Report from Cambodia and Thailand

We arrived late into Bangkok. We were met by the conference organizers who drove us to a hotel that cost $15 a night - almost as nice as the one that cost $120 a night our last night. In Bangkok what you know is directly relevant to who you know. In the morning we took a brisk walk past many street vendors and people going to work. Sizzling shish kabob, bubbling coconut macaroons over open fires, boiling soups, and fresh fruits mixed with the other smells of Bangkok. Three women sitting on a curb held up a puppy for us to admire. We waved.

Our conference was full of South Africans, Israelis, Germans, Indians, Chinese, Russian, Bulgarians, a Columbian, one Uzbekistani, and others I can't remember. The Thai-run conference was formal, stiff and boring (to me anyway) except for the minister of commerce who publicly admitted that internal corruption is their greatest problem. The most exciting part of the conference was watching the election returns in the hotel restaurant beginning at breakfast and running until lunch. Yells of excitement rang through the hotel every time the lead changed. The politics of this group were definitely liberal - a bunch of social reformers.

My highlight there, was a Thai massage ($15) from "my name Banyan" a sweet, sweet Thai girl who sang to me while she gave me a massage. She even hugged me afterwards. I haven't felt so nurtured in a long time. We heard laughter frequently and saw many smiles. Even if the Thai minister of commerce complained about the Buddhist religion breeding too much contentment - fatalism, he called it - I have to admit it makes for a kinder, gentler society.

The spiritual stories mixed Hindu and Buddhism and were told in bas-relief - each temple offering a complete work of literature. Many featured Vishnu (God of Preservation) on Garuda his bird/man mount, also Shiva (Creation and Destruction) on his sacred bull. Brahma with four faces and eight arms was sometimes male and sometimes female. Apsaras - the equivalent of angels flanked most passages with long graceful female beauty and loving arms draped around each other's waists or across each other's shoulders. Their beauty was sensual but not erotic. Other reliefs showed violent battles between monkey men, monster demi-gods, and warriors on foot or elephant. The battles balanced the beauty with shouts of anger and danger echoing over a thousand years from ninth century storytellers.

The temples are surrounded by beggars. Many with limbs missing from mines. One woman with no feet and no hands - a mutilation much too precise for a land mine. Torture? Probably. Pol Pot's regime killed two million people. The food manager at our hotel lost sixty family members, pictures of his murdered parents still on his dresser. Literacy is around 35% since the ability to read; even the evidence of nose indentations left from a pair of glasses was enough to condemn a person to death. It is reasonable to assume that no one over fifteen years old has escaped a direct personal experience of death, killing, violence and true, deep, enduring fear. Even the younger ones have not escaped - the crime report in the Phnom Penh paper listed many domestic killings with AK47s the weapon of choice.
The tug of war between good and evil was evident everywhere in Cambodia. It will take a long time to integrate the new reality I must now carry for the rest of my life. The tug of war continues.


Savannah in April

Savannah was great. This last week was the pinnacle of my education on African American culture. I knew I'd be dealing with race issues yet I felt unprepared. I know a lot about Asian vs. American, Latin vs. American, etc, but I had not really spent time understanding the cultural differences between the races right here in our own country. So I watched Amistad again. I read "Slaves in the Family" written by a white boy about his plantation heritage and tracing the families of the black slaves on his great-great-great-etc-grandaddy's plantation with as much care as they had traditionally documented the white descendents. (not so bizarre, since there were half-brothers and half sisters from 1723 on). On the plane I met an African American couple -she was principal of a black Catholic school and he supervised maintenance for the school board in Memphis. They told me stories. He (Steve) grew up in Illinois and never knew racism until he came south and she (Neddy) grew up in Tennessee and could only go to the zoo on Thursdays, never drank from a white fountain, sat in the back of the train etc - despite the fact that both her parents had masters degrees. Which was quite an accomplishment even for white people in the 20's and 30's. Then the woman in the seat in front of us - everyone was listening to our conversation, it was fascinating - turned around and whispered "Maya Angelou is in first class!" Well....I've been a fan of Maya for years. I've written her three letters and never sent one of them because I thought they weren't good enough. She's such an incredible writer. Anyway, I got to meet her. I didn't get to visit 'cause I was about to miss my plane but she promised to write me back (After all that writing, I ended up giving her a scribbled note on ruled paper as we got off the plane.)

So I'm getting quite an education here. I'm learning lots of stuff about the sources of misunderstanding and distrust. Usually I operate under the hypothesis that we all want the same things - we just disagree on how to get there. I learned for instance that of the five different definitions of fair we have very little overlap. Fair can mean: biggest contributor gets the most, hardest worker gets the most, seniority demands more, all share equal, or those who have the least get the most. White people tend to use the first two and African American tend to use the last two. No wonder everyone thinks the other aren't operating by the rules of fairness. We have different rules.

Right. Like I'm going to sneak into the St. Phillips Monumental African Methodist Episcopal Church without anyone noticing. Just walking a few blocks into the less gentrified parts of Savannah brought curious stares. By the time I walked up the steps I was generating raised eyebrows, surprised smiles, and thankfully a charitable few, who were quick on their feet, reached out their hands in welcome.

It took me a while to find the rhythm of the service. They started off with a responsive reading -- but not like I was used to. When Rev Logan read "Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord" it wasn't the metronome-controlled monotone of voices trying to stay in step. He read it, "let the meditations of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, ...NOT my neighbor's sight, NOT my mother's sight, but THY sight, Lord, ...thy sight."

That's when we had announcements and they welcomed visitors. Rev. Logan asked every visitor to stand, but more than that, to take the microphone, say your name, where you are from, what church you go to and what your pastor's name is! There ain't no way I can pretend I'm not a visitor. So I stand. I'm standing a long time because the woman in front of me, who is visiting her daughter starts to testify and even wanders into preaching before they get the microphone back off her and hand it to me. I keep it short and sweet and then Rev Logan adds a few words about our working together the day before and adds his personal welcome. In that second, I was accepted. I never would have realized I was an outsider until I got the chance to feel like an insider. It felt real good. People looked and smiled. They had smiled before, but now they really smiled. Someone patted me on the shoulder. The overly polite tolerance dropped and real friendliness took its place. (I guess they had assumed I was just a tourist with a voyeuristic curiosity. Not altogether untrue, I'll have to admit.)

There was more preaching and reading. Rev Logan decided to ditch the Apostle's Creed for this Sunday and he referred to a phrase printed on the bottom of the bulletin that I had missed that said, "This worship service is under the direction of the Holy Spirit and subject to change without notice!" And sure enough, it was. The next part I really liked was when we were asked to take the hand of one person and look in their eyes and repeat after Rev. Logan. I looked into the eyes of a gorgeous black woman around 70 or so who had a big turquoise hat and a matching turquoise bag for her oxygen tank. (Hey, when the Spirit of the Lord moves you, you need all the oxygen you can get!) It only took a second or too looking into her brown eyes, crinkled at the edges, that I ceased to notice the plastic oxygen tube under her nose and felt like our souls were touching as we repeated, "I believe in the Lord Savior" more stuff about having no one before him, and on to "I don't know who you are or where you come from but I got to learn to love you....like I love myself....and I am going to love you... and you cain't do nothing about it...may the love of Christ flow through us and between us. Amen"

By one o'clock the sermon was about to begin. I'm still looking at my watch but I've stopped making assumptions on when this will be over - I'm having such a good time, I don't much care plus I realize there is no possible way for me to slip out so I might as well relax. The sermon was being televised and a beautiful woman in a pink suit went up to the front to sign for the deaf. The crowd got quiet and shifted in their seats, Rev Logan was praying for guidance and I could feel anticipation in the air. When he finally began, his voice was no more than a whisper, a sexy seductive whisper.... "you better get ready, you (pointing), you right there...you better get ready" pointing and pausing-- sometimes a little groan escaped from under his breath as the holy spirit started working it's way up from his toes and feet on into his body. He used the style of repetition I know from listening to Martin Luther King --his refrain being, "Jesus shows up, to show OUT!" Stories about turning water into wine, healing the blind, were woven into the time you lost your job, or got a divorce and survived...when Jesus "showed up, to show out!" Stories told with wonderful detail, like the woman who was sick and couldn't find help from doctors, from the Revco, from Dr. Spock, from nobody --but she had the faith and "wanted only to touch the hem of the Doc-TOR Jee-e-sus...and that's when Jesus showed up and SHOWED OUT!" His voice rising to a crescendo and lowering again - slipping jokes into the sermon like when he told of Shadrack, Meeshack and "ABadNegro." Everyone smiled at his jokes. People would sway. Some stood up. There was hand waving and clapping. The woman next to me rocked rhythmically and I found myself doing the same. His sermon was half way between a speech, a song, and a drama. Sometimes he would sing and he had a beautiful voice. One time his voice broke with tears - they weren't fake like on TV, they were real.

Interspersed into his sermon he would ask us "And will the church say, "Amen!" or "Praise the Lord!" and we would. By the end of the sermon, the crescendos had built until the air fairly crackled and he was stomping and shouting and when he said "Jesus showed up" we all shouted together "And showed out! - Praise Jesus!." By this time he had gone through three towels (one he had thrown high into the air to make a point) and almost the entire liter of cranberry juice that one of the men used to keep refilling his glass. His neck was surrounded by a ring of sweat that reached ten inches all the way around. They had the invitational and three young African American men came to the front to join the church as we sang the closing hymn. We sang the Doxology like I've never sung it before, had the benediction and then it was over. It was 2:15 p.m. I had walked in feeling like a white person and walked out feeling like a child of God. Everyone was hugging goodbye, me included, and when Rev. Logan hugged me, three big drops of his sweat rolled down my shoulder. I left them there as I went back out into the sunshine and walked the streets of Savannah feeling the cool air breeze on the wetness of my arm and wondering in amazement at the sensuality, the physical-ness, the sensory stimulation of what I had just experienced. This had not been a cognitive experience of the Holy Spirit as much as a bodily experience - and I'll be eternally grateful to have had the opportunity to find out what it feels like when you are baptized in the Holy Spirit at the oldest African Methodist Episcopal Church in Georgia. Another of Annette's Adventures 1 12/05/00