Desert bloom

Been dry ! In the desert, riding the horse with no name. Some just let go. Never learned. Never changed. Except on New Years. Then, business as usual. Stores Open and Closed i.e. permanently downsized.

However, the longer the wait, the sweeter the result. Like desert bloom. Like maturity and wholeness. Seeing life from both sides. Of course, our outer self is withered while our inner renewed.

Yet we tell ourselves we are looking “fabulous”, younger next year?

For New Year resolution, I learn not to take on additional “blames “(in blame seeking culture). Leaders, be it de Gaulle or de Klerk, paid and promoted, should take responsibilities (for the fall or failure of their regimes.) Most times we would never know e.g. tales of a country collapse. Mine for instance. With babies tossed from Chinooks and caught like basketballs.

Came the cleanup. Came the rescue of refugees. Relief and Cultural Orientation camps. Push/pull forces: Thai pirates’ threats behind, Third-World asylum beyond. Twice, 42 and 40 years ago, I returned to those camps (as of this update, the whole apparatus of USAID was dismantled).

I found myself playing “god’ (culture shock). Flying toward the Sun Icarus-like. Candle burned at both ends (right about now, it feels two flames will soon meet up in the middle). “He who is no fool to lose that which he cannot keep gaining that which he cannot lose.” i.e. made of flesh – college-grad fresh meat – that burn in a flash.

It’s one thing to volunteer: raising money to do good for one summer. It’s another to re-enlist to keep warm a vacated slot (or else the Baptist will take over). More challenging than I had previously thought. CO camp was where folks were supposedly less anxious, knowing a seat on a flight out soon be reserved in their names (with UNHCR hand-carry bags, like the ones we would pick up at “shows” to contain promotional materials).

April 29, 1975 escape, but without “babies like basketballs”: orderly, organized and with orientation. Think Costco shopping: select, carry, load up, transport and lug in the house.

Yet we were 4 adults, 4 kids and one old mom. Later, when the table turned, I became a giver.

Along with UN relief folks, I was often waved through the gate when back on leave. PRPC was a tight run ship of 20,000: controlled and structured. The Philippines made a deal with international VOLAGS: have your personnel and payroll outsourced here. Their track record (Clark Airbase) and proximity to the action won them contracts – for a refugee’s holding center.

A Habitat for Humanity + Guantanamo Bay. Everyone knew it’s transient, like the summer before college. My previous exposure to the Philippines was a 3-day stop at Subic Bay, on-route to Wake Island. But that time, in Bataan, the Baptist just baptized en-mass while the Catholics had their Mass (with Papal visit). Bataan was designed for longer quarantine than my brief stay at Indiantown Gap, PA 8 years previous.

My own refugee processing period was rushing, with weddings conducted daily at Indiantown Gap Chapel, Vegas-shotgun marriages.

Even with empathy and experience, I was ill-prepared (except for being bi-cultural and bi-lingual, with some refugee-work experience). The plus side? International living among expats made my subsequent Cross-Culture coursework a breeze.

Communication was my mainstay. Hence, I found myself speaking, writing, teaching and leading discussions (often I forgot I no longer was at an American campus). Interestingly enough, I found myself a referee among regional factions who, when locked up in confinement often resorted to war 2.0.

In Hong Kong, on my second tour, a vacation-relief assignment, things ended on a sour note: I was falsely accused of “stealing” a gold-engraved Bible. Turned out, I never saw it and hardly read the Bible in Vietnamese to begin with.

Here I was putting myself on loan, at the service of others, riding the ferry, plus boat trips to far-out shut-in camps, with multiple doors slammed behind me on each visit – stomach (Chinese food) churning – holding tight to your day pass (or else easily mistaken for a detainee) while listening to tales of violence and rape – which had occurred the night before…only to get falsely accused in place of thanks.

Not to mention upon repatriation having to wait tables for a few months. On one occasion, unavoidably I was assigned to serve the section where my former film crew ended up seating. “How was humanitarian these days?”

Years later, with humiliation from “humanitarian “behind, I still marvel at the forgiving Father and His unforgiving children. At times, I thought all the wrong in the world, cascading or not, was caused by or somehow implicated me – High Priests of High Church tend to lay colonial guilt on us flocks.

Today, you can hardly find any trace of “white-man burden” in me. All “white-out”, pardon the pun.

Overall, I have had my shares of human misery. Refugee I had been myself, hence am not “rich Christian in the age of hunger.” Of all the (blind) people, few returned to say “Thanks “. I, on the other hand, said twice. From the heart.

Those religious outreach tactically had a trapped audience e.g. cross-shaped burning- brush lit up the hill where spiritual hunger (survival at sea – even on dead- companions’ flesh -would prime and well-oiled you good) would otherwise remain apathetic. As found in the States and Europe, where mainline Protestant denominations experience quite a drought.

At Westmoreland-breakneck pace, baptism was synonymous with Anglicizing. (Certificate of baptism before certificate of citizenship). Wonder how many faithful can withstand materialistic onslaught once settled in the West (It was only fitting the Baptist “mission” was carried out by a former Marine). Numbers game!

Human misery will always be with us. From Hungary to Hong Kong, from Ethiopia to Algeria. Yet we also find beauty in the barren and miracle in the mundane. There must be time (Hologram for a King).

In all its sterility, life has its charm, to serious seekers.

In looking back, I realize despite agonizingly high opportunity cost, I have gained what I was in for (still without knowing the name of the horse on which I rode). Tales by survivors at seas, of rape and rescue, stay with the most hardened of hearts among us. Desert blooms sometimes.