Friday, March 12, 2021

COVID -19 and 2020 recollections

 

Sylvester and Pinky and I enjoy the sunset

I'm writing to you from lovely green Kefalonia, Greece. I came here in October for a writing retreat with a bunch of Berlin writers that had been postponed from May (due to the pandemic). Back in January 2020 when I first signed up for this retreat, I envisioned taking a month off and writing for a week then going on holiday and "island hopping" for a month before returning to Berlin and my work as a consultant.

Little did I know how much things would change for me.

This is probably the year I've done the least amount of travel since I got my passport in 1997 to go on a study tour/vacation to Jamaica! The year started off with a bang - new year's eve in the village in NYC with my friend Alec from my days in DC, visiting old friends in NYC and shopping and eating. I then went to DC on the 3rd of January for my first vacation trip there for a few years and caught a terrible flu around the 6th. I recovered but I remember the weeks of fatigue afterwards and the wheezing and difficulty breathing. I look back now and wonder if it was COVID although the virus had not yet arrived in the USA at the time. Magical thinking to hope that I'm immune is more probable.

I flew back to Berlin after recuperating with my friend Cat in Pennsylvania and my sister in South Carolina and almost immediately went to Bulgaria for a training of one of my favorite projects last year, developing a curricula for interpreters and cultural mediators on how to respond to GBV survivors and provide psychological support for them, as well as addressing vicarious traumatization and burnout for themselves. Interpreters and cultural mediators are the front line workers - particularly in Europe - and it was a very meaningful and lovely project. I met amazing people that really gave me a lot of energy to do this work.

And then I went on a quick holiday jaunt to Dubai to see a friend (thinking, well, I don't love Dubai but its just for a few days!) I had the idea that I would then go from there to a conference in Bangkok and visit friends there, visit my friends in Maldives, and then go to Fiji to see friends there - possibly spending some time getting to know the Pacific before returning to Europe for spring. Boy how those plans changed! As I traveled back on February 11 on the terrible Pegasus Airlines from the budget terminal in Dubai and had a 3 hour layover in the "third" airport of Istanbul from 2am to 5am, the stories of the virus in Asia had spread and one by one, all the events in Asia were being canceled. "Good," I thought, "I could use a rest. These last few flights have been horrible! I am tired of traveling." Little did I know what that meant!

So I stayed at home. February in Berlin is not a pretty month  - dark, grey, cold, and rainy. But i was happy to be in my apartment for a while. We had an amazing spring and I had a small balcony where I could sit in the sun and plant flowers. But it was not restful and the fear of contracting COVID, spreading COVID, or learning that my loved ones had COVID was ever present. At the same time, the humanitarian world was coming to terms that GBV was the shadow pandemic coming alongside the lockdowns and quarantines. Never have I wished more that I had a cat. Simon Le Bon, the Siamese would have reminded me to sit, nap, breathe, eat, and purr to stay calm.

Dancing with Lukas in Templehof

 Berlin was a strange place to be in - we seemed to have the most beautiful spring in a long time and the summer saw the sidewalks and outdoor cafes packed with people outside, not a mask to be seen. And the noise from my neighborhood became unbearable. I hated being in my apartment (although its lovely). I couldn't get away from the stomping neighbors upstairs, the chattering coked up people at the restaurant downstairs under my bedroom, or the drunken mobs coming home from dancing and partying in the park near my house at 4am. I felt miserable and angry all the time. We did have some bright spots, all social activities moved to the parks so we had a few birthday parties in the outdoors. So in October, I came to Kefalonia for the writing retreat... and just stayed.


And - its March and I'm still here! I wake up and look at the Ionian sea and a grove of olive trees. 5 cats (Pinky Tuscadero, Cutie Pie, Sylvester, Filos, and Jenny) come onto my balcony and stare at me until I feed them. We discuss the seasons. I check them for ticks. They fight with each other and sometimes they curl up in the sun with each other and clean each other. We've been on lockdown since November which means there's a 6pm curfew and you have to get permission from the police to go out. So I go out once a week to buy groceries. I go downstairs to talk to my Greek neighbors and cook with them. And I walk around in the olive groves to the sea and listen to Stephen Fry reading Greek mythology to me on an audio book. Thanks to zoom and the internet and a kindle, I can still talk to friends, work full-time, and read books and watch movies. Its a very different existence than February 2020! But a good one.

So forgive my tardiness in sending you holiday greets and instead accept this as Saint Patrick Day or Ides of March greetings! A few photos of Kefalonia, cats, and COVID outdoor party in Berlin

Much love,
Sarah

Saturday, September 26, 2020

Proust

 

When he asked me to marry him, I knew that my dreams of a proper British academic life would come true. We had settled down immediately and his lecturer’s salary at the university was just enough to cover a small cottage in the back of an old church near a graveyard. I was 22 and had just graduated and my head was filled with dreams of musty 1930s books and vicars and rambles in the countryside. He was 48, already losing his hair and developing a bit of a stoop. But I loved him – or rather the idea of him- my dreamy academic. My childhood in India had left me plenty of time in old library of my girls’ school to read old books.

 

When we scrimped and saved for holidays, we found a cheap hotel in the Algarve where we went every year. His idea of fun was to read these Proust novels to each other. One day he told me that when we finished the books, he thought that we should start over from the beginning. And that’s when I saw the next 10 years of my life stretched out before me – the same as the last ten. I realized I had never seen the world. I had never figured out my own story. So I said to him – we’ll never finish these books. And then I packed my bag and left him.

Childhood Scenes

My mother straightened the collar of my blouse, tugging at it and licking her finger to wipe away a bit of chocolate smudged around my mouth from the candybar given to me as a bribe on the drive to the airport. "Now be a brave girl and don't embarrass us," she instructed. She stepped back and looked at me with a critical eye. 

"Why did you put her in that get up" my father asked, lifting a skeptical eyebrow and lighting a cigarette. I glanced down at my blue polka dotted suit - a bit tight and very shiny. The shorts showed my pink thighs, a bit chaffed from the vinyl car seat and goose bumped from the cool Irish rain. "They're French! We have to show them that we have some style!" she tutted at him, "we can't be sending her off to France in some dungarees!" "sure, but they aren't in Paris," he exhaled, "they live on a farm in the countryside." 

My mother ignored him and turned her attention back to me. "You won't understand a thing they say," she lectured. "You had better do us proud. You will make your bed every morning the minute you wake up. Don't eat fast, gobbling down your food like a starving piglet at the trough. And for god's sake, keep your hands and face clean." 

I didn't understand why I was off to the French cousins. Just last week I had been running around in the park, thrilled that school was over and now I was standing in the airport in this hot tight suit clutching a small bag with my belongings- told that I was on my way to France on an airplane. 

The stewardess came over and pinned a name tag to the jacket, pushing the floppy frills of the blouse out of the way. "Don't you look as a cute as a button," she smiled with a chipper cold voice. I frowned. My mother kissed me on the cheek and my father patted my head. 

"Don't forget!" my mother called after me as she waved, "Say Bahn Jar when you get there!"

Tuesday, July 21, 2020

Reflections on current allegations of racism at MSF

So recently, MSF has been in the news again - this time for their racist and colonial tendencies.  A sign-on letter circulated accusing MSF of failing to acknowledge the extent of racism perpetuated by its policies, hiring practices, workplace culture and “dehumanising” programmes, run by a “privileged white minority” workforce.

I often encountered racist attitudes there and in fact worked on a national staff perceptions study where many of the national staff I talked with decried the colonialist attitudes of the organization where a naive young inexperienced Westerner might be the supervisor of a much older and experienced person from the country where they were working. Many of the expats that I met had an inborn belief that only a "Expat" (i.e. a Westerner or European) could truly be neutral.  I was actually instructed when I worked for them to note what pieces of evidence I had from National Staff vs Expatriate Staff as I guess the Expat staff wee more "reliable" .

In the words of my friend Saleem Haddad who I met when I worked at MSF "...make no mistake, like I've said before, MSF is one of the most colonial and racist organisations I've ever worked for. [The linked article above] also notes: "The statement follows fierce internal debate about racism and the Black Lives Matter movement. Some staff were angry at a recent statement released by MSF Italy, suggesting it should not use the term “racism” and that “everyone, starting with MSF”, should talk about “all lives matter”.
This article doesn't mention that after this, the statement goes on to say "because discrimination exists against blacks, whites, yellows, women, men, gays, old, young, etc."

Yellows, ladies and gentlemen. Yellows.
I'm not harping on MSF for any other reason than I believe in its mission, and believe that, if the institutions of white supremacy and patriarchy within the movement are dismantled, the organisation could do some truly revolutionary work. Ultimately, I don't mind speaking honestly about this because I've got no skin in this game. I have no intention to work for MSF again so long as these sexist and colonial structures remain in place. Others have more to lose."

I feel the same way. I didn't sign that letter. I whole-heartedly support the authors of the letter for sure. But I saw some of the same men I complained about in my my blog post on Cassandra Complexity. White men who had power (and still do) signing on to complain about something that they could have done something about if they tried. But its easier to jump on the bandwagon than actually do something.

I originally wrote that blog as a letter to the Director General of MSF Holland and UK in support of a woman of color who had complained about discrimination there. When I heard nothing back from management, I decided to publish it as a blog post to raise the profile. Since racism often goes hand in hand with sexism, I thought I would just put this blog post from Cassandra Complexity here as a reminder that the women of color working at MSF are probably the ones getting it the worst.

Holier than Thou: Is it time for MSF's #Metoo moment?