turning public opinion and potential recruits away from the Islamic State group; al-Kasaesbeh’s killing already has been denounced by Muslim clerics across the region, including some jihadi ideologues.
Christopher Davidson, an academic at Durham University, said the video was not perfectly produced, but had “very powerful political messages which clearly resonate with impressionable youth.”
Hassan Hassan, an analyst at the Abu Dhabi-based Delma center, said having a captive pilot from the U.S.-led coalition bombing campaign was a rare opportunity for the extremists to deliver a strong message.
“It was a chance to humiliate not only Jordan but the international community fighting against it,” he said.
Aymenn al-Tamimi, an expert on rebel and Islamic extremist groups, said the video suggested the group’s violence would only become more gruesome as its fighters – and supporters – became increasingly desensitized to human suffering.
“The beheadings that have been happening so frequently – it’s no longer surprising to any audience,” al-Tamimi said. “They upped the ante.”
Al-Tamimi said the group also had to keep offering something new to its members, supporters and those under its rule – if only to keep them in a perpetual state of terror.
Maher agreed.
“Every time you think they cannot commit anything worse – they open up another trapdoor,” he said.
February 6, 2015
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Counter-terrorism, Crime, Cultural, ExPat Life, Interconnected, Living Conditions, Political Issues, Quality of Life Issues, Social Issues, Work Related Issues | al-Furqan, Aymenn al-Tamimi, Christopher Davidson, Hassan Hassan, ISIS, Lt. Muath al-Kasaesbeh |
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Today the church prays for the diocese of Lusaka, and I smile as I pray for my Zambian friends. We have stayed in Lusaka several times, and visited schools and clinics in remote parts of Zambia. Zambia is an amazing country – something like 70 different peoples and languages, and training in all the schools to help them learn how to live together.
One young Zambian told us that when they come into contact, it is normal to feel strange; the “other” doesn’t speak the same dialect, may be a traditional enemy, is just different, uncomfortable. They are trained to ask “What is it like where you live?” and to listen to the response.
I have used that phrase so many times; it is so useful. When you listen to an “other” talk about his or her life, you connect. You find similarities, and differences, and you learn the joys and challenges of this different life. It is a wonderful question. I used it the first time in Zambia, at a dinner with a lot of people we didn’t know. The woman next to me seemed stuffy, but sometimes that can be shy, so I asked “What is it like where you are from?” and she looked at me with concern and said, very sharply, “What do you mean?” I said “what is your life like, tell me about what you do in a day?” and she said “That is a very odd question!” but she went on to tell me about her life, her country house and her passion for riding. By the end, we were having a great conversation.
May God bless you richly, Zambia. May your peoples live together in God’s peace!
January 31, 2015
Posted by intlxpatr |
Adventure, Africa, Character, Civility, Communication, Community, Cross Cultural, ExPat Life, Faith, Geography / Maps, Interconnected, Lectionary Readings, Living Conditions, Relationships, Social Issues, Travel, Values, Zambia |
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This morning I found two comments on an old post about high temperatures in Qatar (now deleted). I was offended, but now I offer up this commenter to my Qatari friends. He has included his phone number. I suggest you call him and correct his mistaken ideas about Qatari women.
Note: My site is not a hooking-up site.
January 15, 2015
Posted by intlxpatr |
Communication, Cultural, Doha, ExPat Life, Family Issues, Mating Behavior, Qatar, Social Issues, Women's Issues | Gerald Tomusange |
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Here There and Everywhere 