Who Run the World

S. is a twelve year old in my girl’s empowerment group. Her new years resolution is to quit smoking. She wants to learn what she can and can’t do with boys. When she grows up, she wants to have blue eyes. We are working hard on self-esteem.

I did my first home visit with M. yesterday. She lives with her five grown children and one grandchild. Her goal to is to ride the bus to the grocery store and to be able to shop and pay for her food. She barely leaves the house because she speaks no English and has never had any formal education. She doesn’t know what numbers mean. But she sits at the table and practices eagerly. By the end of our session, she was able to hand me the right number of beans to match index cards with the numbers 1 through 5.

A. goes to high school and loves to draw. She used to draw more when she was younger, but she had to stop because she didn’t always have the right supplies. Now she can start again and is signed up to take art class next semester in school. She has never seen watercolors before. (I bought a pack of them to show her next week.)

I’ve been reading up about refugee women. An international report by the United Nations states: “Refugee women continue to be disproportionately affected by physical and sexual violence and abuse… International laws, standards and policies on this issue abound: the problem is that they are inadequately implemented.”

These women have been discriminated against because of their ethnicity and their gender. In addition to the violence they have experienced outside of their homes, some also face abuse from their husbands or other family members. Many were never able to receive an education.  

And yet, the refugee women I have met here are some of the most kind and motivated people I have come across. S. is endlessly inquisitive and wants to learn all she can about the world. M. refused to let me start our therapy session until I had eaten all of the homemade bread and tea that she prepared for me. A. is humble about her work and asks my opinion on what colors to use. In my role as an occupational therapist, I often act as an educator. But even more often I wonder who is teaching who. 

Transitions

Down the street from the Life Skills Clinic is a medicinal garden. I stumbled across it the day before my first day of work here in Salt Lake City’s Immigrant & Refugee Resettlement Program. The garden is sleepy and covered in snow and is set in a background of mountains and fields (much different from the North Philly street corner that I am used to). I put my hand through the icy cold to find there were still remnants of lavender and sage that will make their comeback in early spring.  It was a small comfort, something so familiar in a place that in many ways is so different from what I know.

                        

I am experiencing my own form of culture shock, having just moved to Utah five days ago, where the woman sitting next to me on the airplane was shocked to meet a Jewish vegetarian. She explained to me some of the intricacies of the culture of Latter-Day Saints (I was surprised to learn people of the Mormon faith will not drink coffee) and warned me not to expect men here to treat me as an equal. I am unpacking and resettling in my own small way, thinking about how this is just a small fraction of what the people I will be working with must be experiencing in their own lives, having fled from their home countries because they were not safe places for them to live.

M., a Somali woman who moved to Salt Lake City eleven months ago, used to store her clothes in the oven. She didn’t know what it was supposed to be used for until her occupational therapist showed her. When we visited her house yesterday, her daughter told us how she had baked a chicken last night. M. has also learned to write her name, and proudly showed us her notebook where she had been practicing.

M. was referred to occupational therapy from Utah Health & Human Rights (UHHR), an organization which works with people who have been victims of torture. These people have experienced trauma so severe that their symptoms manifest in everything from depression and anxiety to OCD, PTSD, and whole body pain. But the remarkable thing about these people is that they are resilient, the director of the UHHR told us yesterday.

At the Life Skills Clinic, there is a basket-weaving program started by group of women from a tribe in Thailand. They meet every Saturday to weave and are in the process of starting their own non-profit organization, so they will be able to sell the products that they produce. The Karen people, my supervisor told us, rarely present with mental health issues because they have formed such a tight community to love and support one another. 

It’s hard to turn my brain off here because I am always thinking about the stories I am hearing from the people I work with. When I’m not paying attention, I find that I tend to focus on the struggles they have gone through and continue to face. And I have to keep reminding myself that they are finding the things that remind them of home, the pieces of culture that are familiar and make them human, to hold them together. And even if I am the only insane person digging for lavender in the snow, I know that I can do the same. 

The Things We Fear

This morning, a bee landed on my right shoulder and remained there for the next several minutes. I stayed as still as I could, wondering if she thought my blue tank top strap was a flower or if she had just recognized a temporary safe haven in the city. So many people have a gut reaction of fear when it comes to bees. In reality, bees only sting when threatened, which won’t happen if you are still and calm. Can you sense a metaphor?

When I was first accepted into graduate school at Temple, I became accustomed to the look of fear that many people from my hometown in the Philadelphia suburbs would give me when I told them I would be moving to an apartment in West Philly and commuting to North Philly for school. “Do you have a death wish?” I remember one person asking me. Collectively, these two neighborhoods are stigmatized as dangerous by many people in the area where I grew up and are generally thought of as places to be avoided.

True, Philadelphia is one of the highest crime cities in the country. And true, North Philadelphia in particular represents one of the highest concentrations of criminal activity in the city. But it is also true that there are people that call North Philadelphia home and go about their daily business here every day. It is also true that many of these people are working every day to make their Philadelphia neighborhoods safer. And there are so many incredible things about the places that get overlooked when you are only focusing on the statistics.

Today, I brought Evelyn some of pesto I made to put in the jars she had given me. Seeing her smile when I gave it to her was the highlight of my week. Working in the garden this summer has given me the privilege of experiencing so many of the kind, strong, and intelligent people that I never would have had the opportunity to interact with had I not been working in North Philadelphia. I know North Philly has its problems, and I am only experiencing the neighborhood from my small vantage point on the street corner where the garden is located, and only for a few hours of the day. But from that one small spot, in just a few weeks, I have found a sense of community to exist that seems rare in our society today.

I’m not advocating for putting oneself in harm’s way. I’m not saying to go walking through the street alone after dark. What I am saying is that the bee on my shoulder didn’t sting me, and it’s only because I wasn’t afraid that I got to watch it up close and be in awe of its beautiful wings and bright colors and the graceful way it took off when it decided to fly away.

Gifts

“You’re going to turn me into a vegetarian,” says Yvette, the security guard who works at the front desk of the medical school building, when I first come through the door in the morning. She tells me about the sautéed kale and broccoli she made for her family last night, both of which I picked and gave to her the day before.

Derek, who works in the medical school’s library, holds out his hand to high five me as I walk past on my way to the garden. He tells me how he added the fresh garlic I brought him to his salad dressing last night, and it made all the difference (after harvesting sixty heads of garlic this week, there’s plenty to go around).

The best parts of my days in the garden are always when I can give gifts that we’ve grown to the people around me. I drop off boxes of food to the staff working in med school café and hand out fresh basil and mint to the people walking past on Venango Street. But perhaps the best place to bring food from the garden is the Zion Baptist Church across the street.

The Zion Baptist Church is an unassuming, grey brick building. From its faded anterior you can see the outlines of blue stained glass and the dome shape of the sanctuary. I’ve walked past this church for months, barely noticing it. What you can’t tell from the outside is that the church is a historic landmark, over a hundred years old with ties to Jessie Jackson and Nelson Mandela through former minister Leon Sullivan, a civil rights leader and anti-Apartheid activist. You can’t tell the magnificence of the church organ, whose pipes take up the entire back wall of the sanctuary or the glow from the inside of the original stained glass panels. You can’t tell how welcoming and warm the people inside are when you show up uninvited with a basket full of vegetables.

Last week was the third Monday we brought vegetables over to Zion Baptist for them to distribute at their weekly food pantry. Deacon Jones, who greets us at the front desk, calls over Mr. George, who is starting to be able to recognize the different types of greens in order to explain how to use them to others. When Evelyn, a member of the church, sees the fresh basil we’ve brought, we talk briefly about pesto recipes and she tells us she thinks it would be a great thing to can in jars.

                                   

The next day, working back in the garden, I talk to Joan, who lives down the street. She tells me how she gardened in the city for 35 years, but now the medical school building blocks out most of her sunlight. My heart breaks a little, but because I can’t tear down the building on the spot (I want to), I pull a whole kale plant out of the ground and offer it to her. I tell her to replant it in her garden- it is such a hearty plant that it will grow in almost any conditions.

An hour later, Clay, who I also know from the church, stops over to joke around with me. We laugh about the idea of putting chickens in the garden, and I tell him I am trying to follow at least some rules so I don’t get kicked out of school. As we are chatting, he sees the parking authority start to write a ticket to a car whose meter has run out. Clay reaches into his pocket and rushes over to the car, which isn’t his. “I have it,” he says, and puts enough coins in to hold the meter over another hour.

I go back to weeding the pumpkins, thinking about selflessness. It’s not long after that Evelyn walks by with a plastic bag and hands it to me through the fence. I open it up and inside is a box of mason jars. “For your pesto,” she smiles. And an hour later, when I think my heart is most likely going to burst, Joan shows up with green beans that she grew. “I brought them for you.”

If you are trying to find kindness in a place where you aren’t sure it exists, plant food there. Daily I become more and more convinced that it’s a recipe for bringing out the best in people. Stay tuned.

Magic

This week we built the first of six new raised beds in the Medible Learning Garden, the space where we grow medicinal herbs and vegetables on a plot next to Temple University’s Medical School, the locally proclaimed “palace” of North Philadelphia. This ultra-modern multi-million dollar complex stands in the heart of one of the most impoverished and deteriorating neighborhoods of the city, on a block where you can find health science students and people from the hood walking past each other and averting their eyes, infrequently interacting.

I’ve spent a year on this block and am one of the only students I know who can name people who live down the street. Tony often cooks dinner for his father, who is too sick to leave the house. Vicky has a fierce laugh and loves fried green tomatoes. Eddy is a Vietnam War veteran who likes to work with his hands.  It’s not that I have a gift of words or a superhuman ability to bridge gaps between two seemingly separate groups of people walking down the sidewalk. In fact, I can’t really take any of the credit at all. It’s some kind of magic that happens when I’m working in the garden, that somehow makes it okay to approach and be approached by people you would never otherwise risk a conversation with, and despite the iron fence that separates the raised beds from the sidewalk, there is a human connection that happens that goes beyond the boundaries that exist in the outside world.

On Tuesday I was drilling together planks of wood for our new beds, so focused on my work that I could almost forget where I was at. I was wiping sweat from my forehead and reaching for another screw when I saw a group of small children approach- eight sleepy sets of eyes only three or so feet from the ground walking outside in the ninety-degree weather, herded by three older women who were nudging them along. When the children saw the garden their gaze shifted towards me (it was probably the only time they had ever seen a white girl with a power tool). I never could have engaged in a conversation with them on the street, but I knew I could do it here.

“Can I show them something?” I asked their teachers. They nodded, and I stopped what I was doing and approached one of the beds that rests up against the fence. The children came over to watch. I pointed to the green fronds that were growing in the bed and told them to watch closely. I pulled it gently, and out of the soil popped a bright orange carrot. They looked at me as if I had pulled a rabbit from my hat as I handed it to one of them through the fence. Suddenly, seven other little hands were reaching towards me. They all wanted carrots. Talk about magic.

I pulled several more and gave them to the children, their teachers promising to wash and cut them up for them to eat. I found out from one of the teachers that the kids were from a daycare across the street. These kids think food comes from cans, she said. I told her to bring them back, and we exchanged contact information so that she really could.

I watched as the children walked away, still staring at the magical soil-coated carrots between their fingertips. I’m not sure which of us was more in awe. 

Armfuls of Poetry, Drops of Sunshine

"Spring rain holds poetry in its drops
which bend down to kiss the soil,
so that the seeds may sprout."

-Thich Nhat Hanh

To Be Born Again as Butterflies

for Rachel A.

I've heard that symmetry means there are two sides

and one looks exactly the same as the other only in reverse,

like folding tissue paper appendages in half, again and again.

Like blinking. But still I'm not convinced that it's true.

But what if it doesn't happen that way? I asked.

It will, she said. But how do you know.

I meant really, really know.

Look around, she said.

And then there were the words wrapped in a paper towel that you held a few days before, that I held in the late afternoon, even though you are far away, and a few of them hid like watermelon seeds, near the bottom of page 22: to be born again as butterflies.

And then somehow we were.