#prayforjakarta

#PrayForSyria as if it’s long history of civil war wasn’t enough, just last week 68 children died when a bomb blast hit bus convoys carrying evacuees from the besieged towns. This only contributes to the ongoing deathtoll:

“As the Syrian conflict enters its seventh year, more than 465,000 Syrians have been killed in the fighting, more than a million injured and over 12 million Syrians - half the country's prewar population - have been displaced from their homes.” -AlJazeera (16th May 2017)

#PrayForManchester now known as the Manchester Arena Attack, a suicide bomber targeted concert goers as they were exiting the venue. 22 people confirmed dead, one of them being as young as 8-years-old, and leaving 116 injured. Several people responsible for the terrorism have been detained, but it’s said there are many more linked to the attack still at large.

#PrayForMarawi radical ISIS-supporting group called The Maute are openly battling it out with Philippine armed forces, with gunmen running loose on the streets, taking hostages and planting bombs in homes and neighborhoods. Sites they have burned include a church, a school, city jail and college. President Duterte declared martial law and residential areas have been bombed by both terrorists and military, at least a dozen civilians dead and many more injured; clash ongoing.

#PrayForBangkok where a hospital nail bomb injured 24 people on the anniversary of the Thai coup. Though the hospital belonged to the military, it still treated civilians, with patients varying from the young to the elderly, all waiting for treatment. 3 people were struck with shrapnel to the face and neck.

#PrayForJakarta where suicide bombers  set off explosives at one of Jakarta’s busiest transit hubs, killing 3 police officers and injuring 10 others. Residents recall the trauma left behind from last year’s terrorist assault in January where  a suicide bombing and shooting in Jakarta killed 2 and wounded 24 people.

Terrorism has no religion. No race. No moral code. No ethics. No boundaries when it comes to bloodshed. Yes, I know it’s unfair some news gets circulated in mainstream media more than others. So learn. Read and educate yourself.

Then educate others so that they may do the same.

“Dan Kami perintahkan kepada manusia (berbuat baik) kepada dua orang ibu-bapanya; ibunya telah mengandungnya dalam keadaan lemah yang bertambah-tambah, dan menyapihnya dalam dua tahun . Bersyukurlah kepadaKu dan kepada dua orang ibu bapakmu, hanya kepada-Kulah kembalimu.” Qs. Luqman : 14

-----

kelak jika nanti Tuhan bertanya amalannya di dunia ia habiskan untuk apa, akan kukatakan bahwa beliau sudah menjadi sebaik baik orang tua. akulah saksinya.

-

kelak jika nanti Tuhan bertanya bagaimana perannya sebagai seorang istri bagi suaminya, akan kukatakan bahwa beliau telah amanah mengembannya. akulah saksinya.

-

kelak jika nanti Tuhan bertanya apa yang dididiknya untuk keturunannya, akan kukatakan bahwa beliau tidak mendidik apapun kecuali iman dan kebaikan. akulah saksinya.

-

jika kita bicara tentang manusia yang kukenal sejak aku lahir ke dunia, maka aku tidak mengenal kesabaran dan keteduhan sebaik miliknya. tidak mengenal, keikhlasan sebesar hati nuraninya. sosok yang berhasil memberi rasa aman bagi suaminya dan kehangatan bagi seisi rumahnya.

-

kasih sayang ibu yang katanya sepanjang masa itu, benar adanya. keutamaannya yang terulang hinggal 3 kali "ibumu, ibumu, ibumu," itu benar maknanya.

-

disaat aku ingin sekali kembali sekarang juga ke ibukota untuk ikut turun menangani bencana, senyumnya menyadarkanku. tidak, ladang jihadmu kini sejatinya tepat didepan mata. yang begitu besar nilainya dan mulia nilainya. jangan sampai menyesal.

-

“Ya Tuhanku, tunjukilah aku untuk mensyukuri ni’mat Engkau yang telah Engkau berikan kepadaku dan kepada ibu bapakku dan supaya aku dapat berbuat amal yang saleh yang Engkau ridhai. berilah kebaikan kepadaku dengan (memberi kebaikan) kepada anak cucuku. Sesungguhnya aku bertaubat kepada Engkau dan sesungguhnya aku termasuk orang-orang yang berserah diri.” Qs. Al Ahqaaf : 15

-----

I am a decidedly middle-class white lady. I am a monolingual American from the mid-west. I was raised with notions of self-righteous Western civics and imperialism, the glory of democracy and capitalism, the unquestioned necessity of a functionally-differentiated (“individualist”) society, the power of the individual, and the myth of American meritocracy. I generally expect everyone to have straight, healthy teeth and no discernible body odor. I honestly do not care about taking my shoes off inside my home even though I have a young child and I know how unsanitary and unhealthy that habit is. My experience working domestically with and among immigrants and refugees, and abroad as a foreign white-minority teacher taught me a lot about my own strange American habits and cultural biases.

As it turns out, I talk about the weather too much. I eat breakfast in my car unusually often. I take showers that are far too long and far too hot. And in the mornings I habitually zigzag around my home multi-tasking with a mouth full of foaming toothpaste (How revolting!). These are things I learned because I am self-aware of how odd my habits seem to others. But this is only the beginning. This is a superficial level of intercultural interaction. Most recommendations for intercultural communication competency will discuss the importance of self-reflection and self-awareness. In my opinion, the next recommended step toward ICC competency—confronting your own bias—is often overlooked and under-emphasized.

Confronting your own biases is a step of the adjustment process that goes beyond just being able to see your own mistakes and being aware of how you contribute to situations or circumstances. Confronting your own biases means understanding how your personal lens—your assumptions (The majority rules!), your habits (NO sugar in your coffee, Miss?!), and your worldview (Be the change you want to see!) are part of your own cultural inheritance. In most of the literature on the topic, it reads like the next logical step, looks pretty straight-forward, and sounds kind of obvious. However, in my experience working with Peace Corps Volunteers, Fulbright ETAs, and fellow English Language Fellows who are all otherwise talented and experienced intercultural communicators, it is not always a next logical step. It is not always a straight-forward step. And it is definitely not obvious in real-life critical situations. This self-check is the emotional heavy-lifting. It is the task that requires nitty-gritty vulnerability. And it’s the step that demands dig-deep-for-it courage.

In her book, Other People’s Children, Lisa Delpit (1995) wrote about the difficulty of confronting your own biases in a way that captures how this step feels to me. I hear her words echo in my head like a line of poetry when I find myself in critical incidents. I share them with you in the hopes that they will remind you take this step, too.

We do not really see through our eyes or hear through our ears, but through our beliefs. To put our beliefs on hold is to cease to exist as ourselves for a moment — and that is not easy. It is painful as well, because it means turning yourself inside out, giving up your own sense of who you are, and being willing to see yourself in the unflattering light of another's angry gaze. It is not easy, but it is the only way to learn what it might feel like to be someone else and the only way to start the dialogue. (Delpit, 1995, p. 46–47)

I remember the first time I honestly saw myself “in the unflattering light of another’s angry gaze” and it was much, much worse than I thought it would be. Delpit is right that it was painful, it did turn me inside out, and it did make me lose a sense of myself. By the time I got to Indonesia I was familiar with this step. I knew it was coming. I knew it would be hard. I could hear it in the McCulture playlists on the radio. I could read it in fast-food slogans like, “Bros love brownies.” I could see it in the cable television line-up. But I didn’t expect it to be as hard as it was.

I didn’t expect it to be on an average Thursday in Jakarta.

I didn’t expect it to be terrorist bomb.

And I didn’t expect it to be at the Starbucks across the street from my husband’s office.

I knew in the aftermath I could #prayforjakarta or I could #kamitidaktakut or I could consider myself #blessed that my husband spontaneously decided to work from home that day.

But I know that Starbucks.

I know people who lost colleagues—from the United Nations and from the Indonesian National Police.

And I know better, as an intercultural communicator.

In the back of a police vehicle with tinted windows, wrapped in a colleague’s jilbab and behind sunglasses, I checked my phone and shared my location with my husband. A kind soul caring for my child wrapped her completely in her favorite “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” blanket and delivered her quietly into the car on a back residential street. I put on a brave face to send a photo to my mom. We are okay. 

Then, I took a deep breath and “ceased to exist.” I saw myself, my work, my husband’s work, and our presence here in the angry gaze of someone who walked into a capitalistic, imperialistic, and materialistic coffee shop and sat down at the table with one of my husband’s colleagues. He was a middle-class white man. That man could have been my husband. Or it could have been a middle-class white lady, like me.

When I sifted through the shattered pieces of the worldview I originally boarded my flight with, I went back to Delpit’s wisdom. I pulled up the article and re-discovered the two sentences, which began the quote that still rings in my ears.

Delpit (1995) wrote, “Both sides do need to be able to listen, and I contend that it is those with the most power, those in the majority, who must take the greater responsibility for initiating the process. To do so takes a very special kind of listening, listening that requires not only open eyes and ears, but open hearts and minds” (p. 46). Although my American middle-class white lady status doesn’t make me particularly powerful in Indonesia and doesn’t place me in the majority in Indonesia, I recognize how my own intercultural interaction mistakes, my own biases, and my participation in the larger framework of structural oppression does still place me squarely in the people group Delpit is referring to. It is my responsibility to remember to confront these biases. And it is my obligation to continually get better at listening with open eyes and ears, as a self-aware intercultural communicator; and furthermore, to get better at listening with a truly open heart and mind.