“The Big Box People”

Have you ever noticed that every time you go into a big box store, the lines are usually way long at the check out, and they usually sell stuff (junk) you really do not need (but hey, it’s cheap!). The store is way too big and you tend to forget what it is you actually came into the store to buy in the first place, and you wind up getting so frustrated you remind yourself once again to never come in here again?!

OK, so maybe I am counter-cultural, I really dislike big box stores!    I am always astounded to hear so many say how much they like them!!    I find them impersonal, bland, distracting, they have no soul.  

Most times the items for sale in them seem to be mass produced, substandard quality and from countries far far away that are usually exploiting the workers over there.  All in the name of “free enterprise”!  Is it really worth saving a buck or two?
 
For when someone is “winning”, it also means someone is losing.

The past nine years I have worked as an adjunct professor at one of the local community colleges.  I have asked my students as we are exploring history and cultures, “How will we be seen or viewed by people three thousand years from now?   Or ten thousand years from now?   What remnants will we leave that will be dug up by future archeologists....     How will they see what we value, our religion, etc?   How will we be known?”
 
Yes it is true, someday in a future history or anthropology class, a few thousand years from now we may become nothing more than a slide or a “bullet” on someone’s future PowerPoint presentation! 

What will they dig up about us?  The people of the 21st century in North America?  What will we leave behind that tells our story?

They will find as they dig...our stores, our malls, buildings, giant sports stadiums, and....big box stores! 

We will be known as the “big box people”!

What a legacy! 

Uh! 

JULY 30th 2010 “An American in Panama”

I just returned from a nearly two week TDY (temporary duty) and received the briefing for my next deployment, which actually inspired the creation of this blog “Ministry at the Edge of the Earth”.  I am heading to Antarctica in a few months!  

But until then and this new and upcoming adventure, I will continue to share some of my former tours, TDYs, and stories.  

My first overseas tour, or deployment was many years ago, another time.  It was seventeen plus years ago, and I was a 2LT (second lieutenant).  I was sent to Panama, where I served for about six months.  This was before I became a chaplain, and back then I was a “line officer”.  My job for this tour was coordinating and leading trips and visits of VIPs, Generals, Governors and other “high vis” civilians.  

The first day I arrived to Panama, I was, as usual after traveling for many hours and through the night, dazed and exhausted.  A friend I knew who was already at the base where I was, met me and took me for a ride off base and through Panama City.  I was very excited to see a new country!

As soon as we exited the base, the first thing I saw written (spray painted) on the buildings was graffiti:  “Yanqi go home!”  

Well, that was a nice welcome!

It was in the early 1990s and it was another time.  Rubble of buildings and buildings with bullet holes still where everywhere from the aftermath of “Operation Just Cause”, the US invasion of Panama in 1989.  

This was a time before the Internet and before everyone had cell phones.     My only link to “home” was watching CNN on TV,  and a five to ten minute phone call home on Sundays.  

And as the months went by, a pain and longing for home was very much felt.  One weekend, after being there for four months, I went scuba diving with some friends in the Caribbean and we were sitting in the evening around a camp fire on the beach.  We all missed home (America) and began talking about things we missed about the United States.   

One girl said she missed malls.  (Panama did not have malls).  Another said she missed Denny’s.  (Back then Denny’s was the coffee place!)  And I thought about these things.  I was never a mall person, but strangely, I missed these things too!

It was challenging for me living in Panama, because I barely spoke any Spanish, and this was the first time I had ever lived outside the United States.  I had to get an apartment in the city as the base did not have the room to house me on base.  This was a blessing in a way, for I was forced to live in the culture totally.  And really learn some Spanish!

I was very embarrassed that I could not communicate with the people there in Spanish.  They tolerated me, (stupid American).  But I soon learned they were more than friendly if I told them I was trying to learn Spanish, and would they help me?  They were then delighted.  

I began to learn, reading the Spanish road signs, learning words and phrases, studying and struggling with the language and soon I began to hear the language!!  It felt like my ears where opening up!  I began to understand the gist of what I was hearing!  Of course, if I was really in a bind, most Panamanians spoke English.  

But it was lonely, for I would see the people with their friends, laughing and talking...in Spanish.  How I wished to join in and talk and laugh too, but I could not even talk to them, or understand them.

It was a realization of what the people in the US feel who are from another country, struggling with English.  I now knew what it felt like to be the outsider, the foreigner.

My apartment was in the heart and hustle and bustle of Panama City.  In Panama, the phones, electricity and water at times went off.  Yep, no water, no electricity, and sometimes the phone just went down.  Usually they would announce what sectors of the city would have no water when, so you could make arrangements.  When i knew I would have no water for a morning shower, I would wake up extra early, go to the base gym and shower there.  

But one evening, down went the phone, the electric power, and I had no water.  And I was not presentable.  I needed a shower, and I could not go out. I needed to do laundry, but had no water.  The phone was out, so I could not call anyone.  I wanted to read a book, but had no light.  And now, no air conditioning and was sweating like mad.  What to do?  

And so, I sat in my bed, reading a book by candlelight, drops of sweat hitting the book as I read it.  It was miserable.  Then I thought, ‘oh my gosh,  how many hundreds (thousands) of years did people live like this, and I am whining?‘  

I had a major education right then and there, sweating and reading by candlelight!!  

The military installation where I worked was right across from the giant Miraflores locks on the Panama Canal.  It was amazing to see everyday from outside my office window, the gigantic ships moving through the locks.  Some so large I wondered how they floated.  Cargo ships with conexes stacked upon stacks.  Giant “Love Boat” cruise ships, oil tankers, and more.  

Panama is very green and tropical, the air very humid and salty smelling.  There are two main seasons; wet season, and dry season.  In other words, one season that rained A LOT, and another season that rained a little less!

Being that it is so close to the equator, the days are usually 12 hours in length, and the sunrise / sunset does not change much.

This lack of change hit me one morning as I was preparing coffee in my kitchen, getting ready for work.  I had been there for about three months, and had an eastern window that the sun always blasted through every morning.  As the days and weeks went by I began to get this uneasy feeling.  Always that sun!  In the same spot!  Everyday!  At 6 am!    Suddenly an awareness hit me.  I was not used to things always staying the same, like the sunrise always being the same time being I was from a much more northern latitude where the slow change of time everyday, bit by bit I was  accustomed to!  Back home, three months time would have been a significant change, the sun would be rising at a different time.  But in Panama, 6 am, every day.  It did not change!

In my job, I coordinated the visits of large groups of people for 5 to 6 day visits.  I would usually book them at one of upscale hotels in the city.  

Now, going about doing this was completely different than in the USA.  How would you do this?  Pick up the phone, call the place, request the days, tell them the number of rooms, give them a credit card number and confirm and that would be it!  Right?   Wrong!

In the USA this would work.  But not in Panama.  I learned very quickly, (after they hung up on me half a dozen times!) that I had to ‘make an appointment’ to see the sales director, or better yet, the hotel manager.

And so I did.  Usually this “appointment” entailed meeting them for a nice lunch at the hotel, talking, getting to know one another, and then getting down to business.  Negotiating the prices, the extras, express check in with goodies and so forth.  All this took about three hours to do.

And every time I needed to book rooms, we would have a nice three hour lunch, talk and renegotiate everything.  

At first I thought this was incredibly inefficient.  What would take a 10 minute phone call in the USA took 3 hours in person to accomplish.

Until, after awhile, I began to get to know them, the hotel staff and them, me.  Pretty soon we knew each other by first names, I was asking about their families, their kids, and vice versa, etc.  This would rarely happen in the US!

I learned to appreciate the slower way of doing things there, as it was really about people and quality.

In the US it is about getting things done, and in a hurry.  Panamanians  are much more people oriented than American culture in general.

Panama had armed police officers and guards everywhere (like in front of stores, traffic stops and restaurants), usually armed with M-16s.  Rarely were there traffic lights at busy intersections, there were cops directing traffic.  

What you had to be careful of, especially if you were a foreigner and looked American (like I did), was not making eye contact with the police officers at traffic intersections.  Fortunately I was told the first week I arrived that the standard “bribe rate” was $5, and to keep a five dollar bill folded behind my driver’s license.  Should I be pulled over, I was to give the cop the $5, smile and say “buenos dias”.    It was standard operating procedure here.

And sure enough, on my very last day of being in Panama, as I was driving to the airport, on a big wide boulevard called Tomba Muerta. (Tomb of the Dead, nice name for the road to the airport, ay?) I mistakenly locked eyes with the traffic cop.  He motioned for me to pull over.

Uh, I thought!  He came up beside me and said “license por favor”.   And I gave him my license with the five dollar bill folded neatly behind it and said “Negotiate?”  And he said “Si”.  He handed me back my license, minus the five dollar bill, smiled and said “buenos dias!”  

I smiled, waived goodbye and was on my way to the airport, and home!

Sharing a Sandwich on a C-130

Last year as I was making my way to my deployed destination in SW Asia, I was awaiting transportation at an air base in Qatar called Al Udeid, known by many as “the Deed”.  It is a hub where hundreds of flights come and go everyday, and it is huge.  There are hundreds of rows of tents to hold the transient travelers, a place to catch some sleep and have a shower before you travel onward, with hot white sand underfoot.

And so, I showed up at the “PAX Terminal” at my designated time, there were about 15 of us traveling in our group.  Where we were headed was a quick 45 minute flight from where we were.  So when they told us we were flying in a C-130, I was not surprised.

But when they filed us into a large warehouse looking room and gave us flak vests and helmets...I knew something had changed!  We were going to Baghdad, Iraq.  Completely in the opposite direction and out of the way, and an extra ten hours of flying....in a C-130.

And so we marched toward the plane with flak vests and helmets on, just like you see in the movies.  It was still dark and the sun was beginning to rise.  Walking in two lines on the flight tarmac, toward the opened back cargo hatch we boarded the plane.  We sat longways, (no rows or seats like in a commercial jet airliner) we sat on benches.  A C-130 is a cargo plane and there were pallets of cargo piled behind us, including all our luggage and bags. 

And so we took off, stopping shortly in Bahrain, and we continued on over the deserts of Iraq heading northeast to Baghdad.  C-130s are prop aircraft, so it took us much longer than in a jet. 

I looked out the one tiny window on the side of the aircraft.  Looking down at the ground, it was flat, and very beige.  So, this is Iraq I thought to myself.  I had been to other countries in Middle East before, but not Iraq, until this day!

Amazingly, the C-130 has a bathroom.  It is way in the rear of the aircraft, and you have to climb up to use it, and privacy is a green shower curtain looking thing that wraps around you and the toilet.  But when you gotta go, you are thankful this little toilet is there!

As we began to get close to Baghdad, the loadmasters took their places at each side of the aircraft, armed.  We were all locked in our bench netted seats with safety belts.  The plane began to turn side to side, deep turns and then began to dive.   It did what seemed like barrel rolls as we dove.  It was a sharp, sharp decline, not for a weak stomach.  We could not see out of the aircraft as there are no windows.  So it felt like we were flying in a corkscrew dive, and it was a bit dizzying!   This is called a “combat landing” and they do this to avoid or dodge any incoming bullets or artillery as we land.

We landed in Baghdad, at the main airport which is also a base.  We deplaned and as we walked across the tarmac I noticed fires on the edge of the tarmac in certain places.  The guy leading us to the PAX terminal said to us “Oh, if you hear any explosions, don’t worry about those!”

The sky looked very polluted, and I could see the tower across the runways.  The people there in the PAX looked like they had seen some long, hard combat.

We hung out at the PAX terminal a few hours, and then departed for our destination....which was another 6 hours of flying. 

I did not bring any food, as I thought our flight from Al Udeid was only going to be 45 minutes!  Now, I was getting hungry.

The young female airman that was sitting next to me unpacked a huge sandwich from her backpack.  She saw me watching her, and asked if I wanted some of it.

“Oh no, no”, I said.  “You go ahead.  But thanks for asking.”  (I did not want to take her sandwich!)

She insisted I take half, as it was quite large.  We went back and forth. Finally I accepted her offer. We conversed as we flew over Iraq, eating our sandwiches.

Dazed, hot and tired, we finally landed at our destination.  We in processed and soon began working our respective jobs.

That first Sunday upon being there, I was leading the various worship services, as I am a chaplain.    She showed up for Sunday services.  We hugged hello.

We had an instant rapport.  I heard the others ask her, “Oh, you know the chaplain?”  I heard her say, “Yes, I shared my sandwich with her!”

The rest of our deployment, we shared a special bond.  What an experience to share.... one of hospitality as she shared her sandwich, and we ate and talked as we flew over Iraq in a C-130.