Life Inside the Turkey

I've been here in Trabzon for three months now and so far things have gone fine. I haven't learned much Turkish or traveled too much locally but I have done some good work in my department.

I started a club called the English Outreach Club where students in my department go around to local high schools to promote scholarship opportunities sponsored by the embassy. We accomplished recruiting three students and a teacher to go to the states for two weeks this winter and we have built a lot of interest for future programs.

Other than that, we have done a Campus Cleanup and have more planned for the coming months and we are currently working on reorganizing the English Department's library.





Next semester we'll be doing much more as we have a Children's Day and High School Teacher Workshop planned. I'll let you know what happens.

So life in Turkey:
The food in Turkey for the most part is good. They eat a lot of meat here, especially lamb. They also make good use of eggplant, serving it in a caserol with tomatoes and other various items. Although they drink a lot of tea here, it can't hold a candle to the tea in Taiwan. But, for the most part, Turkey is a comfortable place with regard to eating (for those that have lived overseas, you know how important that is).

I have done some travel here. So far the best things I have seen are:

Sumela Monastery, which is near Trabzon and is home to some beautiful frescoes. Many of them have been defaced by young non-Christian nationalists, but Turkey for the most part respects Christian history and has made many sites into state museums.





The Aya Sofia in Trabzon. The Aya Sofia in Istanbul is much more famous and is a grand site to see, but it is crowded and constantly has scaffolding. The one in Trabzon is smaller and one can convince oneself that they are standing there in the 13th century when Christianity held a more profound meaning than it does today.

The Mevlana Temple in Konya. Aaron will be interested in this as he introduced me to the poet Rumi back in 2001. I got to see his burial casque and take in the Sufist decor.




Sufism is the mystical strain of Islam. Most religions do what they can to strangle their mystical portion (Christianity is most famous for this) but Turkish muslims have respect for Rumi and the Mevlana Festival (whirling dervishes).




It was great to see a 750 year old tradition alive and well. Here is an excerpt of Rumi's poetry:

There is a community of the spirit.
Join it, and feel the delight
of walking in the noisy street
and being the noise.
Drink all your passion,
and be a disgrace.
Close both eyes to see with the other eye.

Wouldn't it be nice if all obtuse fundamentalists from all religions took that advice.

Finally, the ruins at Ephesus. I hate when people automatically use the word "amazing" upon returning from a trip or eating some kind of food, but Ephesus is truly impressive. It's the site of an ancient Roman city and has never been lived in since that time. Hence, you can stand in places and picture what it was like intead of having a Starbuck's juxtaposed to confuse matters. I highly recommend going during the winter or early spring. We were there on a sunny day (I walked around in a t-shirt) and there were no crowds. Kellie, the landscape looked just like San Luis Obispo.





As far as my daily life, I get up each morning and walk to my department with a nice view of the black sea.



During the week I teach five classes of 40 to 50 students each where we read and discuss literature.... (I taught As I Lay Dying, Matt. My students all call it "Zaladine" after I told them your story.)....and do various Conversation activities. Currently my students are working on 12 seperate films.

Besides work I spend my free time watching MSNBC on my computer as well as The Daily Show. I've been bad lately about eating chips and drinking Coke, but I think a lot of my bad habits and wasted time has been a manifestation of culture shock and indecision about my future. But that is changing.

I've decided to stay here for another year. I will go to Taiwan this summer for six weeks and then to Washington D.C. for two. After that I'll be driving around the states for two more weeks and then fly back to Turkey before I lose my tax-free status for the year. I'll continue my work here until Spring 2010 and then I'll probably go back to Taiwan again. After that, I'll probably settle in Sacramento for two years where I will teach some, but spend most of my time studying film and making movies. I plan to start film school in Fall 2012 unless major life changes interfere.

So, for now, I'm alive and well in Turkey and as usual I have a lot of dreams and plans. I have just returned from my trip to Konya and Izmir and on January 24, I will fly to Cairo for a conference and then go to Antakya (Antioch) in southern Turkey where I will get to see Christian mosaics and catch a swim in the Mediterranean. While in Cairo, I plan to meet with my friend Scott to talk about our plans to start a non-profit called "Student Film Excahnge." More on that later.

Happy Holidays to all of you. I will be off the radar this week as I attempt to catch up on work, but feel free to comment on the blog and talk to each other.

Good Neighbors

I saw a great decription of the domino effect of the Mumbai attacks on Rachel Maddow's show. It's frightening to see what is at stake here and to see just how precarious these international balancing acts can be.

I've been thinking a lot about Pakistan and India today because of one of my students who is doing her thesis symposium on Robert's Frost's "Mending Wall."
Here's the poem:

"Mending Wall" by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Robert Frost's poems are incredibly nuanced and therefore subject to myriad interpretation but let me offer one here:

In 1947, the newly independent India partitioned itself into India and Pakistan in order to give its Muslim minority a country of their own. Perhaps you remember the scene in Gandhi of droves of Hindus and Muslims passing each other along the Pakistani border as they leave their respective homes.

Since then we have seen various wars and a continuing tension between Pakistan and India, now two nuclear powers.

Although these countries have differing religious majorities who had a past of violent conflict when part of the same country, this separation has not done anything to ameliorate that conflict. And now, instead of individuals not liking neighbors they know, you have entire nations distrusting "those people" across the border. Good fences make good neighbors?

When we look at many of the international conflicts around the world, we see so many examples of once coexisting ethnicities or religious groups now living on the other side of fencelines.

Jews and Muslims used to live together throughout Palestine and now we have neverending paranoia and violence.

Greeks used to live in Turkey and Turks lived in Greece. However, in 1923 two million of these people exchanged places. Now, instead of a healthy ethnic population in each country contributing to increaing cultural empathy, Turkey considers Greece one of its greatest enemies.

Probably the most obvious example of a wall dividing people is the Berlin Wall. For decades we witnessed hair trigger distrust between people speaking the same language and sharing the same religion. Then, when the wall came down, we saw an immediate warm embrace between once-curtained neighbors.

Frost in his poem is arguing that these walls and divisions we build only increase our distrust of others. In the middle of the poem, he writes:

"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence."

Frost is arguing that when we put up these walls or increase national "defense" spending or talk disdainfully of "those people" we need to take a second and look at ourselves. Are we putting up this wall to protect ourselves from the violence and distrust coming from across the fenceline or are we putting up the wall because we know our own tendency toward violence and distrust and are projecting it onto our neighbor? If we mean no harm towards them, why are we so quick to believe that they mean great harm to us?

It's worthy of note that in Antakya, Turkey (also referred to as the Hatay region) Muslims, Jews and Christians live and have lived for centuries peacefully in the same community and many of them claim this peaceful coexistence as a point of pride.

Although building walls is often a quick fix for stopping or abating violence as recently evidenced in Sadr City, Iraq, the long result is a creation of unfamiliarity and foreignness among people who once knew each other. This leads to abstract nationalism and the willingness to watch bombs killing "those people" on green screens on CNN.

What are we walling in and to whom next are we like to give offence?


Now for that Rachel Maddow video. Wait through the Robert Gates news. The Pakistan analysis follows: