diversity | Rachel Pieh Jones

What I Learned: Raising a Special Needs Third Culture Kid

This post is part of a series on learning from diversity called What I Learned. To contribute, contact Rachel (there is one more scheduled post coming up and then, unless I hear from you, the series will close, but if you have an essay in the future that you feel might be a good fit, feel free to contact me).

Today’s What I Learned post comes from MaDonna Maurer (who wrote about being married to a TCK for the Painting Pictures series), writing about raising a daughter with mental and physical disabilities in Taiwan. Can I just say how much I love this post?

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Diversity seems to flow easily inside the doors of an international school. Many have called these walled-establishments little United Nations. It’s no wonder they have this description. Once you step through the doors you see and hear the various cultures that make up our world. The expat community lends itself to diversity, but once you exit what I will call the “expat bubble” you’ll discover that the only diversity you may find is yourself.

I have found this to be true here in Taiwan. Among the expat community I know how to float in and out of conversations. I understand the lingo, the hardships, and the coming and goings of the community. Learning how to function in the community of the culture you are living in can take some time, especially if you have a child with special needs.

My daughter was diagnosed when she was ten-months old with Cri-du-Chat Syndrome, a genetic disorder that causes mental and physical disabilities. Along with the diagnosis, she was given a feeding tube – overnight we became a different family. We were already living in mainland China, and amazingly we were encouraged by all the health professionals and family to return. After a few years we moved to Taipei where she would have better access to therapy. Moving to Taipei, though still took time to adjust, was a smoother transition just because of the healthcare system.

My daughter is ten-years old now and no longer has a feeding tube. We still travel between Taiwan and Germany or Taiwan and the US, depending on the year. In these ten years I have learned a few things about traveling with a child with special needs and about life in general.

1. I am not alone. First, we are not the only people that live overseas with a child with special needs. There are others. Second, which isn’t too surprising, but since the diagnosis it seems that I just “see” others with special needs. I know they were there before, but I believe that God has made me more aware – especially here in Asia where disability is more often hidden.

2. Give Grace I know how easy it is to be offended by certain words and odd looks. I know how angry I can get by comments made about someone with special needs. I can become that protective mama bear ready to strike out at anyone – but God has been teaching me (notice, I’m still learning!) to give grace. Sometimes that is a silent prayer, other times it is quietly in love telling the person what their words mean. I’ve found that most have no clue and are truly apologetic for it. I’ve also found that some questions are just purely that: a question. They just want to know, but didn’t phrase it quite right (sometimes this is a culture-clash). I’m learning to answer with grace. Do I get it right every time? No, but I’m in the process of it…

3. The beauty of a smile Having someone say hello to my daughter and to talk to her, not me, is a HUGE gift. I’ve come to realize that people with special needs want to be talked to directly – even if they can’t respond back. When we stop and speak (just say Hi!) to someone with special needs we recognize that they are human – not just a statue that takes up space. And the impact you have on the parent by that small act of kindness speaks volumes. I know from experience.

4. Churches are empty The most noticeable issue I see in most churches is what I don’t see. I don’t see too many people with special needs in church. This is something I’ve seen in every country I’ve visited. Why is this? I don’t have a researched answer, but from my experience it seems that people do not know what to do with my family. They want to help, but not sure how. They feel unqualified to teach a child with special needs. The congregation may feel that the person is too disruptive…read #3 again, they are fearfully and wonderfully made, too (Ps. 139:14)!

Diversity is so much more than the color of ones skin or the various cultures of the world. As I’m living this expat life, I’m learning more about what that means as a family with disabilities. I could easily say that my daughter is teaching me, but really it is God teaching me through her about the special needs community and my response to his diverse world.

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You can read more from MaDonna Maurer on her blog www.raisingtcks.com and find her on Twitter

By Rachel Pieh Jones|June 3rd, 2014|Categories: Expat Thoughts, Third Culture Kids|Tags: diversity, madonna maurer, special needs third culture kids, taiwan, what I learned|10 Comments

What I Learned: Walking Into a Brothel

This post is part of a series on learning from diversity called What I Learned. To contribute, contact Rachel.

Today’s What I Learned post comes from Jillian Rogers who write about walking into a brothel, sitting down on the bed, and learning something unexpected. This post is incredibly brave and hard and honest and filled with grace. It challenged me and I’m thankful to Jillian for sharing it here.

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Stench. Filth. Nausea. Everything I had imagined and everything I had feared hit me in the face on that day last spring when I walked in to a brothel in Southern Asia and sat down on one of the beds. All the things I had read came crashing down on my head. Men came in droves, in and out, in and out, slinking around like they didn’t want their Mamas to catch them. At the same time, there was a tilt to their shoulders, like some kind of badge of merit or achievement had just been won. Young girls, barely thirteen or fourteen years old, with their beautiful faces painted like a white-washed picket fence eyed me from their perches on the teeter totter of hope and resignation. And just like that, they pulled on my arm; they pulled me into their world.

Underage girls. Drunken men. Large women, with gaps in their teeth. This is what I had expected. There could be no questions; I was their guest. I couldn’t ask what I really wanted to know. I couldn’t grab the girls by the hand and whisk them away to safety, to freedom, to take them back to the childhood they had lost. The idea of freedom is like pink cotton candy; it’s fluffy and light. The reality, though, its road, is more like a ton of bricks settling down in the hollow of your stomach; it can weigh on you and shift your every move around with its awkward gait.

I had expected to feel everything I did while sitting on that bed. With the soiled curtains mocking me as they blew haphazardly in the wind, I became outraged that this was happening in my world, on my watch. I expected to have the image of the little boy begging me “Aunty, Aunty, please take me home with you. Don’t you love me, Aunty? Don’t you want me, Aunty?” to be seared, branded, embedded into my memory, into my conscious, a part of my very being. I expected the anger, the fear, the what-ifs to run amuck in my brain.

What I never expected was to accept the hospitality that was offered. I didn’t see the grace or the love coming, and it pummeled me over, like an avalanche. Right there, on her sturdy bed, the overweight Madam, the one in charge, the one who held the power (maybe) to stop this atrocious work, invited me to come over and drink a nice cold bottle of Sprite.

This same lady who was influential in keeping all of those young precious girls inside the brothel, working and earning and sinking ever farther down, was just as influential in getting small girls, babies really, outside the brothel, away from the stench and the sin and the sorrow. How could this be?

With tears in our eyes, we talked of *Satvik, her eight year old daughter, who had recently come to live in the residential home that my husband and I operate. Here I was, sitting on the bed with the brothel Madam, swapping tales of report cards and holiday treats, laughing at the girlish antics of the one who had made both our lives come full circle. I, with my rescue, and she, with her “business,” had found a little bridge to connect the chasm between us. Tentatively, like the first five minutes of an already maladroit first date, we began to walk along that bridge, makeshift steps and all.

She told me how she had brought her girl to Akhi’s Place, to our girls’ rescue home, determined that Satvik grow up with a different story, living out a better life. This same woman who commanded the other girls to “get back to work” had made sure another girl received the chance to go to school, to learn English and computer skills, to get as far away from the white-washed tombs hiding in the eyes of the brothel workers as possible.

What I learned that day last spring was pretty simple, really. Whether I am in sitting in front of my computer screen or sitting on a bed in a brothel, I can’t slap a one-size-fits-all label on to others. I can no longer pretend that I am capable of measuring the unseen oceans within them. Mothers want the same things for their children. Whether we are sipping luxury from a white suburban spoon or engaged body and soul in the atrocities that even a dingy curtain cannot hide, we want something more for our children.

I saw unspeakable darkness in the border town brothel that day. Its palatable grip choked my expectations and what I thought I knew about ministering to the exploited. I also saw, and inhaled in short steady doses, the reality that Light and Hope can live there, too. There is a Madam, now a friend and ally, working with my team and me to see that same Light push the darkness back a little further. I can’t help but believe that His Light is also warming her from the inside out in the process.

*Names have been changed, and faces have been blurred to protect the identities of those involved.*

A lover of coffee, chocolate, & deep conversation, Jillian’s heart is to give a voice and a choice to the countless millions who find themselves needing options, safety, love, and hope. She serves as a community relief and development strategist alongside her husband, Mel, and their two small children in Southern Asia. Together they direct Akhi’s Place, a rescue home for young girls born into brothels. Jillian would love to connect on Twitter (@JRogersinAsia) and on her blog, www.singforjoysouthernasia.com

By Rachel Pieh Jones|May 20th, 2014|Categories: Expat Thoughts|Tags: brothel, diversity, jillian rogers, sex trafficking, what I learned|6 Comments

What I Learned: Forming a Diverse Team

This post is part of a series on learning from diversity called What I Learned. To contribute, contact Rachel.

Today’s What I Learned post comes from Anita Dualeh (who also wrote Why Doesn’t Your Wife Wear Hijab for the Let’s Talk About Hijab series). She writes about wrestling with issues of race and diversity in the Parent Teacher Organization at her children’s St. Paul, Minnesota school.

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This past September our oldest son started kindergarten at a public school in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. At the first meeting of the Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) I learned that the school now has fewer than half Caucasian children in its student body. The PTO, however, does not reflect the diversity of its students. There were a few parents of color at the first few meetings of the year, but the only people who consistently show up are white moms. Leaders in the PTO have been talking about how to increase the diversity of the organization. They formed a mosaic committee, which has met twice I believe. I haven’t ever heard an exact number, but I’ve gathered that the committee charged with helping figure out a solution to the lack of diversity is mostly, if not all, white.

diverse school boys

I thought about joining this committee, but it seems like it is doomed from the start. My husband, who is from East Africa, isn’t joining either. He has things to say on this topic, but he’d probably never say them in such a setting. Many minorities may feel like he does. They have little spare time because they’re working hard to provide for their families. Why would they show up at meetings where the goals are nebulous and where they are fairly certainly people don’t really understand them? If they have input, would anyone take it seriously? Some of them probably feel that the major decisions have already been made and there isn’t room in the conversation to tell the group that they aren’t convinced of the need for their children to sell frozen pizzas or kitchen gadgets from a glossy catalogue to people who don’t really want to buy them. They probably won’t bother to say that they have no intention of going to a bar on a Saturday evening to bid on silent auction items they don’t have room in their budget to buy. (I never said that aloud either, though it was how I felt.) And they may not understand the point of going to school on a frigid night in January for family fitness night. But that does not automatically mean they are uninvolved or apathetic parents.

At our school there are parents of every color who care deeply about their children’s education. But ideas of what an involved parent looks like may vary from one culture to another. And how it plays out in the day-to-day could look quite different from what those in the dominant culture might expect. For starters, the mass emails or letters sent home from school probably aren’t reaching everyone the PTO wants to reach. Indeed, some parents may respond better to personal invitations to help out with existing activities or programs, but I have a hunch that even a more personal touch won’t achieve a really high response rate. It’s a hunch based on personal experience. For the school’s literacy night, another PTO-sponsored event, I talked my husband into telling some traditional tales from his culture for one of the storytelling sessions. He didn’t want to. “Do it for your son,” I pleaded. So he agreed. But if my son and I wouldn’t have been here to talk him into it again on the snowy evening of the event, he may have never gone. He really did it just for us. I asked our neighbors from Togo to participate in the storytelling that evening as well. They declined. Even though I’d recently started taking care of their daughter after school and I thought they sort of owed me a favor.

Rather than just inviting individuals of color to join us in what we’re already doing, perhaps we need to take a step backward. Maybe we need to start with questions like, “How should we collectively support our children’s learning?” Certainly, we need to make it a conversation that includes a lot more people. But to those like my husband, even this appears to be little more than lip service. I asked him why he thought parents of color are generally not involved in the PTO. “Because they don’t feel like they belong,” he said. “Look at the staff at the school. They’re all white.” In his view you’re not going to get parents of color to participate in volunteer activities when the school doesn’t demonstrate they value diversity enough to hire teachers of color. What if they can’t find such teachers? He doesn’t believe that’s the problem. (I have heard once that city schools in our area have found it challenging to hire licensed teachers that reflect the diversity of their students, but don’t have any facts to prove or disprove that statement.)

What my husband is suggesting is that perhaps the root of the problem is structural racism, which is something the PTO alone can’t fix. It sounds overwhelming. But for the sake of our children I hope we don’t give up. I hope we continue to ask the hard questions. I hope we make a commitment to listening to minority parents. To do that well, parents from the dominant culture first need to reach out to parents of color with no agenda beyond friendship. As we each diversify our own pool of friends, diversifying the PTO might just take care of itself.

Anita Dualeh, who lives in St. Paul with her husband and two sons, leads her church’s Refugee Life Ministry team. She blogs at www.1stteacher.wordpress.com

*image via Flickr

By Rachel Pieh Jones|May 13th, 2014|Categories: Uncategorized|Tags: anita doualeh, diversity, race, what I learned|7 Comments

What I Learned: The Hospitality of Greetings

This post is part of a series on learning from diversity called What I Learned. To contribute, contact Rachel.

Today’s What I Learned post comes from Heather Caliri, writing about greetings and the uncomfortable risk we take in simply saying ‘hello.’

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The instructions for passing the peace are pretty clear—and even written in the bulletin: un saludo cordial, mirando a los ojos. Which means, “a cordial greeting, looking into each others eyes.”

My first time at the Spanish-language service at my church, I thought I understood those instructions. I stood up and shook hands with the people seated around me. Each person murmured la paz del Cristo–The peace of Christ–as they shook hands with me.

Easy enough. I smiled cordially, looked them in the eyes, and repeated the phrase back to them. After two or three people, I sat down again. My shy self was a little relieved that the face-to-face time was over.

My duty done, I lifted up the bulletin, wondering what came next. Then I stopped.

Something weird was happening.

No one else was sitting down. No—everyone was wandering around the room like bees dancing in a hive, zooming from one person to another. People shook hands, they kissed cheeks, they hugged. Several people from across the room came over to me and passed me the peace, even though I had closed up shop.

For several minutes, I did a little jumping-jack dance where I started standing, then sat down again, feeling silly. Surely the greeting would end soon. Surely if I stood up now, I would be the last woman standing. Or maybe I seemed standoffish, sitting down? I half sat, half stood and wished I could hide someplace until the greeting dance ended.

It takes a while for even a small congregation to greet everyone in the room. I watched everyone swirl around me, wishing I had approached the peace of Christ differently. I realized that there are greetings, and there are greetings, and I had wandered into the second kind.

I’ve spent years of my life in Latin American cultures; greetings stuck out even in my first weeks of immersion. In one of my letters soon after I arrived in Argentina fifteen years ago, I wrote this: “I’m entranced with the Argentine people, who are warm to the extreme. The proper greeting is a kiss on the cheek, regardless of sex. After getting used to not sticking out my hand, I started loving that I got such a friendly welcome.”

That hive-dance I saw at church shouldn’t have surprised me; living in Argentina, the same sort of thing happened all the time. Arrive at a large birthday dinner? Everyone stands, forms an impromptu receiving line, and kisses you on the cheek. Coming in late to a gathering at a restaurant? Expect to go down the line of chairs saying hello to each person in turn. The more people arrive at once, the more comical the greetings seemed—a factory line of quick pecks and “holas”—twenty at a time—until my lips were worn out with air-kisses.

But if you don’t bother with greetings, people notice. If you don’t bother to say goodbye or goodnight, people notice. My Argentine friend Cami told me that when people don’t say hello to her, she wonders whether she offended them somehow.

So I’m surprised I was surprised by the greetings at church. And the more I see greetings as central to the congregation’s culture, the more I’ve seen them pop up everywhere, woven into the very fabric of worship.

After the opening prayer, new and returning visitors stand and introduce themselves by name, and the person leading the service greets welcomes them—calling out people that were too shy to stand up.

Minutes later, the children gather at the front of the room and say their names into the mike one by one. After each one, everyone answers back, “Hola, Henry,” or “Hola, Eileen.”

And informal welcome is constant: someone grabbing me a Bible in English when the leader begins to read from the Word. The pastor, rushing on his way to start the service, stops and gives me a hug, saying, “I am so glad you’re here.” An older man finds me a song sheet. And if someone comes to the service that doesn’t speak Spanish, a bilingual member sits next to them and translates.

Coming as a stranger for the first time to these services, being welcomed—formally and informally—deeply affects my heart.

And in a country where immigrants are often demonized and made to feel unwelcome, being given a warm welcome by immigrants is tremendously humbling.

I think about that before I started going to the Hispanic service at my church—which shares facilities and some activities with the Anglo population—when I’d see various members at the coffee cart, or in the English service. Can I be honest? I didn’t make an effort to look them in the eyes and give them a cordial greeting. I told myself they might not be interested in meeting me (despite my fluent Spanish and the fact that we’re brothers and sisters in Christ). I felt awkward and shy. I felt weird about the divisions between Latinos and Anglos at our church and in San Diego.

So I didn’t bother.

I’m not sure: is it culture that kept my eyes downcast? Is it culture that prevented me from walking over and giving the Latino members of my church a cordial greeting?

I look back and feel ashamed. I knew better, and I didn’t do better.

Being welcomed over and over into the Spanish-language church is changing my approach to hospitality. It’s not a nice thing for people who are good at it. It’s an imperative that acknowledges the humanity and value of every person. It’s the first step to confronting barriers like ethnicity, skin color, or language. It’s a petite cross that we should not neglect to shoulder.

I stay after the Hispanic service sometimes, and I watch as people leave. The parents kneel down by their children, and tell them to say goodbye to this person or that. Their children wiggle, ready to play or run or move on to the next thing, and their parents gently, kindly, insist.

*image via Flickr

Two years ago, I started saying little yeses to faith, art, and life. The result? Transformation. Get my free e-book, “Dancing Back to Jesus: Post-perfectionist Faith in Five Easy Verbs”, on my blog, A Little Yes. Follow on Twitter.

By Rachel Pieh Jones|May 6th, 2014|Categories: Expat Thoughts|Tags: argentina, diversity, heather caliri, what I learned|6 Comments

What I Learned: A Culture of Relationship

*This post is part of a series on learning from diversity called What I Learned. To contribute, contact Rachel.

Today’s What I Learned post comes from Malana Ganz, writing about relationships in Panama and realizing how cultural her understanding of her faith had been.

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About two years ago my husband Steve and I were visiting Panama for the second time. We had come to teach, at the invitation of friends from Oregon, where we live. While there, Steve had a dream of Jesus standing over the map of Panama, arms outstretched, saying, “I want you to teach in Panama.”

Not being a man to whom dreams come, his reaction was to ask for counsel. When I responded positively, our hosts did, our pastor did…well, then we asked our six adult children for their input. Although they were not as quick to agree, we reminded them that we had supported all of their life decisions. What could they do? Other than requesting that we remain in good communication for the sake of our grandchildren, they gave their blessing.

What a whirlwind of activity it took to close two businesses, get on social security, and move out of a 2400 square foot house and 2400 square foot shop. My organizational skills, for which I am legendary in the family, were severely challenged. But we did it! Eight months after the dream, we were here.

As part of our service here, we ended up being in their first training school at this location as students.

When we started school we had been here a year. My Spanish was improving, my husband was still struggling with simple phrases but making some headway. He told everyone that it goes in one ear and out the other. They suggested that he hold the exit ear shut! But he explained that then the words come out his nose. Pretty funny conversation in sign language!

Our understanding of the people was also improving. We thought we had a good handle on the differences between our American Christian culture and jungle tribal culture. When Steve teaches, the interpreter has few cultural corrections to make, mostly about keeping examples pertinent to their experiences. We were making friends and enjoying our classes.

However, our cultural differences really hit home to me one day in class, when our teacher was discussing the scripture, “The devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy.” His point was, that if we do the opposite of what the devil is trying to accomplish, we will thwart his plans and he will have no control over us. The class was asked to identify the opposite of “steal, kill, and destroy.”

My thoughts instantly went to “to support yourself (let those who stole steal no more, but work with their own hands), bear life (no abortion), and to build (a wise woman builds her house, a foolish one tears it down with her own hands). Where would your thoughts go to? Self-sufficiency, social responsibility, personal responsibility, that is the American mantra. I’ve learned it well.

I sat in silence to listen as my Wounaan friends and classmates answered the question. We try to let them speak first, because their parents taught them to listen before speaking. If we jump in too quickly, they won’t participate in the discussion. The first response was from an 18-year old girl:

“When I was little my father left some money on the table. I was tempted to steal it and go buy candy. Then I remembered that he always told me, ‘If you want something, ask me for it.’ I decided not to steal the money, but to ask my father for enough to buy candy. He gave it to me gladly. The opposite of steal, is to ask.”

Then someone started throwing out antonyms for “kill” – “resurrect, grow.”

And the opposite of “destroy” that they decided on? “Include.”

What I have always seen as words of responsibility and guilt, my Wounaan friends saw as words of relationship. If you ask, you will receive and not need to steal. If you encounter death, bring resurrection life. If you have a temptation to destroy a relationship, include the person in your life and rebuild the friendship.

I was completely floored and humbled as I understood the limitations of how I view scripture. I was unaware that I had been locked into a narrow cultural interpretation. As I meditated on this class, I remembered that Jesus comes from a rural relational culture more similar to Wounaan than American. I felt like I was hearing His heart.

Worldview is usually our silent partner, until it is challenged. I am so glad that my worldview was exposed, so that the light of truth can shine more deeply into my heart.

Malana Ganz and her husband have 6 married children and 14 grandchildren. They ran a piano restoration business for 38 years and pastored a small church for 10 years. They work with youth in Panama and happily refer to themselves as Geezers for God.