Why I sometimes hate airports.

Monday, August 23:

I was outsmarted by a toilet today.  Or maybe it was yesterday—it’s hard to tell.  We’ve been traveling since 6:00 Sunday morning to get from Iowa to Romania, so my sense of when events occurred has been rather seriously skewed.  But regardless, at some point in that journey, I definitely got out-witted.

We were waiting in the Dusseldorf airport for our flight to Bucharest, and I had to, well, you know.  So I left my luggage with the group at the gate and went off through the mysteriously-empty airport in search of a WC.  I couldn’t open the door to the first women’s room I found, so I kept going.  Soon I happened across a coed, single-serving, handicapped restroom, so, seeing no nearby handicapped clients, I decided to use it. 

Opening the door, I see a typical bathroom, so I walk in.  The door shuts behind me with a firm thud, metal and impenetrable.  But it’s not locked.  And there’s no way to lock it.  I examine the handle like a scientist, peering at it to see if I’ve missed something, but to no avail.  Then I notice two buttons: one red and one black, each is inscribed with German words I don’t know (there are, by the way, very few German words I do know, but still).  I press the black one.  Click.  I assume that means the door is locked, but just to be sure, I decide to press the red one too.  With a whirr, the door unlocks and mechanically opens, swinging smoothly outward.  Feeling foolish, I tug at the handle, expecting it to close again.

It doesn’t.  There it sits, wide open (and handicapped doors are quite wide, you know), sticking out into the terminal like a sore thumb.  I stare at it dumbly.  I press the black button again, the red button again, to no avail.  There it sits.  And sits.  And sits.  Eventually, I decide to save face and just go look for a different bathroom, so I step outside.  An old man sitting at the coffee shop in the terminal stares at me.  I hesitate for a moment, planning on saving face and walking away like I meant to open the door, when suddenly it begins to shut.  Abandoning my pride, I yelp and jump back into the bathroom, barely slipping in the rapidly-closing crack.

When I emerged a few minutes later, the old man had folded his newspaper and was drinking his coffee.  As I passed, he gave me a bemused smile.  I think he was laughing at me.

What a beautiful thing.

In six short hours, we start the journey to Romania.  Yes, I should probably be sleeping.  But I can never sleep the night before I leave on a trip, so why bother?

I am so excited.  This program encompasses pretty much everything I am passionate about: the Church, international development, Eastern Europe, environmental stewardship, outdoor education, civil society, international political affairs, youth, backpacking... yeah.  And on top of that, the path to the semester in Romania with Northwestern appeared so easily and naturally in my life that I cannot help but believe God opened the door.  Now I am excited--more than excited, actually--to run through it.  I'm trying to leave without expectations, a blank page where God can write, but I also cannot help but have them.  I expect this semester to change me.  I expect it to challenge me.  I expect to fall in love with some parts of life in Romania, to barely suppress my frustration with other parts, and to not understand everything.  I expect to meet God.  I expect to meet people who inspire me; I expect to meet people who counter me.  I expect to miss people from home and to be lonely occasionally and to be frustrated by a four-month language barrier.  I expect to sometimes be so wrapped up in life there that I don't think of Calvin or Iowa or camp at all.  I think those are okay things to expect--but I want to be willing to discard even these assumptions. 

My prayer for this semester is that God would reveal Himself.  My prayer for this semester is that I would not settle.  My prayer for this semester is that my perspective would be shifted and broadened and challenged and adjusted, and that in the process it would become more True.  I hunger to see Glory.  I pray for that this semester.

My prayer is the same for you: that you would see His glory, and that it would amaze you, humble you, and transform you.

Man.  Here we go!

On the edge of my seat.

You know when you're so excited about something, and have been waiting so long for something to happen, that when it finally comes you feel like it's maybe all a dream?

Yeah.  I can't sleep.  And tomorrow is just orientation.

Romania!!!!

A sigh of relief.

Three weeks, at least ten phone calls, and five trips to the embassy later (which, by the way, is 15 miles of walking)… and I have a passport again!

I’ve been keeping this saga secret, not wanting to worry my family unnecessarily (sorry, guys). But now that it’s all resolved and the passport is sitting securely in my bag, I can tell the whole story. It’s a good one.

So! My passport was nabbed my first night in Sarajevo. The next day we went to the American embassy to apply for a new one, and since I would be in the country for three weeks, decided to just skip the temporary phase and send to the States for a full-fledged permanent replacement. No problem. It was supposed to arrive in a week.

When we got back to Sarajevo after a week and a half in other cities, I went back to the embassy to pick it up, expecting it to be there. The first trip was on July 5th, which was unfortunate, because Americans working in foreign embassies get American holidays off as well as the holidays of that country… so no luck. I went back the next day at noon, during our lunch break between meetings, only to be told by a security guard that the entire embassy was on lunch break from noon to 2 pm and no one—no one at all—could talk to me. And that they closed again at 3:30. (So apparently, if you don’t want to work long hours, the embassy is the place to be!)

So, okay, no big deal, I called them a few times to set up a time… and then got some bad news. My passport, which had been mailed from the States on July 1st, hadn’t arrived yet. But passports which had been mailed later had already made it to Sarajevo, so they didn’t know where mine was. Oh well, I figured—I had until Monday, so I would just wait. I called every day, only to be told, “Sorry Kelly, it’s not here yet… try again tomorrow.” (Pretty soon, the lady at the consulate greeted me by name before I even said anything… we’re pretty much best friends now.) Ha.

So on Friday, becoming a bit worried, I talked to my embassy lady and reminded her I was leaving the country on Tuesday and would need some way to get home. They still didn’t know where my passport was—they said sometimes they’ve been mailed to Bogota instead of Bosnia. (Uh, wrong continent.) I was fine with the idea of an emergency passport, except for the fear that I needed to send my passport to Northwestern when I get home in order to get my Romanian visa for this upcoming fall semester… and I wouldn’t be able to get the visa on a temporary passport. She told me to wait until Monday. I did. I called at 9 am. No luck. I went to the embassy at 10:30 to file the paperwork for an emergency one, thankfully in possession of two extra (ugly) passport photos. She told me to come back at 4:00 to pick it up. I did. When I entered the complex, the security guard greeted me with, “Cao, Miss Larsen,” which made me laugh—even the security guard was sick of seeing me, I guess! They ushered me in—I made small talk with some guy from New Jersey who works for the OSCE, which was a pleasant diversion—and then I heard my embassy lady call my name. I turned around and went up to the window, where she grinned and waved the two passport photos at me. “We didn’t need them,” she said, and handed me my official passport. It had finally come.

Just in the nick of time. Amen and hallelujah.

:)

Kyrie eleison.

July 11, 2010:

An excerpt from my journal:

I don’t feel like writing. We’re back in Sarajevo, safe and clean and comfortable in our hostel, and now sleep is tempting. But I want to write about today. It’s important.

We awoke early to walk down the one main road in Potocari, the village just down the valley from Srebrenica. Potocari is where most of the killing took place. Beginning on about the 11th of July, 1995, the RS army (Bosnian Serbs led by Mladic, who remains free to this day!) encroached. They took a few UN hostages and threatened to kill them unless the Dutch UN soldiers stationed there gave up the supposedly-protected enclave. They did. They let the Serb soldiers separate the men from the women and children, and shipped the women and children off to Tuzla in buses. Some men took the road our hostess lived on and walked towards Tuzla—many were killed along the way, but a large number did survive and finally made it there. But for the majority of the men, who stayed closer to where they thought they’d be protected (the UN headquarters, now taken over by Serb soldiers), the next few days were hellish—executions of over 8000 people: the worst genocide on European soil since the Holocaust. Many of the bodies were moved to secondary graves to hide the evidence.

Today was the largest memorial service—the fifteenth anniversary—since the 1995 genocide. The town, which is normally sleep and abandoned, practically swelled to bursting: this morning, 70,000 people filled the street and the entire memorial site and cemetery. It was like the crowd at a really morbid rock concert. Foreign dignitaries from all over the world came rolling in with their sleek cars and security guards; buses full of people from all over Europe arrive; groups of hikers who had followed the route from Tuzla came. It was really beautiful to see the mass of humanity. But my reaction was mixed, honestly. I mean, where is the media attention, where is the rest of the world, on July 12th? On November 28th? (I know I also write as one of those foreigners who comes and leaves, but still!) A bunch of diplomats gave speeches commemorating the occasion, and promised “never again,” and that’s nice I guess, but I couldn’t help but think… where is your support on the days there are no TV crews in Srebrenica? And where were you fifteen years ago, with the promises of “never again” still ringing in our ears from the Holocaust, when the international community could have intervened earlier and didn’t?

Much of the day was hard. The never-ending line of green caskets, borne on backs up the hills to already-dug graves—like rafts floating in an endless line on a sea of heads and hands. Tears and wails. Hands upturned in prayer. The endless drone of victims’ names, lasting for more than an hour. Even worse, the terrible silence when they stopped. But the moment I broke down and wept was when I saw the fresh grave of the one Dutch soldier. There was a cross on it, and a mound of flowers. I suppose he’s seen as a hero of sorts, one of the few who did the right thing and fought back. But I couldn’t help but weep. There was only one.

Only one.

One cross in that whole cemetery.

Serbs are generally Orthodox. The Dutch UN troops were primarily Christian. So HOW, WHY could such atrocities have been committed? Why did so few sacrifice?! For me, that one cross proved the failure of Christians, over and over and over again, to actually live as Christ (and to die is gain). Why do we stand by?
I think I wept more for the ways we have failed to love God and His people than for anything else.

Lament. Songs of lament. They will speak to me now of hot sun in Bosnia, beating down on thousands upon thousands of mourners, upon the grieving mothers and lonely widows, upon the impossibly-beautiful mountains and the impossibly-long line of cars and buses belching exhaust and heat. Upon Srebrenica.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Kyrie eleison.

Srebrenica.

July 10, 2010:

An excerpt from my journal:

We’re currently on the bus, driving to Srebrenica from Sarajevo through the most beautiful countryside.  In my mind, it’s a mix of Custer State Park and Yellowstone and the Sound of Music.  Thatched roofs sit on houses scattered through warm, soft, sunny meadows filled with yellow and purple flowers.  Hills rise steadily in the distance.  The sky stretches long above us, perfectly blue and jumbled with brilliantly white, cotton candy clouds.  The road enters a stretch of woods and winds through trees, vibrant green and towering overhead, rooted far below where I can see, as the ground plummets downward from the edge of the road, suddenly surprisingly steep.  A gap in the trees changes the flickers of sunlight that have been tickling my arm to a wash, warming my chest, arm, hand, fingers, as we move out of the forest and into the sunlight that envelops these mountains.  “It’s absolutely beautiful,” Heidi says, and I nod, trying to take a picture to bring back home and share, to capture the vast enormity of grandeur surrounding our bus.  But I cannot, of course—and there is something right about the fact that the little metal box in my hands cannot capture or contain the patchwork greens and yellows of fields along the mountainside, like a huge familiar quilt, or the reddish-brown tiles of rooftops that sit warming in the sun as we approach a town, nor the hulking mass of forested mountains far off in the distance.  My pen cannot capture it either, but at least in writing I feel able to worship.

(Hours later)

Srebrenica’s memorial to the massacre of fifteen years ago stretches so far that it becomes unreal.  At first, the endless rows of white tombstones reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of Arlington National Cemetery.  But then we got closer and saw the coffins—775 of them, green plastic-covered caskets, carried in on men’s shoulders and lined up neatly in long lines.  We were there for the last 300 coffins or so (oh dear God, 300 coffins), just watching.  People stretch out their hands to touch them as they pass, but the men in green shirts handle them deftly, smoothly and quickly setting them in order.  There was one young boy carrying coffins who looked about 16.  (What sort of world is this, where a 16-year-old carries hundreds of coffins?)  There’s only bones in them, so they must be light.

To be so close to so much grief is troubling.  (That word is so callously inadequate.)  This is not about me at all; I simply found myself swept away in the grief all around me.  This is the world’s sorrow.

Our talk of how we looked in headscarves (oh, Allie…) was quickly silenced when we approached the caskets.  There we saw people grieving: women weeping silently, stroking the green plastic cover gently, caressing with worn fingers the face, hair, hands they still see in their minds’ eye.  Families gathered to approach a specific casket, each of them apprehensive, faces crumpling one by one as they remembered and relived their last memories with their brother, son, father, husband.  Men crouching and weeping, some openly and some with faces hidden, all unabashedly grieving.  One woman saw the name on a casket and went into shock, convulsing.  Others began to wail, their cries hauntingly penetrating the air.  Death is terrible.  May Your kingdom come quickly, God!  Tomorrow the grief will be amplified a thousandfold, and still not everyone who died is represented.  It’s supposed to rain tomorrow.  Heaven should weep for Srebrenica.

The nutshell version.

Friday, July 9, 2010:

It’s been a busy few days in Sarajevo, hence the lack of substantive blogging. So here we go with the whirlwind version of what the group has been up to this week:

Monday:
• Tour of part of Sarajevo with Miki
• Mennonite Central Committee meeting
• War Crimes Tribunal and Courts of Bosnia and Herzegovina meeting

Tuesday:
• United Nations meetings
     o UNDP: United Nations Development Program
     o UNICEF: United Nations Children’s Fund
     o Director of the entire UN mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina
• National Gender Agency meeting
• Women to Women (NGO) meeting

Wednesday:
• United States Embassy meetings
     o Deputy Chief of Mission
     o Culture and Education branch of Public Diplomacy
     o Media and Information branch of Public Diplomacy
• Research and Documentation Center meeting
• Nasa Stranka (political party) meeting

Thursday:
• Bosnia and Herzegovina Ministry of Defense meeting
• Jewish community meeting
• Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meetings
     o Advocacy for Roma and other national minorities
     o Education reform

It’s been an astounding week—especially in terms of access. I don’t know how Miki, our program director, knows absolutely everyone who’s anyone in all of Bosnia (and around the world, for that matter), but somehow we have gotten to meet some of the most prominent movers and shakers of this country. I won’t fill this post with the details of what we’ve learned in meetings—I’m writing separately of some of the things that have challenged and interested me most. But I felt like I needed to at least write an overview of what’s been going on. My imagination has been ignited, dreaming of coming back as an intern…