nocturne, taciturn, sojourn

i know tonight is the night i should be doing this. it's just that...

most of me would rather be watching some nerdy overly dramatic historical movie and employing my greatest form of escapism, aka pretending i am not here. or anywhere for that matter. except exactly wherever i feel like dreaming i am. queen elizabeth I's court...wwII germany...india...
but alas, i am a slave to my conscience and it's time for another note.

i have been learning a lot this past week. i think i may have mentioned this line of thought to several of you before i even came here, but there's been a major theme for me lately, and it has corresponded with the events in the lives of many of my friends here as well.

we tend to hide our struggles. while the struggles themselves are great and formidable on their own, they are even more dangerous when the struggl-er is made to think that they alone are unable to keep up. two big problems that sort of chicken and egg each other, right?

i spend a good chunk of my free time with missionaries. many of them would rather not be called missionaries, largely due to the evangelistic implications that lie therein (which i will leave you to imagine on your own, lest i offend anyone). but nonetheless, here we all are. trying to show people, at the very base of it, what jesus has done in our lives, and how beautiful life can be when you have hope. and can you guess what the number one struggle is for us?

uselessness. feeling like we aren't doing anything. literally, across the board.

and it's almost humiliating to admit, even here, even now. one almost always feels pressured to account for every minute of his or her time, making sure everyone knows how hard they are working and all that they have accomplished. at the very least, there's a lot of self-justification that goes on, trying to reconcile what you would like to do, with what you can feasibly do. and telling yourself over and over that you'll do better and you'll do more when you can. some day you'll stop enjoying your life so much and settle down and be serious. get to work!

but no one talks about it. because it's so deeply embedded and such a very personal attack. and i am convinced, having prayed and railed against this for months and months, that the universal prospects of this situation make it most certainly a sneaky and evil lie from the pit of hell. we're being hoodwinked!

and what's more, many of you at home have been expressing these same doubts to me, about your own lives and ministries. so here we are tricked into being isolated by our own fear and unable to help one another because we can't bear to admit that we need help in the first place and we think no one else does. well, cue twisted sister. we're not gonna take it!

i want to tell you a quick story. it's about a guy who works in my favorite cafe. we're going to call him gavin, mostly because he looks startlingly like (a really skinny) gavin rossdale.

the first day i went to casablanca, gavin was there. he was obviously intrigued by my presence, since i don't blend in well, and to be honest, he doesn't exactly look bolivian himself. but i gave him the benefit of the doubt, or rather didn't give him much notice at all, until i realized that he was spending a great deal of time staring at me from behind the window. creeper.

about the 19th time i looked up from my gabriel garcia marquez book because i felt his eyes boring into me, i became exasperated, and asked the poor boy if he needed something. "you're not from here," he said, in staggering spanish. i was irritated. "no, i'm from africa." i sassed back in better spanish. he took the hint. no more creeping. until...

i came back again with some friends a few days later. we were talking and joking around. speaking english. like we do. gavin walked in circles around us never taking our order, for several minutes. it's not a big cafe, mind you. when he finally recognized us, he looked at me and said, "just coffee for you, i know." in perfect and quite defiant english. just like i had a feeling he would. call it a hunch. and that, my friends, is when the cold war began.

gavin and i began to do battle daily. how long would he make me wait before he'd ask what i wanted. and when he did come to my table, would he even look at me? or just wave his hand and refuse to speak. as if i were bothering him. and never again in english. i started to really hate seeing gavin when i walked in the door.

that is, until today. today i had a date with a gypsy girl i met yesterday. she was going to teach me how to make the bracelets they sell. yesterday she had been in dire need of someone to talk to. and you know me, i have a flashing neon sign above my head that screams "tell me your life story," right? so today, she came back, i bought her coffee, and gavin was our waiter. i guess he decided to be nice since she was there with me. no need to punish the innocent. even cold war gavin has morals.

after she left, i asked for another coffee. in english. i suppose i was feeling lighthearted and i wanted to see what he might do. his response shocked me.

he whipped a chair around, and sat down very close to me.
"what are you doing here?" (english) shocked? um, yes.
"i'm a hospital administrator in vinto. where are you from?"
"i'm from the middle east." non-specific. okay, cold war gavin. keep holding out.
silence.
"how did you end up here?" i ask.
"blessing, destiny i suppose." he smiles, and gets up.
"i am studying spanish at the university and i need to practice, so i work here. it helps a lot. how's your spanish?" he asks.
"horrible, can't you tell?" i say, laughing.
"no, i can't tell horrible spanish from regular. mine's bad too." ah, common ground.
now we're both laughing.
"i think we should practice together." his idea. and just like that, cold war gavin offers the cease-fire.

so, i accepted. gladly. it will be nice not to dread seeing his face when i want to have coffee. it was nice to spend the rest of the time smiling at him when he passed, randomly chatting about the other languages we speak or want to speak, and saying, "chau, nos vemos!" when i left instead of trying to get out while he was in the bathroom or something equally childish.

the thing is, we are actually allies, gavin and i. whose name is actually nima, by the way. we are both lost and trying to find our way in a strange country, away from everything and everyone we know. but because of a long list of assumptions made by each side, we have been practically shooting poisoned darts at one another for weeks. instead of finding solace in our similar situations. and because we thought it would be too hard or humiliating to admit these things to another person, we pridefully engaged each other in disdainful (if not halted) spanish conversation for much much longer than necessary.

here it comes.

that's kind of like how we struggle against ourselves and our perceptions of other people's work and ministry, and never take the time to speak it out and see who is really behind all the lies. crazy, huh?
we're letting him win.

but not today.
cold war gavin and i are having coffee next week.

score :)