Just around the Corner from Us

I thought that I had a pretty good handle on what this city has to offer. But she continues to suprise me. Saturday morning, the girls and I went for a quick hike. Four minutes on the train and twelve minutes walking up a mountain access road and we were at the trail head. We scrambled up boulders in and next to around this river for twenty minutes and cha-ching we were there.

One train stop away from our house and just over half an hour from our door is this mountain swimming hole with a forty-foot water fall. Amazing, I've lived here for over a year and I knew nothing about this until a friend tipped me off last week.

This city continues to amaze me.

-Jack

VanNoords Unplugged

We just finished unpacking our last items in our new apartment across the hall. As we unpacked our belongings, it occurred to me all the items –particularly electronic items- that we are living without.

We live in one of the most modern and technologically advanced cities in Asia, but ironically the VanNoords have turned into neo-luddites. This past year, we’ve reverted to doing things the way grandpa and grandma used to did them.

We drip-dry most of our clothes. Whenever she bakes cookies, Julie has to mix all the ingredients by hand; we do not have an electric mixer. She has to chop all her vegetables by hand. We actually have to open our cans by hand. Julie doesn’t have her curling iron.

Surprisingly, we do own a dishwasher. Actually we have two. They are named Annika and Elise. They girls take turns doing the dinner dishes everynight.

Recently, I spent 45 minutes backing out eight screws with a screwdriver because we have no electric drill. After a decade of shaving with an electric razor, I am back to using cream and a blade.

We bought an area rug for our living room. But once a week one of us has to get down on our hands and knees and brush it with a small whisk broom because we don’t own a vacuum cleaner.

-Jack

Picture: our new view from our new apartment on the other side of the building.

If You Can Keep Your Head When All About You

Being Americans citizens living in Hong Kong, we get the occasional email message from the U.S. Consulate. The following was in my email inbox last night.

One, a "demonstration" organized by the Hong Kong political parties that marches on a government house does not seem like the appropriate response to the recent tragedy in The Philippines. A vigil, perhaps; but a demonstration?

Second, for a the U.S. consulate to issue a warning that makes reference to "anti-American messages" seems to miss the mark. Widely. Hong Kong simply does not have a history of demonstration that turn violent. As if Hong Kong were Chile.

It was and is a tragic event. As residents of a city-state that violently lost eight of its citizens it's hard to navigate all the emotions that the headlines engender. It doesn't help when political leaders are all over the map with their own responses.

Date: August 27, 2010
From: U.S. Consulate

According to media reports, the Consulate has learned that there will be a sizeable demonstration on Sunday, August 29th, regarding the recent bus hijacking in the Philippines. The major political parties of Hong Kong have all agreed to hold a joint demonstration in Victoria Park beginning at 3:00 p.m. and are expected to continue with a march to Chater House. Organizers are expecting a crowd of up to 50,000.

The Consulate advises U.S. citizens to avoid the Central MTR station and the march route on Sunday afternoon. We do not expect any violence or anti-American messages, but advise you to stay clear of the protests.

Even demonstrations that are meant to be peaceful can become violent and unpredictable. You should avoid them if at all possible. Be alert and aware of your surroundings and pay attention to what the local news media has to say.

Philippine Tour Bus Tragedy

Many of you watched the Hong Kong tour bus tragedy in Manila as it unfolded on your televisions two days ago. Hong Kong is reeling. People here are shocked and dismayed. The whole episode is taxing Hong Kong's already complicated relationship with the Philippines. Reactions vary. The Hong Kong government called for Hong Kongers to cancel their travel plans to the Philippines. A friend overheard a man in a local restaurant call for all 250,000 Filippino maids in Hong Kong to be sent back to the Philippines.

The international Christian school community in Hong Kong is a relatively small, interconnected community. One of the girls killed on the tourist bus was a former student of my colleague when he taught at Christian Alliance International (CAI). She was a student of his in AP Calculus. Information is sketchy, but the word we are getting at this time is that the girl, her siblings, and her father did not survive. Her mother was the only survivor from her family.

One of our school's flagship programs is our Week Without Walls during which the kids spend one week in November learning and serving outside of the school. While some of our students stay local many of them travel overseas to China, Malaysia, and elsewhere. I will be leading a group of middle schoolers to Indonesia for six days.

This past week I have been helping the Week Without Walls coordinator get all the information together in anticipation of rolling out this year's WWW offerings.

The two of us spent Friday evening making 250 copies of the twelve-page catalog to be distributed at the Tuesday morning WWW kick-off assembly.

Between printing our booklets on Friday and our kickoff assembly on Tuesday, the tragedy in Manila happened.

One of our thirteen Week Without Walls trips is planned for The Philippines.

We still had our assembly. We still distributed the catalogs. We are still offering The Philippines as one of our offerings.

Once the shock wears off from recent events, I am confident the trip will still be a go.

But in the meantime, we are all a little rattled, to say the least.

White Walls

I've taken over 10,000 pictures since we've been here, and up until three weeks ago, I hadn't printed a single one. Inspired by the massive expanse of white walls in our new apartment and by the prints I saw in our friend's apartment this summer, I decided it was time to finally print some pictures.

We are only allowed to use sticky blue tack on our walls; no nails, no hooks. So I had to get a little creative. For a small fee the local FotoMax in Tai Wai will mount your pictures to foam-core board. That way pictures won't sag or curl in the Hong Kong humidity; but the best part is the pictures are still light enough to hang with sticky tack.

These pictures of Vietnam hang in our family room - a trip I took this summer . . . without my family.

Oops.

Next month I plan to print and hang some pictures above the sofa of the Philippines -a trip we all went on.

That should make everybody happy.

Well, everybody except for our neighbor across the hall who walked in, took one look at the wall, and asked "Where are the pictures of your family? You have pictures of a Vietnamese girl but no pictures of your own girls?"

I guess I''ll have to do a thrid collection by the dining room table.

Displaced Persons 3 of 3

We were again herded into yet another room where we were given some twine, a few bricks and a large canvas and told we should fashion a tent for our group. Night came, the lights went out and the refugee camp soldiers who were supposed to be there to protect us spent the night shining their lights into our tent. In the tent next to me a man was hauled out, frisked, and accused of being a trouble maker in the camp.

The next day, anyone under sixteen was invited to attend the refugee camp school. Thirty kids lined up. They only had room for six.

Several of the women were told that for the price of their watches and rings, an escape could be arranged. So on the second night, they slipped out under the cover of darkness and followed the man who had taken their jewelry as payment. I found out later that they had been sold into slavery.

Finally, the leader of the Crossroads program slipped off his turban and announced "Ladies and Gentlemen, the simulation is now over." The simulation had put me into a rather peculiar frame of mind that was a combination of powerlessness and dread. I thought that I would have snapped out of it once it was over, but it took me a while for the sensations to ebb away.

We debriefed as a group and talked about what it means to be a displaced person. We also talked about how because Hong Kong appears to outsiders to be all about wealth creation, Hong Kong is sometimes accused of having no soul. Someone pointed out that the ever-increasing scope of the work that goes on at Crossroads proves otherwise. The Hong Kong government actually requested that Crossroads outfit itself with a gift shop and a cafe so that they are equipped to handle tourists.

The Crossroads staff, no longer wearing fatigues or holding semi-automatic weapons, brought out all the watches, rings, and other jewelry in individual ziplock baggies that -unbeknown to us- they'd been carefully stowing as they were surrendered during the simulation.

Finally, before departing, we were instructed to leave our laminated i.d. cards on the table by the door.

I had been carefully gripping mine the whole time.

I didn't want to give it up.

I wanted to keep it as a reminder of what had been a rather transformative hour and a half.

I took one last look at the i.d. card I had been given: "Mohammed Chelab. Age 21. Not married. Farmer. Head injury."

I deposited it on the table with the other cards and exited the building.

-Jack

Displaced Persons 2 of 3

Suddenly, several staff women rushed into the room we were sitting in and instructed us -pleaded with us really- to follow them and to move quickly. All seventy of us quickly herded toward the one exit. On the two flights of stairs were more people imploring us to move faster. None of us knew what was going on. I simply gripped my i.d. card and followed the person ahead of me. We were all ushered into a room with Persian rugs and tapestries on the wall.

A man -who I was about to find out was the head of our village- started addressing the group. He told us that he had been to the neighboring village and seen the devastation with his own eyes. He said that he feared that the rebels were coming here next. He said that he knew about a refugee camp just over the . . .

Suddenly, there was a deafening bang and all the lights went out. In complete darkness, we could here soldiers entering the room, yelling orders, telling us to put our heads down. Knowledge that this was a simulation left me. Instinct took over. I did what they said.

Suddenly the lights came back up. I could see that where a taipestry had once been a large six-foot hole in the concrete wall now stood. The soldiers were dressed in fatigues and carrying automatic weapons. The barked at us to move, move, move. As we stepped through the hole in the concrete wall into the next dimly-lit room, the soldiers told us to separate into two line of men and women. We did what we were told. None of us talked among ourselves. I gripped my i.d. card.

When it was my turn, I handed my i.d. to the guard who alternated between shining his flashlight on my i.d. card and in my face. It seemed like he was taking longer than what should have been necessary. I was wishing that he would simply wave me forward so that I could rejoin the rest of my group. I was afraid that he was going to send me somewhere else or detain me for some reason.

In the next room, we were told that we had to get ourselves into groups of seven or eight people and at the same time to keep an eye out for possible relatives. Finally, something constructive to do. I started milling around, approaching various groups of people, and quietly calling out the name "Chelab" hoping that someone would hold up his or her card and show me that he too was a Chelab. I knew that it was just a simulation but I really wanted to find somebody who had the last name as I did. Not quite sure how to explain it but, but I really, really wanted to find somebody who was a family member.

Displaced Persons 1 of 3

His name was Mohammed Chaleb. He was twenty-one years old, unmarried and a farmer. He had a head wound and was disoriented.

I am not even sure if he was a real person.

But for ninety minutes last Friday, I was him.

Crossroads is a one-of-a-kind organization. They started out collecting clothing and furniture from those with excess to give to those in need. Things quickly grew and Crossroads now sends out several cargo containers worth of goods every month.

Then CrossRoads set up an international, state-of-the-art website that matches up those in need with those with excess so that a company in Taiwan with excess office furniture can connect with an orphanage in Zambia who is in need of desks. This on-line clearing house was so successful, that when the UN needed something similar, they contracted with Crossroads to design it for them. Not bad for an organization that started out in an Australian couple's spare bedroom in their Hong Kong apartment fifteen years ago.

Crossroads also does a lot of work with refugees here in Hong Kong. Another service that Crossroads provides is the chance for visiting groups to get an insider's feel for what it's like to be a refugee. They started running these simulations a couple of years ago and they have been widely successful. In fact, Crossroads was invited to an economic summit in Europe last year where luminaries such as Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines participated in the very simulation I was about to take part in.

The Headmaster at our school is a pretty extraordinary guy. In addition to being a crack administrator, he is quite the visionary. While some heads of school might plan a faculty picnic to kick off the school year, Ben Norton signed up our entire staff for Crossroad's refugee simulation. Several years ago, he was the first headmaster to bring his teaching staff to Cross roads. Several area schools have since followed suit.

So last Friday, after a brief explanation and a short history of Afghanistan, I was handed a small, laminated i.d. card. I was to be Mohammed Chaleb - a soon-to-be displaced person. I was also given a bandage to wrap around my wounded head. All the women in our group were given headscarves. We were given a few minutes to get comfortable with our new identity.

Boomerang Kids

The summer school program not only uses ICS teachers, but also makes generous use of a lot of college-aged alumni who are back in town for the summer. They serve as teacher assistants, hallway monitors, gophers, and a few of the more experienced ones actually teach a class.

It was fun chatting with them before and after school. It's pretty standard for these alumni to go to school in North America or Great Britain. Toronto and Vancouver are particularly populare destinations. Because we are a Christian school, a lot of alumni end up in evangelical colleges like Wheaton or Taylor. During summer school, the head of the hall monitors, Y.K. regularly wore Calvin College basketball shorts that his buddy brought back for him.

Having all those college-age kids around added an extra dose of energy to the whole summer school atmosphere. It meant that our program was one part school, one part vacation Bible school, and one part summer camp.

Y.K. and his family are originally from South Korea. He just graduated from ICS and was his senior class president. He was also the starting pointguard on the school's boys basketball team.

When I asked him where he was going to school in the fall, I was a little taken aback when he told me he wasn't going to university.

You aren't going to college?

No, I am going back to Korea to do two years military service.

Every South Korean male, I found out, must give two years of military service once he turns eighteen.

You can be exempted from service if by your eighteenth birthday, you have lived out of Korea for a total of twelve years.

When Y.K. turns eighteen next month, he will have have lived out of South Korea for eleven years and five months.

So close.

Hopefully, they give him the summers off to come back and work in the ICS summer program.

-Jack