ali's african adventures

I'm finding it strangely hard to blog from the first world. We've been in Australia for a week now, and I've been avoiding this corner of the internet, totally unsure of what to write.

I want to say what a great time we're having. How we've been welcomed so warmly by friends from the ship, shown everything from Sydney Harbour in a raging thunderstorm to the Australian Outback Spectacular in Brisbane to the top of a mountian in Port Macquarie. How we've slipped so easily back into these old relationships, born of a common love for Africa and a big white ship.

But when I sit down at the keyboard, my fingers are slow to type these words, pushing as they must through an unexpected and overwhelming feeling of guilt.

I expected to feel the not-belonging, coming here. I prepared myself for the shock of first world prices, a place where a bottle of water costs three dollars instead of three cents and actually comes in a bottle instead of a plastic bag. I schooled myself to be ready for the orderly streets, the fenced-in lawns and the stop lights where everyone, inexplicably, stops when they turn red. All this I was ready for.

It was the guilt that blindsided me.

All around me is the shiny, new first world but all through my heart is the third, and it's my heart that's telling me that there is something so wrong about all this. I'm here having the time of my life and I can't stop feeling like I shouldn't be.

At the risk of sounding presumptuous, I think I know too much now. I think I've seen and lived among, in my admittedly limited experience, far too much of the opposite side of the coin to be able to bask in the shine on this one without consequence. I run my fingers over dresses made from rich cloth in air-conditioned stores, and I find myself wanting to buy things even as I cringe from the thought of spending so much money and through it all is this voice screaming in my head. You are greedy again. You are enjoying yourself, eating ice cream and going to the zoo and spending long days pleasing only yourself. You want this world and everything it has to offer. You are greedy again.

I'm telling myself it's not true, that I would give anything to be back on the dirt roads and in the bamboo shacks of Asia and Africa, but then I catch the scent of my freshly-washed hair and realize that I'm loving the feeling of being clean and safe in a quiet home where all I can hear is the crickets in the fields outside.

I don't know which way is up anymore. I don't think it's wrong to enjoy myself in this place, to revel in the feel of clean sand between my toes without worrying whether someone's dropped a dirty needle or used the area for a toilet. I don't think it's a sin to wish I could buy a pretty dress. But I don't know how to think that with the same mind that has seen families living in raggedy shacks no bigger than a chicken coop. I don't know how to type about how I got to feed kangaroos with the same hands that were clutched by beggar children with huge, pleading eyes.

I don't know how these two halves of me will ever fit together again. to form anything like the whole I'm used to. I'd say I'm not sure I want them to, but I really don't want to live with this guilt because it's strange and awkward and not terribly comfortable.

This is one time I really wish I had all the answers.

My mother always reminds me when it's been too long since I've blogged, and this time was no exception. Until the last two days, though, there hasn't been much to say. Silence truly was golden. Silence was the ten days spent in blissful rest at Deeper Still, rediscovering the reason God told us all to stop working on that seventh day.

Mama J has a point when she says that we've totally lost the concept of Sabbath rest. I think it's especially true for us as missionaries. We're meant to be these unbreakable powerhouses who just keep going day after day, month after month, with no regard to ourselves. Because, after all, there are needy people who, well, need us. Right?

But what we were forced to do during our time in Chiang Rai was to put all that aside. To be 'useless' for ten whole days, except for a couple of odd jobs around the place. To stop measuring ourselves by how much we could accomplish in a day or by how many days in a row we could keep on going. And it felt strange, a little wrong, even, to be in a place where nothing was expected of me. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was somewhere I should be, something I should be doing, and all of a sudden it became so clear to me that Mama J is right; I don't know how to rest.

I don't have any earth-shattering realizations to add to that. I didn't all-of-a-sudden learn to lay down my need to be useful. I think, if anything, I just learned that I need to. Deeper Still was a starting, a place to begin. Now I just need to find out how I can do that in real life, something that promises to be slightly tricky because of the next piece of news I have to share with you.

We're going to South America!

That, I know, seems incongruous for the author of a blog entitled Ali's African Adventures. And Africa is still the biggest piece of my heart; be sure of that. However, for six months next year, starting on the 28th of February, the HoJ and I are going to be living in South America instead; in Peru, to be exact. We're going to be taking part in something called a Discipleship Training School (DTS for short, which is how I'll refer to it from now on) with Youth With a Mission, (YWAM). We'll take part in four months of class and then go on outreach for two months, to places not yet determined. (Potentially, though, we could end up in Ecuador, where a good chunk of my heart was left in the sandy ground of a camp on the beach there.)

The course will be in Spanish and then translated into English, so I'll be learning another language on top of everything else going on. We will be living in the city but going on outreaches to Amazon river villages, and the packing list includes jungle hammocks, so I'm pretty sure it's going to be an incredible six months. We're going to use the time to seek God's heart for us for the coming years and to grow in our love for God, the world and each other. I get the feeling it's going to be intense.

So that's the news up to the minute. We've spent the last two days in Bangkok, wending our way through crowded markets, climbing temples and riding boats on dirty canals, but I can't upload pictures, so it seems hard to write about for some reason. We're about to say goodbye to Elliot and Julle, our companions for the last two months, and board a plane for the next leg of our trip, where we'll spend six weeks just hanging out with Mercy Ships friends and family in Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.

In some ways, I'm looking forward to the first world. It will be nice to pay a set price rather than having to barter for everything I want. For the first time in seven weeks I won't have to carry toilet paper with me everywhere I go, and I'm going to be able to go out alone with no fear for my own safety.

But standing on a crowded bus last night, sweat tricking down my back even as my hair was being pulled into the fan above my head (because I am taller than 99% of the Thai population), I had this sudden, blinding realization that, in some strange way, I belong in the third world. I might long for the first, for its clean bathrooms and safe streets, but there will always be something in me that pulls me back to the chaos and the open markets and the people staring at my white skin. I revel in the crush of people and the swirl of colours and I don't think I want to stay forever in a place where no one stares at me.

Ask me again after I've had a dose of clean streets and first-world supermarket selection; I might be singing a different tune, but something tells me I'll be missing all this.

And just when I thought all was well, that the tears were starting to dry up, I've had a day that broke my heart yet again.

We spent the morning in the company of Vern, who drove us into the hills and through several villages of the Akha hill tribe. As he navigated the muddy, rutted roads he told us stories of the families who lives there, of the girls who have been brought down to stay at Eden House because otherwise their lives would have consisted of abuse and slavery and worse.

I'm in a country where forty percent of the national income comes from the sex trade, and today I heard some of those stories. I heard what poverty has reduced these girls to, how they are denied even the right to citizenship because they are born into a hill tribe. How they are indoctrinated right from the start with the belief that they are worth nothing, that they will amount to nothing. Women from the hill tribes are not allowed to leave the province, are unable to work legally, cannot go to school past grade nine and are not allowed to own cars. They are often referred to as the slaves of the servants, so low is their position in society here.

But, as always, there is light even in the darkest of places. Sitting with Mama J over the past few days, I've found out more about what Deeper Still does. Once I'd had a chance to rest, she revealed to me that this place is so much more than just a place for that. She told me how, when she first came to Thailand, seven years ago, she prayed that God would give her four women to mentor. She had a vision of each of those women going on to mentor four women and on and on.

This Christmas, Noina, one of the original four, is leading a team of thirty-three univeristy students on an outreach to a Lahu village way up in the hills. The group is made up of both Thai and tribal students from the Akha, Karen, Lahu, Lisu and Hmoong tribes, and they are going out to minister to their own people.

Their goal is to provide every family with a mosquito net, along with distributing winter clothes like jackets, hats, and long pants. If there's money left over, they want to buy sports equipment and some toys for the children. They are hoping to raise 2,000 USD, and want to buy everything locally in order to invest back into the local economy and support business here which have been badly suffering because of all the political unrest in Thailand in recent years.

Again, I don't expect you to donate, but if you do feel led and would like to help out, you can send a check payable to Deeper Still Ministries, International to Deeper Still Ministries, International, 4110 Foothill Road, Kalispel, MT 59901. Don't write anything in the memo section; just put a note in with the check saying whether it's to be used for the hill tribe outreach or for the ministry centre itself.

Because there are also needs here at Deeper Still. With the school starting up, there are much more mundane things that need to happen; curtains for windows and a desk for the office and a bunch of little needs that go along with maintaining a property and running a school. Julie's vision is to change the way teachers in Thailand value not only themselves but also their students. In a country where people are so often told that they're worth nothing, because they were born on a hill or because they're a woman or because they just don't have enough money, she wants to start a revolution, a new metric for measuring worth.

Given the love she's lavished on us during this past week, I think she has a very good chance of doing just that.

Today I had one of those myriad small moments that make up the fabric of traveling the world. It was enough to make me carve out a corner of my heart that's forever going to be reserved for Thailand, because, in some strange way, it reminded me so much of Africa.

I walked outside to put on my flip flops because we were headed to the fabric market to search for material for a dress. They weren't in the place where I've been leaving them, and when I looked over to where the ladies who help out here were doing laundry, I saw that one of them had them on her soapy feet. We made friends yesterday, bonding over a lesson in Thai numbers, so I didn't hesitate to walk over and point to my shoes on her feet, a hopeful look on my face.

She answered with a broad smile and a knowing nod before walking over, retrieving her own shoes from under a table and handing them to me. Clearly, I was to wear them instead of my own.

Because my feet are the same size as a tiny little Thai lady's.

And that, my friends, is why I love Thailand. (Also because it is the land of inexpensive street food that bursts with flavours I've never tasted before but which I'd probably like keep eating forever.

Now if you'll excuse me, we're heading out to the market.)

(Deeper Still Ministries, Chiang Rai, Thailand)

We are nestled in the countryside in northern Thailand, somewhere that I think God must have created when He wanted to show us beyond a shadow of a doubt that He is beautiful. I have never seen sky deeper blue than this, and when I step outside I am greeted with the fragrance of flowers hanging from the trees above me. The hills are deep green following a season of rains, and everywhere there are little lizards scurrying around and birds singing in the trees.

We have landed in an oasis where Julie, a woman we've affectionately christened Mama J, has created a place for rest and renewal. Deeper Still Ministries is a place where teams can come to refocus, to rejuvenate and, above all, to rest. We're here at a time of transition, while Julie is moving into a new phase of adding an English school to all the balls she's already juggling. We're helping out with small things around the base, doing some painting and pruning and curtain measuring, but more than anything, we're resting.

We thought we were coming to be a blessing, but already I have had such blessing poured into my soul that I'm not sure there's room to hold it all.

I don't know what it is about this place, but, for the first time since everything fell apart in India, I feel like I'm finally being pieced back together again. I'm on the verge of tears every. single. minute. because I can finally let down my guard. It's finally safe to admit how scared I was by everything that happened to me, how unutterably small and fragile I felt. How I wasn't sure I'd ever be okay again. How I'm still not sure I haven't been changed forever in some vague, undefinable way.

But there are boxes of tissues scattered around in every room, so I just let myself cry and the tears are washing me a little bit cleaner each time they fall.

I can't stop thinking about the passage in Matthew 11 where Jesus talks about how the weary should come to Him. My sister was the first one to show it to me in the Message translation, and I've been reading it over and over, swallowing the words like a starving woman who's suddenly been shown to her place at the king's table.

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly.

The unforced rhythms of grace.

Here in the hills of Chiang Rai, I am learning to feel these rhythms. I am letting them pull me into a dance where I don't quite know the steps, but where the steps don't seem to matter.

All that matters is grace.

(Qian Men Hostel, Beijing)

Sorry for the protracted silence; China has been too much fun to take time sitting in front of a computer.

Somehow we've already come to the end of our stay in China. We've spent the last four days in Beijing and the four before that in Yangshuo, and the time just seems so short. This is one place we wish we could have stayed longer. I was ready to leave India by the time we boarded our plane, but I would have relished a few extra days to explore this city.

We've done everything good tourists should do (and a few they don't), the majority of it in the company of what felt like around half of the population of China, since our visit to the big city coincided so neatly with the national holiday. We saw the Forbidden City (where we had to literally throw elbows to have any chance of actually seeing into any of the palaces) and the Olympic stadiums (which were not nearly so dangerous). We meandered through the shaded paths and along the cool lakes at the Summer Palace, watching an old man write long lines of calligraphy on the cement with a brush and a pot of water. We hung out with Abby and her incredible friends, eating home-cooked food in a homey apartment; hands down the best meal since India. We're professionals on the Beijing subway system, provided we can find a stop; it's not always easy depending on where we are, since taxi drivers don't want to run the meter, prefering to squeeze the foreigners for all they're worth and we are not the type of foreigners that trick works on.

We hiked the Great Wall under a cloudless, clear blue sky, marvelling at the way it just goes on and on into the distance, every ridge dotted with guard towers sticking up over the long grey spine of the wall. We wandered through the hutongs near our hostel, trying out the various meat-on-a-stick options, sometimes for free, if the vendors found our lack of Chinese endearing enough. We were even brave enough for the night market at Wangfujing, crunching down such delicacies as fried cricket, silkworm, snake and scorpion (all on a stick, naturally) while Chinese people looked on and laughed, holding their own sticks of far more identifiable lamb and chicken and squid.

I should be giving you links to all these places, and I definitely can't wait until I get to a computer that'll allow me to upload some photos, but we've got to head to the airport soon and I need to wander out into the street one last time and get a donut and a little porcelain jar of yogurt. I'll stick a straw through the paper cover on the jar, drink down my yogurt, return the cup to the shop and head back to the hostel munching on my sesame seed donut and I'll leave Beijing, albeit unwillingly.

Next up: Thailand and Chang Rai.

I think I'm getting good at this traveling thing。 Today， I sat way at the back of a bus from Yangsuo to Guilin， and when the girl next to me threw up all over the floor， I didn't flinch。 I just calmly handed her some of the toilet paper I had stashed in my purse， unpacked some starfruit and handed her the plastic bag they had been in， and didn't breathe through my nose for the rest of the trip。

I didn't even really care when I went to put on my flip flops again and realized that they had been， shall we say， “compromised。” I just used the rest of my toilet paper to wipe off my shoe， deposited it in the girl's bag， and went on my merry way。

Now， if you'll excuse me， I'm going to go take a shower and wash my shoes。

（In addition， I just want you to know what an effort blogging is going to be for the next few days。 We're at a hotel whose computer is rigged to type in Chinese， meaning that I have to hit enter after every single word before pressing the space bar or else it comes out looking something like this： 和i 默默！ 能谋善断 有啊打 发死了 科技是 受到旅客及 时答复。)

Oh China. You crack me up.

(Tripper's Carpe Diem Hostel, Yangshuo, China)

Happy Chinese National Day! We are in Yangshuo, somewhere deep in the Chinese countryside, surrounded by the incredible karst landscape. Before we made it here, though, we spent a day in Xi'an after taking another night train from Luoyang.

This time, three of us were treated to a soft sleeper bed. The fourth ticket, for some reason, relegated one of us back onto a hard sleeper, and Elliot took the fall for the rest of us. Our beds were in a little room with a door that closed into blessed silence and darkness, and if it weren't for the fourth person in our compartment, a woman who snored ferociuosly throughout the short night, it would have been perfect.

It was our third night without proper sleep, so when we arrived into Xi'an before seven in the morning, we were a little fuzzy-headed and disoriented. We managed to find a place to check our bags in (five yuan for the day, somewhere around eighty cents and well worth it) and stumbled around until we found a bus that had Terracotta Warlors (typo intentional, because that's what it said on the bus) printed on the front.

This was another sight that nothing could have prepared me for, these rows upon rows of silent men standing guard in an underground cavern. Each one was crafted individually, based on someone living at the time, and so they all look different. They're fat and skinny and short and tall, some with mustaches, some without. All of it, all the time and effort and years of work, was to provide an army to watch over a dead king as he made his way through the afterlife, and once again I find myself saddened by something that's just meant to dazzle.

A late-night flight took us to Guilin where we found our hostel (after a prolonged search) and crashed gratefully into bed for the night. The next day, possibly Thursday, although I've lost all sense of time, we gave ourselves one mission: get to Yangshuo. This we managed to accomplish in style, because when we showed up at the bus station, a man offered to take us on the scenic route; rafting down the river on a bamboo boat, past the mountains that are pictured on the 20 Yuan note.

After a couple of bus rides further and further out into the country, we were dropped off by the side of the Li river and shown the way onto a small boat. The man explained that the old man at the tiller was his uncle and, despite the fact that the bamboo turned out to be PVC pipe, we settled down to enjoy the ride.

It was wonderful, really, sitting there and puttering down the river. We never knew what we'd see around each corner, and were invariably happily surprised. The terrain here is like nothing I have any kind of framework for in my head; I've never seen anything like these mountains that just thrust up out of the land, row upon row of them fading out into the distance like jaggedy teeth.

Our hostel is wonderful (I'll probably write more about it at the end of the trip, when I plan to make a list of the best and worst of the world, this place sitting easily in the best column), and the receptionist who checked us in, Alice, turns out to be a tour guide as well. Yesterday, she took us out on bikes through the countryside. It was one of my favourite days so far, not least because we actually got to ride on a real bamboo raft, poled down the river by a chain-smoking guide who steered us over little rock slides where we had to lift our feet or risk being soaked when the entire front of the raft dipped under water. (We're not sure whether he liked us much, since he guided us over the very deepest part of one of these, laughing as the water came up to soak our bums through our chairs.)

We spent the rest of the day hiking up Moon Hill, marveling at the scenery, and pedalling slowly through rice paddies where old men and women worked under pointy straw hats. I'm very sad that my card reader doesn't seem to work in this computer, because I want so badly to share photos of all of this with you. Maybe when we're back in Beijing.

Tonight we'll head back into town where the place will be alive with people and street vendors and all sorts of crazy food-on-a-stick and the only English we really need is maybe later, the standard phrase for turning away persistent sellers. The HoJ is desperate to try snake, and I'm pretty sure I'll be brave enough to follow suit, especially after having eaten fried dog meat last night at dinner.

For now, we're just relaxing, enjoying the slower pace of the countryside and the luxury of having a bed we can sleep in whenever we want. Speaking of which, I think it's time for a nap.