Feeling like an outsider

This is a bit strange. I was planning to write about the word “kiwi” for my next post, but that will have to wait. World events have interrupted my plans again.

I was in the United States on September 11, 2001. Like everyone, I remember it like it was yesterday (with all caveats of what I know about the “truth” of memory). But I have been living abroad for two significant events of its aftermath . . . well, now three. I was living in France as a foreign exchange student when we first invaded Iraq, and I was living in France again, but as an English teaching assistant, when President Bush was reelected. I think it goes without saying that I had a lot of explaining to do as an American in France at those times. For the record, I was treated well and respectfully by the French, but that story is for another day. Those events were nothing compared to my reaction to yesterday.

I have been in New Zealand for just over 4 months (hard to believe really), yet my time here has not been uneventful. First, I was not only witness to, but a direct participant in, New Zealand’s major tragedy this year – the Christchurch earthquake. Although I was treated like royalty because of the group of people with whom I was in Christchurch, I did not feel like an outsider. If anything, it made me feel more like a kiwi (yes, I will explain why they use that word later, I promise).

But yesterday, that all changed. Yesterday, I wore the mark of American loud and clear, if only in my own head. Sitting alone at the Union Grill was a little surreal (after asking them to change the channel on the tv). Wolf Blitzer was blabbing nonsense to fill time, and my fellow kiwi students were walking around as though nothing were happening. I felt an obligation to inform them of the news but then realized that this topic did not hang over them like a dark shadow each and every day. So I sat there alone. Eventually, another American from the postgraduate suite joined me (we had never met before yesterday), and then two of my American friends. We had our little party. The rest of the world just kept on moving along as though nothing was happening.

And then the announcement. Osama Bin Laden is dead. His death was ordered by the President. Watching President Obama, I thought he seemed “off.” With no emotion or guidance of how to respond, President Obama ended our 10-year national obsession with one person who we had been trained to vilify. Then he walked away, leaving the rest of us to figure out what to do about it.

And that is when people cheered. They stormed the streets to chants of USA! USA!, to renditions of the Star Spangled Banner, and to songs of victory. My heart wrenched watching this. How could people celebrate? A man was dead. We killed to stop killing. It makes no sense. So what did I do? I went to yoga, of course. And yes, I felt calmer after the class, but my 40-minute walk home brought all those emotions back. What am I “supposed” to feel?

My flatmate is a 55-year-old woman getting her certificate in Peace and Conflict studies. I was dreading coming home to anyone. I wanted to be alone. I wanted to think. I wanted to understand. Instead, I asked her, “did you hear the news?”

“Yes, what a tragedy,” was her response.

I sat shell-shocked. Wait, what? A tragedy? That was not the reaction in the States. It was not even my reaction. Was it supposed to be? Was this the “rational” response? I agonized more and more. She is right, but I found myself defending American policies with which I generally disagree – secret CIA operations that have as their stated purpose to capture, but everyone knows they will end in a bloodbath. I had to tell her that it is policy to try to capture, but he fought back. She said, “how do we know for sure he committed the attacks of 9/11?” I just sat there.

But then I began to understand. I thought about the dancing in the streets. I took a broader view of it – what is it really? For ten years, we have been building tension. I saw a sign today that said something like, “It has been 9 years, 232 days since September 11, 2001. Where is Osama bin Laden?” Over bin was a cardboard piece that read, “dead.” We have been holding onto this. He was a symbol. I make no judgments as to whether he should have been, certainly not on this post, but regardless of what you think, he symbolized that tension. He symbolized that fear. The dancing and joy and excitement were less about a man dying than they were about relief.

But what is this sense of relief? A release of tension. In yoga parlance, this jubilation was really just a really powerful exhale. It was a moment to let go of 10 years of tension. Rationally we know it will not make much difference. If anything, it could escalate anti-American sentiments. But we had the moment to let go, and we needed it. Our collective consciousness needed it. Was it “right?” I cannot judge that. I know that going forward this is a solemn event, one that should make us think very carefully about our definition of “terror” and what it means to the world, what it means to kill people without trial.

But the exhale was needed first. Perhaps with that release, our pent-up tensions can give way to our frontal lobes and our rational thoughts. Perhaps the collective release, the American release, can open our eyes to what really happened – a man was killed. Perhaps we can release into a state of understanding that we are all connected, Kiwis and Americans, and Pakistanis, and Afghans. Perhaps with that release the notion of “outsider” will cease to exist. 

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

A day in the life . . .

I have been wondering what to say next – the initial trips and orientation are over, the craziness of disaster is getting hard to discuss, and I am “settling” into life here in Wellington, at least until my dad and stepmom arrive on Wednesday!! But there are little things I want to share, and I think that my day yesterday, with a bit of additional thoughts, might be the perfect way to tie it all together.

My last post before the earthquake was about the little quirks here in NZ, about what it means to have culture shock in a place that is so much like home. I promised more . . . so here goes. My housing situation here in Wellington is with a professor and her 8-year-old daughter. On Fridays, the girl has a spelling test, and her mom tests her in the morning. Yesterday the child asked me if I would like to help. I have helped with piano and even some yoga postures, so spelling should have been a piece of cake, but the theme was “ou,” and as I looked at the list of honour, labour, etc., I felt my confidence dwindle. Needless to say, I declined to help, informing her that we spell things differently in the States. On that note, one of the weirdest emails I have written since arriving was asking my thesis advisor how to spell – not a question you expect to be asking in year 20 of education.

Leaving the house, I walked to school. My walk takes me right through the botanic gardens. I have tried different routes to get home nearly every day. I find it a good way to learn my way around. The best part, though, is that if I get “lost” I can always find my way home by finding the Botanic Garden. I keep saying, “how bad can life be when getting lost means you end up wandering through the beautiful gardens that surround this city?” My walk to school in the mornings takes me to one of the most glorious lookouts over the city. And I have learned that by adding about 1 minute (maybe less) to my “commute,” I can walk through the edge of the gardens instead of along the road that runs next to them. Today (Saturday), I discovered that by adding about 10 minutes, I can walk through the heart of the gardens.

Am I a tourist, or do I live here?

As I leave the gardens on my way to school, I arrive at the corner of a busy street, and like everyone else, find the easiest and quickest way to ignore traffic signs and jaywalk  to the Old Government Buildings (and if you knew me in Tucson, you know this is not a good idea for me). The law school is housed within the Old Government Buildings, which is the largest wooden building in the southern hemisphere (also one of the safest in an earthquake!). I even took a tour of the building today, then promptly went upstairs after it, past the signs that say, “No Public Access” and used my swipe card to enter my office. From that office, I look out over “The Beehive,” aka Parliament.  

The flag is at half mast for Christchurch.

Tourist? Resident?

Wellington is a small city, and I probably know 10 people here, maybe 20. One of the people I met in Christchurch who was part of the Future Partners Forum with me just informed me that she is starting her job at the law school on Monday – her office is next door to mine. Wellington is a small city. New Zealand is a small country.

And when I leave my office at the end of the day, I walk amongst the backpack runners. I think this is a Wellington phenomenon, but there are hundreds of people who run to/from work with backpacks. I can only assume that inside the backpack are their work clothes. New Zealand is a laid-back country.

And where do we walk? We walk UP. I grew up near San Francisco, so I know about hills. The two times I lived in France, I lived up hills. But nothing, and I mean nothing, has prepared me for New Zealand. While much of Wellington is below sea level, and many of the buildings and the airport are built on reclaimed land or land that magically appeared after a major earthquake in the mid 1850s, you walk up a lot. Panting and wheezing, I get back to the house, back to a place I’m not sure whether to call home.

So, from spelling to gardens to the heritage buildings of the city, my day gets confused between tourist and resident. On my way to school today (working on a Saturday because my parents are coming, and I will be not working as much this week), I took some time to read the tourist signposts along the way, trying to appreciate the fact that I am in an amazing place, with wonderful history and heritage. 

I took a short walk this evening to see the full moon. I walked to the top of the gardens, to that lookout point I pass each morning and saw it with fresh eyes, in the night sky, lit up by the glorious moon. As I looked up, I saw the Southern Cross constellation – probably the best reminder that I am in a new landscape. After all, it is not visible from the northern hemisphere. But then just behind it was Orion, probably the only other constellation I can recognize. I felt one emotion – calm. After all the tumult, all the craziness of these months and certainly these last few weeks, that moon (that so many have predicted will bring more disaster) brought me to a sense of peace and calm as never before.

My cousin just posted a beautiful quote on facebook, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscape but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust. As I continue to live in this new world, I’m trying to see it through new eyes each and every day, to see its beauty, its quirks, and its similarities to home. I am still not sure whether I am a tourist or a resident, but hopefully I can keep my eyes open to the beauty of where I am.

Namaste!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

This blog is not affiliated with Fulbright or Fulbright New Zealand, and all opinions expressed herein are my own.

From Tears to Aroha

These have been a stressful couple of days, and as I have emerged from the initial instinctual reactions to this unsteadiness (literal and figurative), the intensity of what happened in Christchurch really hit home. There were moments when I could not see anything about it without tearing up. It has become obvious that I was in one of the safest buildings in the entire city, and I was far enough outside the city center (2.5 km from the cathedral), that I did not see the horrible wreckage and people everywhere.

But then with each news item, I get hit with the devastation again. I realize what befell that beautiful city and its wonderful citizens. I ask, “why me?” with the deep knowledge that the universe works in interesting and unique ways and that I got out unscathed to do something else with my life on this planet. My gratitude grows. Yesterday was nearly useless for me, but this morning, I decided to sit for a few minutes and deal with it. I dealt with it the only way I know how – metta.

Metta is a Sanskrit word meaning loving-kindness. Metta meditation is a type of meditation where you offer loving-kindness to yourself and others. It is much more than that as well, but for purposes of this post (especially on the non-yoga blog), that will suffice.

Short of giving money (which I have done) and food (which I will do), there is not much for me to do to help the people of Christchurch. Crisis cleanup is just not my specialty, not to mention that I have but nine months to write a 150-page thesis that I have barely begun. But we can all offer our metta to the world. I can sit and wonder why I got out so easily, but that does no one any good.

During orientation, we learned a little Maori. It is, after all, one of the two national languages in New Zealand. The one word that stuck with me was “aroha.” Yes, it looks almost the same as aloha and has the same roots. It has a more “limited” definition than aloha, and we were told that it really means love. As I tought about metta, I turned to aroha, the Maori concept of what I have studied in Buddhist and yoga practices. I thought it was a perfect transition.

Then I looked up the meaning and realized it is far more perfect than I could have imagined. It may be an online dictionary, but this is the definition I found: as a verb, “to love, feel pity, feel concern for, feel compassion, empathise,” and as a noun, “affection, sympathy, charity, compassion, love, empathy.” It encompasses exactly what I feel for the people of Christchurch, exactly what I feel for those who survived but saw others who did not.

Below are two photos of what I saw after the quake and a photo of the building I was in when it struck. While it is obvious there is damage, you will notice that it is nothing compared to the utter destruction of the Central Business District (CBD). I have learned so much from the kiwis in the past month (Monday was a month after I arrived). Perhaps the greatest lesson has been the one of aroha – love coupled with all its meanings, including charity, compassion, and empathy.

The flooded street. I think I heard the word liquefaction 500 times that day, and I had never heard it before.

But one photo of the cracks in the sidewalk, but they were not too bad near us.

The AMI Rugby stadium, where the Forum/conference was being held. We were on the 5th floor. My backpack and bag are still there. It is sort of surreal to think of all that stuff just sitting there - the spilled water and our bags - simple reminders of what transpired.

There is no doubt the tears will continue. In fact, they flowed most freely this evening at a Dunedin community gathering (a vigil, in the United States) in which a group of people gathered to support Christchurch. As I write this, a helicopter is flying overhead, and my first thought is that it is from Christchurch – Dunedin is the closest big city to Christchurch, about a 3-hour car trip. But more than the tears and the constant feeling that the Earth is going to shatter below me, I feel aroha, for the people in Christchurch, but also for all people – a constant reminder that we must hold that notion at all times.

It is unusual for me to share so openly, but after this tragedy, it only seems natural. So, from tears, to aroha, to hopefully finding a better way of living in the world. As I said in my Is Yoga Legal post, “As we got off the plane, I told a high-ranking US politician that if we are to survive, we have to act, at all times, as we acted that day. The best part was that he agreed. For a brief moment, idealism, from my yoga background and my generational attitude, was able to come through.”

Hopefully, I can now move forward and start getting some work done again. After all, I am here for a purpose, and that purpose must be fulfilled, now more than ever.

Namaste and Blessings!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

This blog is not affiliated with Fulbright or Fulbright New Zealand, and all opinions expressed herein are my own. 

As "Luck" Would Have It

This post could also be called “The Morning After . . . on 4.5 hours of sleep.” In other words, please bear with me and my probable typos and grammatical mistakes.

As you all probably know by now, Christchurch New Zealand was struck by a Magnitude 6.3 earthquake a few minutes before 1pm on Tuesday (New Zealand time, which would make it about 7pm Wednesday, Eastern Time in the United States). Instead of being in Dunedin or Wellington where I will be studying for the next 9 months, I was in Christchurch. I was part of a Forum called the Future Partners Forum, which was part of a larger US-NZ Partnership Forum. There are press releases to both forums, but suffice it to say that business and political leaders from both countries were attending to discuss the US-NZ partnership, and we were asked to discuss its future. It was quite an honor, but not the point of this post.

The Future Partners consisted of 9 United States Fulbright Fellows and 11 New Zealanders. We all had vastly different backgrounds, and the Americans and kiwis met for the first time on Sunday evening. That is important to this story. To keep this somewhat short, I am using bullet points and focusing on “as luck would have it.” At the end, you will know why.

As luck would have it . . .

·      We were an over-anxious and productive group. We had a “brown-bag” lunch. Instead of being in the center of town, and all spread amongst different restaurants, where the vast majority of the Forum was, we were all together working through our lunch break when we could have been socializing, etc. In other words, we were together as a community. Readers of my other blog will know the importance of community to me, and if you are curious, here is a link to 12 blog posts on it.

·      We were in a particular room of the rugby stadium. As the floor started to shake, the building did exactly what it was supposed to do. It shook violently, and water glasses fell, a little of the soft ceiling fell (so someone told me, but I did not see it), and the windows and walls stayed intact. My CA training kicked in, and I protected my head before my computer, which got a little water damage and saved immediately after the shaking ended, but my head came first.

·      We were in New Zealand. I am from CA, but little did I know how unusual the phrase “Duck and Cover” is to the vast majority of Americans. The kiwis made sure we were all under tables. They felt they had an obligation to protect us in their most common natural disaster that makes CA look calm by comparison. Not only did our kiwi counterparts scream to get under tables, but I heard that other Americans were dragged under tables by the kiwis they were with.

·      We were in New Zealand. Within seconds, and I mean seconds, crew from the stadium were in the room, on radios, evacuating us from the room and the building.

·      I have a blackberry. Ok, this is purely personal, but as we were walking from the 5^th floor to the outside, I emailed my four parents to tell them I was safe. This was before the phone lines got clogged, and I could still get through. They heard that I was safe before they heard there was an earthquake.

·      We were in New Zealand (are you seeing a theme here?). The entire staff was outside with us, comforting us, taking care of us. They all live in Christchurch, and they were concerned about their family and friends and their homes, but they stuck with us until a bus arrived.

·      There was a home across the way. Let’s just say that within minutes several of us had to use the facilities. We walked across the street and were welcomed into what can only be described as a college house of boys. Clean or not, they had a toilet, and they let many of us use it. (Later, as we left the area, they had set up a card game outside – not for us, but they were doing it, probably because they were bored, and there was little power in the city.) They were really, really kind to let us use their home.

·      We are Americans (and our kiwi friends were not leaving us). The embassy acted fast! Some of the Partnership Forum was also in the stadium and found us about an hour after the earthquake. The rest of the people started to migrate back. Before 5pm (now that I think about it, that was about 4 hours after the earthquake when roads were nearly at a standstill and the city was in shock), a bus was there for all of us ready to take us to the Antarctic Center. We were all accounted for, and reaccounted for, before we got on that bus. We made sure our kiwi friends got on with us. This was the Partnership Forum, after all, and we are partners . . . and now friends. The embassy took them with us!

·      We were with some VIPs, and the military cares about us. We were at the Antarctic Center less than an hour when it was decided that we would be evacuated by NZ Air Force jets to Wellington. They made sure that we future partners signed up for our boarding passes first and foremost. We were getting out! But more importantly, being with these people made us all feel safe. Without going into specifics, people trained in disaster preparedness, who have helped with some of the largest most recent natural disasters in the world, were there, and they were working together to make sure we were all cared for properly.

·      We were with some caring people. This was the first trip on a C130 for most of us, and for many, this was their first earthquake. One VIP in particular spent the pre-flight once we were on the plane ensuring we had earplugs and ensuring that we were ready for a different sort of air trip. (We also passed out sick bags for those that were worried.) That same VIP realized that several of my friends were a tad nervous, and he chatted with one for 15 minutes about her work, her boyfriend, etc., just to distract her. We had to scream to hear, and even then it was hard. The outpouring of love and support to everyone was amazing.

·      We have an amazing Ambassador. Here is a link to his official blog. Let me just say that it was his call that we were safely removed. It was him on the tarmac as we got off the plane. It was him who ensured that we had housing last night. It was him who made sure that a Navy Captain was there to pick us up and take us to our lodging. The embassy staff, along with the Ambassador, ensured we had everything. I have rarely before been so impressed with a group of people.

·      I was wearing Flourite. Ok, odd one, but I’m putting it here. I bought this bracelet about two years ago, and it is both pretty and useful. Apparently, florite sold out after 9/11 because it has a calming effect. I don’t know if it helped, but I’m glad I have it on.

·      We are alive.

That last point is, of course, the most important. As I talked to people who saw the damage, and the news came through that at least 65 people had died, the cathedral I had photographed that morning to show my parents a view from their hotel where they are set to stay in a month, had collapsed, and hotels and buildings around the city still contained missing persons, the last point hit home harder and harder. We are alive, uninjured, and together.

These next few days will be about processing. I beg of you to think of those in need right now. I was treated the way I would expect royalty to be treated, perhaps because I was with the VIPs of both countries, but also because I know how much the Fulbright program means to our current Ambassador. I feel like I do not deserve such treatment, but I am grateful for the support and caring that we received.

I have been in many, many earthquakes in my life, but this was, by far, the roughest (though not worst magnitude). The last time I went through one that resulted in a state of emergency I was 7. Today I can grasp what happened. I woke up this morning in a strange but safe bed unsure of what I experienced yesterday. There will be more posts, but I wanted you to all know that I feel “lucky.” I do not actually believe in luck, so the better word is grateful, incredibly, incredibly, incredibly grateful. Wow!

It is now several hours later, and I have not had internet access to post this, so I am adding to it. I am actually on a flight from Wellington to Dunedin as I type this, and as I read the newspaper, the survivor guilt sunk in. Why me? Not only did I survive, but I got to leave the city – in a military jet. I know it is the embassy’s job to ensure our safety, but after being in a devastating earthquake my biggest inconvenience is that I had to buy a toothbrush at the airport, wear the same clothes two days in a row, and get back to Dunedin about 15 hours after I was supposed to arrive there. Oh, and some of my stuff is still in Christchurch. That is hard to stomach, really hard. But yes, I am grateful, and I know that this Forum / Partnership is going to do what we can to send whatever help we can to the people who have been hurt, killed, displaced, etc.

Namaste and Blessings!

© 2011 Rebecca Stahl, all rights reserved

This blog is not affiliated with Fulbright or Fulbright New Zealand, and all opinions expressed herein are my own.