Well, the bad news is that I lost my favorite hoodie. I lost it in the shuffle between busses. But I take some small comfort in knowing that somewhere in Jordan, someone is wearing a needle exchange sweatshirt and maybe not even knowing it. There is so much to tell since I last wrote.
Last week I was helping my counterpart make mansef for 25 guests who were showing up for lunch. When I showed up at her house there were a few kids outside playing with a kid. And by kids playing with a kid I mean children tormenting a baby goat. For a brief moment I thought (with horror) that this was our mansef goat. But apparently the little guy just got lost. So for a couple days we had a pet goat. We fed it milk with a bottle. I actually don’t know where he went, but I hope he found his mom again.
I just recently came back from operation smile (I talked about it in the last blog). We had about 100 kids and their families from iraq to get operations. Unfortunately the weather was kinda bad so we couldn’t take the kids outside and entertain them. We tapped all my resources for indoor childrens games. A lot of the kids were very shy. I wondered what the reaction they normally receive is. It certainly couldn’t be a group of Americans who want to pick them up and kiss them and roughhouse with them. I found myself mostly gravitating towards baby duty. I would wander around and find babies and take them so that mom or dad could eat or have a moment’s peace. I was surprised just how many dads there were there. I would say that a majority of the parents were the dads. Probably due to the dangerous bus ride in from iraq.
I had a blast with the kids, but I found the whole experience to be bittersweet. Several times as I was playing hide and seek or holding a sleeping baby I couldn’t help but think of what they were going back to. Most of them were shia and going back to the south of iraq. And on the bus ride in apparently their bus was stopped by insurgents. They were threatened and eventually let go with the caveat that the insurgents would be looking for them when they came back through. I had what was most likely the hardest conversation I have ever had in my life with one of the fathers. He told me that life under sadaam had been hell. But that hell was traded for another now. He literally used the word bloodbath. He was mostly talking about the people that are coming in to fight from other countries. Extremists. And he told me that he thought that there was a good chance that he and his baby girl would be killed on the return trip. What do you say to that? I felt that anything I could have said would have been trite and meaningless. I mean, I almost always have something to say, but I just couldn’t. and I was sitting there holding his baby. All I could think was, don’t cry here, andi. I asked him what he thought could be done to make it better, and he said nothing. It would never end. The complete lack of hope in his voice, and the tears in his eyes… I won’t lie, it really made me feel sad and angry and helpless all at once. I had to give myself a break and compose myself in the hotel room. So far as I know, alternate arrangements were made and the families were flown home to avoid whatever their fate may have been if they had taken busses.
In rereading that I am struck by how heavy it really is. And to be honest I don’t know where to go from there. Anything I would say or any story I would tell would seem out of place and inappropriate. So for now I will go and try to reabsorb what really happened last week. But I am ok. You either process your experiences or you pack up and go home. And real life is what I was after, right?