SO.
Here I am. In Canada.
It’s been far, far too long since my last update – I will
try really hard not to let this one be too long to make up for it.
I landed in Vancouver, B.C on Wednesday nearly two weeks ago
after a hectic last few days in India. For those who don’t know, I actually
nearly missed my flight due to a mistake in the time – I thought that it was
the midnight between Wednesday and Thursday, not Tuesday and Wednesday, and it
took a trans-international, frantic phone call from my Mum to me while I was in
Orissa to get me to realise that I’d got my lines very, very crossed. So we cut
short our time with the Bridge family and their gorgeous orphanage haven in
Jharsuguda, trained back to Kolkata lickety-split and spent my last evening in
India with Kenny, Dave and Meghan from the Servants team. Then it was a teary,
tired and wretched farewell with Chris at the airport, then several haphazard
flights through China and the States which spanned 27ish hours (34 if you count
waiting around in airports), and I arrived on the same day I’d left India – oh timezones,
you are cruel and confusing masters. I was searched while trying to get through
Canadian immigration because they were suspicious of the combination of my age,
my dishevelled Indian clothing, and the fact that I didn’t have a work permit. Yeah,
fair enough I guess!
I was greeted and loved from the start – the Servants
community here are a lovely hotchpotch of about ten people who live in two
houses which share one property on East Cordova street, which runs right
through what is called the Downtown East Side (DTES). It is a sprawling,
heavily populated suburb which is riddled with drug addiction and homelessness,
which often operate in tandem. Drugs are cheap, nasty and very public here –
down the road from our houses is ‘ground zero’, an intersection which is
something like a market for substances, particularly cocaine (crack cocaine),
crystal meth and the ubiquitous heroin. The deals, administration, and
overdoses all happen in the public eye – something I as a Kiwi had to get used
to fast. The team moved here six years ago in a bid to be a different approach
for the inhabitants of the DTES – something that wasn’t a shelter or a soup
kitchen (there are hundreds of those), or a clinic, or a drop-in. They wanted
to be an open community who spend time with their neighbours, get to know them
on an equal basis and practice hospitality that empowers people, rather than
disenabling them, which can happen all too often in a neighbourhood where so
many handouts are available. There are structures in place which give the team
a body and life – Mondays are team days, where we eat and pray together, and
the team sorts out admin and plans new projects or talks about ideas. Tuesdays,
Thursdays and Fridays end with an open dinner at six, which anyone can come to –
often neighbours who team members are tracking with will come, as well as
friends from across the city. Tuesday nights, after dinner is Creative World
Justice – a bible study-cum-activism project that focuses on God’s love for
those oppressed under unjust political structures, both locally and
internationally – take a look at their little website which will give you a better
idea of what meeting like this looks like. What I love is that a lot of
neighbours seem to really get into this and will stick around to get involved
in political bible studies or creative actions. Wednesdays, some of us ladies
will go out around nineish in the evening and spend some time wandering and
talking to women who are out working the corners of this neighbourhood. There
are many of them, and it’s a cold, depressing and often brutal job, so we
invite those who’re keen to come back to the Servants team centre on Hastings
Street and have hot tea and cake with us. It’s called Night Vision and it’s a
lot of fun. Every day begins with prayer at 9am at the Team Centre, and from
here the day begins. I’ve been doing all sorts – hanging out at Womens’ Drop In
Centres (the food is great), going to an open pottery workshop run by Grandview
Calvary Baptist Church (if anyone here listens to Tom Wuest, I believe it’s his
church), it’s called JustPotters –
check ‘em out. I’ve also been walking the streets and learning how to talk to
God about what I see, hanging out with kids, going to public forums on working
with those who have mental health issues, going on food collection runs (a LOT
of the food that the team gets is donated, which helps when we have to cook on
large scales three or four times a week), hosting community dinners, and trying
to soak up as much as I can. It has been full on, and I am tired and a wee bit
run down – but I am loving every second of this grimy, scary neighbourhood, and
so far it is loving me back.
I am struggling to marry my time in India with this crashing
recourse through the troubles of Western neighbourhoods. The friendly poverty
of my beloved homestay family and the team in Bediapara seems a long way away.
I was re-reading my Servants intern journal the other day and read a small
clipping that talked about the way that interns re-enter into their home
cultures, and while Vancouver is DEFINITELY not my home culture, I can totally
see how this all applies to me. There are several types of re-entry:
Assimilators, Alienators and Integrators. Assimilators slide right back in like
nothing happened – their experience gets lost in picking up the slack, in
rediscovering the joys of soft beds and running hot water. The Alienators reject
their home culture for a while, criticising and finding themselves angry at
ever being a part of it. They succumb eventually, because they need a place to
belong. Integrators expect dissonance upon their return, but are able to
debrief it and identify the changes that have taken or are taking place within
themselves upon ending an internship or homestay. They can make this experience
count for the long-term, which is something I desperately want to do – but I
feel more like an Assimilator. Things have moved really quickly, and every day
I see opportunities to growthfully change slip through my fingers. Actually,
maybe writing this is one step toward a more integrational approach… who knows.
To help stimulate more reflection on Kolkata, I will pop a
couple of photos up at the bottom of this blog, but I’m all too conscious of
the impact that photography has had on the privacy and lives of the poor, and I
would be really stoked if no one reposted or reproduced these (or shows them to
people who will). I’ll put photos of Canada on my facebook page, seeing as they
are full of people who have facebook pages and don’t mind me pasting them all
over the show.
I miss you all in Aotearoa – and Chris, of course, who’s
still in India, hanging out with his long-lost whanau. Check out my facebook
page if you haven’t already seen his lovely Taj Mahal umm… declaration!
Be well – I’ll try and be a bit more organised about this
blogging thing.
Kia kaha.
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