After 2 weeks of traveling to conferences (that I was actually quite impressed with). I came straight back into work as we had our Orlando Clinic on Tuesday night, and both the national attorney and our new attorney were overlapping.
We have clinics one a month in the areas we serve so potential clients can meet with the attorney. They are held in churches so we can also offer hospitality and so there is a possibility of linking to a community. The clinic is really the only place volunteers meet clients, as so much is done between the client and the attorney in confidentiality. Some people our attorney can serve, help with filing paperwork or represent. Others do not have a legal pathway at this point, and can only be advised. This free advice is very important though, because unfortunately there are a lot of people who charge a lot of money pretending to do something that cannot be done.
A. I was happy to spend a little time with both attorneys. I am excited by our new JFON attorney in Florida and even more so because she seems interested in outreach to the community. This will make working together really great and it will be easier to achieve the whole mission of JFON. She is very dedicated and from what I can see (and understand) I respect her work. Also just having someone else in the office is mutually beneficial for us.
B. I like clinics. I love spending time with people and for right now its really my only set up venue for education. This week I was giving information on the DREAM Act as the hearing in the Senate had happened that day and nationally we were pushing to get the house to hold a hearing by calling in out support of the DREAM Act.
Now all of these things are important to share, but its hearing peoples stories and showing solidarity that is the best.
One family had called a few times during the day for directions. They said we they were in Orlando at 3pm. I was a little worried about them waiting, but explained the clinic did not start til 5pm and there would be no one there before then. The woman said they were coming from far and wanted to make sure they got to Orlando in plenty of time to find everything.
(I think at every clinic I have been to at least one family has come from over 3 hours for a chance to talk to an attorney.)
At the end of the evening I was trying to give them extra fruit to take for their journey. They explained they were staying in Orlando for the night, because they did not feel as safe driving in the dark. So I told them to take it for breakfast. I had no idea if the attorney was even able to help them.
Then as I was saying goodbye to a volunteer the family said goodbye as well. They had not planned to stay in Orlando, our volunteer must have heard their story and invited them to stay with her for the night. So all three women left with out volunteer, who had humbly provided even more hospitality. I would have never known of her providing for her neighbor had I not been in the room at that moment. She asked for no recognition, but simply made sure people that had just come into her life had a safe place to stay.
Moments like that make me proud to work where I do.
Moments like that make me remember what we are called to do.
Moments like that make me believe it is possible for a positive change to come.
we can't all do everything, but we can all do something.
blessing and hopefully,
Hannah
30 June 2011
16 June 2011
reflection
She asked me to walk with her to an appointment with another community group. We didn’t have any work transportation and it was against the culture and I guess wisdom to walk alone. Especially as a woman. So if we needed to go somewhere for work or to buy lunch we asked someone else to join. I often enjoyed the buddy system time, but some days it was hot or there was other work to do.
But I had never gone anywhere with her so I said yes. We were talking about things and I mentioned we had no mirrors where we were staying. (Living in three different places we went from no mirrors, to an awkward amount of too many mirrors, to no mirrors again). It is interesting the things you stop paying attention to with mirrors, but I mentioned it none the less.
We worked in a church where some people were a little better off and I figured someone would have an old mirror lying around or in a room they didn’t use too much. She seemed concerned and asked if I would like her to find a mirror maybe from a friend. I didn’t want to inconvenience her and new she was struggling to make ends meet with time and money. I explained I was only looking for something to borrow for a few months and then would give it back before I left South Africa.
She stopped walking and said no you couldn’t give it back. If someone gave you a mirror it would be a gift to you. You couldn’t give it back.
I didn’t want something new or really a gift, but to borrow something that would be useful to someone again. Our debate continued, even though I had started by just making conversation. I explained I couldn’t really bring a mirror home with me, it would break in a suitcase.
She finally said well you could give it to someone else who needed it, but it would be an insult if you gave something back to the person who gave it to you.
I understood her point. The next day, she told me to take the white bad in the staff room. It was for me. I figured out she didn’t want to bring attention to it or talk about it at work. When I got home I opened her present that was carefully wrapped in newspaper. It was a piece of mirror about the size of a piece of paper.
Sitting on the sink in the bathroom it was still hard to hold to be too useful. And people often asked why it was there or told me to be careful with the edge. I hadn’t intended on a joke about mirrors becoming my gift, a reminder, a lesson. So to me the sharp edge of a mirror didn’t make it trash or dangerous, it was a gift and the connection of our stories.
In Zulu her name means gift. Nosipho.
15 June 2011
Ministry With*
Check out the United Methodist Churches new website
Ministry With*
This is their video:
Thanks United Methodist Board of Global Ministries and United Methodist Woman
Ministry With*
This is their video:
Thanks United Methodist Board of Global Ministries and United Methodist Woman
14 June 2011
fair or just?
Yesterday I was at a planning meeting for a 1st-8th grade summer camp that will focus on justice at a local church this summer. They really have some great ideas, it is centered around Micah 6:8, and I am coming to speak on the “walk humbly” day. (If you have any ideas for the 1st-4th graders for my hour session of time to be engaging, send them on over)
This team of adults was really excited to engage with these young people in exploring their spirituality and the call to justice. Smart people were coming up with these ideas but something didn’t sit right. It was thoughtful and real, but fair and just were in a different context.
Yes there is something to learn when one group of children get all the expensive toys and other children don’t get any and the reasons behind it. Seems unjust and unfair, the kids will understand this based on the activity and maybe can start thinking about it.
But then is justice and fairness all the children getting all the really expensive toys? Is that what we all want to work for?
I encouraged that we just focus on toys, instead of one group getting toys and the other picking up trash. While the realities of wealth may come into play in certain exercises, we need to be careful of the value judgments we make. I have seen other children with no toys at all play very happily, some work too or are just much more respectful about chores.
I think the kids will get fair, and maybe even really start to understand ways other people live. I think it’s a great first step. But we that are a step or two beyond that or who want to change the world… we need to think about what we are trying to change it to and what we have to work with. Sometimes changing this at one end, means the other end has to give up some things.
I struggle with justice that means you need to live like us. I struggle with it for many reasons, but honestly worldwide its just not sustainable. We got good words, but how do we learn to live like and with each other justly? And with all of us?
This team of adults was really excited to engage with these young people in exploring their spirituality and the call to justice. Smart people were coming up with these ideas but something didn’t sit right. It was thoughtful and real, but fair and just were in a different context.
Yes there is something to learn when one group of children get all the expensive toys and other children don’t get any and the reasons behind it. Seems unjust and unfair, the kids will understand this based on the activity and maybe can start thinking about it.
But then is justice and fairness all the children getting all the really expensive toys? Is that what we all want to work for?
I encouraged that we just focus on toys, instead of one group getting toys and the other picking up trash. While the realities of wealth may come into play in certain exercises, we need to be careful of the value judgments we make. I have seen other children with no toys at all play very happily, some work too or are just much more respectful about chores.
I think the kids will get fair, and maybe even really start to understand ways other people live. I think it’s a great first step. But we that are a step or two beyond that or who want to change the world… we need to think about what we are trying to change it to and what we have to work with. Sometimes changing this at one end, means the other end has to give up some things.
I struggle with justice that means you need to live like us. I struggle with it for many reasons, but honestly worldwide its just not sustainable. We got good words, but how do we learn to live like and with each other justly? And with all of us?
05 June 2011
Transitions
Two questions that I think I could have done a better job answering when I spoke to churches and other groups were:
What culture shock are you experiencing or noticing?
And What can we do?
My hope is to make a whole tab on this blog on what you can do. My work with Justice for Our Neighbors is much more focused on that, but my time in Africa leads to some good examples to.
But for a little more lighthearted let me mention what I have noticed with all these transitions:
- Driving on the right hand side of the road again was not really an issue, but I miss driving stick and putting the car in neutral and when I come to a roundabout/traffic circle I have to look at it and think for a minute.
- didn’t take too long, but unlimited internet
- conference calls… (the number and length and learning how to *6 are its own kind of culture shock)
- Diet coke at the office instead of tea or coffee (Florida thing) In South Africa my coworkers would make me wait to work or speak with a client until I had fixed my morning tea.
- air conditioning (not the cooling factor itself, but the isolating factor of moving through space and time in air conditioned vessels)
- living alone for the first time and not working with a staff of 15
- knowing what a prima facia is and moral perptitude
- gathering at coffee shops or restaurants instead of family homes to share a meal or visit
- when I am meeting someone for the first time I shake hands with me left hand on my right forearm. (no one has said anything about it yet, but in greeting in Africa it was necessary to show respect and now it feels disrespectful not to do it, and its habit)
- using a dryer. Pants I have had for over a year fit differently ad I couldn’t figure it out, until I realized I had used my mom’s dryer to dry my clothes, and these pants had only ever been line dried.
- and I think its just as much as a shock when things you haven’t done in almost two years come naturally and you don’t really adjust at all
- Though the amount of construction and new building in Arlington took me back a bit. Traveling the US before I left for South Africa and living in Africa and knowing the world impact of recessions – it was very surprising to me to see and realize my home towns isolation from much of that.
- NYC was one of the easiest places for me to visit, with the least shocks, oddly enough
-and as a few of these have mentioned, transitioning to Florida has its own culture shocks
Thanks for helping me think about the transitions,
Hannah
What culture shock are you experiencing or noticing?
And What can we do?
My hope is to make a whole tab on this blog on what you can do. My work with Justice for Our Neighbors is much more focused on that, but my time in Africa leads to some good examples to.
But for a little more lighthearted let me mention what I have noticed with all these transitions:
- Driving on the right hand side of the road again was not really an issue, but I miss driving stick and putting the car in neutral and when I come to a roundabout/traffic circle I have to look at it and think for a minute.
- didn’t take too long, but unlimited internet
- conference calls… (the number and length and learning how to *6 are its own kind of culture shock)
- Diet coke at the office instead of tea or coffee (Florida thing) In South Africa my coworkers would make me wait to work or speak with a client until I had fixed my morning tea.
- air conditioning (not the cooling factor itself, but the isolating factor of moving through space and time in air conditioned vessels)
- living alone for the first time and not working with a staff of 15
- knowing what a prima facia is and moral perptitude
- gathering at coffee shops or restaurants instead of family homes to share a meal or visit
- when I am meeting someone for the first time I shake hands with me left hand on my right forearm. (no one has said anything about it yet, but in greeting in Africa it was necessary to show respect and now it feels disrespectful not to do it, and its habit)
- using a dryer. Pants I have had for over a year fit differently ad I couldn’t figure it out, until I realized I had used my mom’s dryer to dry my clothes, and these pants had only ever been line dried.
- and I think its just as much as a shock when things you haven’t done in almost two years come naturally and you don’t really adjust at all
- Though the amount of construction and new building in Arlington took me back a bit. Traveling the US before I left for South Africa and living in Africa and knowing the world impact of recessions – it was very surprising to me to see and realize my home towns isolation from much of that.
- NYC was one of the easiest places for me to visit, with the least shocks, oddly enough
-and as a few of these have mentioned, transitioning to Florida has its own culture shocks
Thanks for helping me think about the transitions,
Hannah
i was never called a stranger.
in a year and a half in another country (to my recollection) no one ever called me a stranger.
as I work to change the names we call migrant people in my ‘home’ country,
as I hear the words people wish were not associated with them,
as I hear the pain that comes from illegal, alien, other, and even the mild stranger,
I am reminded of a time when I was an other – but I was claimed in a strange land.
my first day of work at Bula Monyako my now friend Patty took me on a tour and introduced me to everyone. she would say proudly (and not fully understanding who I was) “this is Hannah, our missionary.”
somedays I may have had to struggle with my American identity and everyday I was welcomed into a different reality.
but no one ever called me a stranger.
the perspective of my work today in the land of freedom and opportunity is much different. It has been a painful week of learning the good words of inclusion and diversity have boundaries with much bigger walls than I realized. Some days I would rather go back to being a stranger.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)