Like an Old-Timer

17.Like an Old-Timer (29 August 2018)

Togetherness (mostly) over kebab at the Bakalians!
This time with Sevag and a bunch of friends
(20 July 2018 – Geitawi, Beirut)

         When taking some visitors around Beirut recently, I realized that I was talking like an old-timer. Remember, you don’t have to be old to talk like a senior citizen. I was pointing to this place where there used to be such-and-such school, and the other place where so-and-so used to live, and on and on. I’ve only lived about a dozen years of my life here (and not even my formative years), but here I was, talking about the place as if I had been here all my life. To be fair, I can talk in the same fashion about nearly any place I’ve lived, but this place is nowhere near where I was born.

         So, here I was giving the “insider’s tour” of our neighborhood, from the post-Genocide era, to the pre-Civil War era, to the ups and downs of the past 3 decades. It offered a strange satisfaction, a deeper sense of belonging, while at the same time reminding me of the responsibility to pass along the heritage I have inherited (and chosen), particularly the Western Armenian and Armenian Christian heritage. The fact that I might know more than most people about this background is largely irrelevant. There is so little I know, and so much catching up I have to do to begin to grasp it all… even as an old-timer… or a perceived old-timer / know-it-all.

The theme-word for this summer’s youth
conference was “dukhov” (on the hat), a Russian/
Armenia word meaning “with spirit”. Ha.
(23 June 2018 – KCHAG, Monteverdi)

         One of my new favorite spots to eat is a little hole-in-the-wall kebab sandwich place, a 10-minute walk from home. The proprietor and sole worker there is a youthful and light-hearted, 70-something Armenian woman, whose friendliness and focus on providing high-quality food is a rare commodity. Eateries in this city can be pretty snooty places, even cheap eats, but Angele easily finds a way into your heart, and you into hers. She gets up before dawn each day, chops her fresh onion and parsley, gets to the butcher for fresh meats, switches butchers if she feels they are slipping in their quality, and lines up her skewers in small quantities in the refrigerated display for her regular customers. When I stopped by she talked about how, a few days ago, Persian Armenian visitors to Lebanon kept coming back day after day, even bringing friends to eat there. Sometimes Angele recruits willing friends to help with the chopping, but she is the one and only cook. Puts the charcoal on, sets the blow-drier to intensify the flame (they keep breaking down, and her brother keeps fixing them), peels the skin off the tomatoes after she cooks them, tosses on the right amount of spices to make a delicious sandwich… and charges almost nothing for it. At every turn she thanks the Lord for helping her. “It’s enough for me to live on – that’s all I need, praise God.” In a country of debt-based living, it’s an outlook on life that a lot more people need to share.

A heart for figs that grow out of the walls of Roman temple
ruins (25 July 2018 – Niha, Beqaa)

         The summer zoomed by us. We started out serving as counselors for the youth camp, then I got to be recording secretary for the church union’s annual meeting, and in between we got to see brother-in-law Vicken for a very brief visit. After that we spent a month (sort-of together) with our son Sevag, who was making his second annual appearance here. We enjoyed Lebanon for a few days, visiting Rayaq, where a lot of Armenians settled after the Genocide, until they emigrated to Armenia in 1946. We ate the most flavorful – not sugared – Arabic ice cream (in the Beqaa village of Saghbine). Sevag then did his second annual stint as a leader at the Armenian Evangelical Children’s Conference in KCHAG while we departed for Armenia to get ready for yet another big conference… “Zoomed” is the word.

Wrapping up the Armenian Evangelical Youth Conference
(15 Aug. 2018 – Hankavan, Armenia)

         Over the past months Maria and I had been filling our days and nights as directors of the worldwide Armenia Evangelical Youth Conference, organized by the Armenian Missionary Association of America for its 100^th anniversary. (Read about Day 1 through Day 14 here.) Sevag, along with the Syria & Lebanon group, joined us a few days after we arrived Yerevan, with about 140 other youth and mostly young leaders from a bunch of different countries for a two-week conference. (Read his interview in Armenian here.) The most memorable part of the plan was, predictably, the service opportunities the youth had, in teams of 4 to 10 people, heading out to various cities and villages. Each team did something different, whether helping run Vacation Bible School, or making jam, or doing housecleaning, or planting rooftop gardens, or visiting lonely elders in border villages, or refurbishing dwellings, and on and on. The conference got them culturally enriched and spiritually challenged, and then provided them an outlet to give to others a portion of what God was filling them with. Good, good times.

LebCat 16 and associates: We will soon take over your planet
with our fuzzy bodies and our laser eyes. Meanwhile you must
feed us (18 Aug. 2017 – Mar Mikhael, Beirut)

         Emerging mostly unscathed through all of this, Maria and I realized anew that this kind of leadership is something we need to encourage, advise and challenge in others. Because, simply put, we are old-timers! Happily, there are at least a few out of the youth with whom we worked throughout the summer who will likely do very well as tomorrow’s and today’s leaders.

         News update: it seems the ants noticed that they were getting very little social media traction from their antics in our apartment, so they took a break from bugging us. That and a bit of spray from a store that sells organic stuff seem to have done the trick. For now.

         September has nearly made its way back into our lives, so it’s time for both of us to hunker down again for the new academic year. With the summer conferences behind us, we can focus on the tasks we were sent here to do. While we continue to be integrated deeply into the fabric of life here. And gladly fulfill our roles as old-timers.  [LNB]

Infestations

15.Infestations (6 May 2018)

A last-minute flier, in case you are confused by the
new electoral laws, let’s make it simple for you:
just vote for our list. (6 May 2018 – Geitawi, Beirut)

            It’s Election Day here in Lebanon. Like the movement of populations to their home towns as recorded by Luke (in Jesus’ birth narrative, 2.1-3), today people are traveling to the places where their family records are held. This is not a reflection of where they currently live, and you often hear a surprised reaction when friends learn where their friends are going to vote. Husbands and wives may even go to different polling places, too, to choose slates (or is it individuals?) for a variety of political parties vying for a majority in the Lebanese parliament.

            In the prior nine years, since the last parliamentary election, there has been a change in the already byzantine electoral laws, involving redistricting and reassigning numbers of seats for each religious sect (also byzantine), trying to move towards proportional voting, and allowing expatriates to vote in Lebanese consulates around the world (except for those who are flown in by various factions), and, well, you get my point. Grasping the “what” and “why” and “how” of all of this requires you have a Mensa membership. What is evident is that there is little talk from the candidates about change, and a lot about control. The body language in the campaign posters infesting every square meter of the city says it all: arms folded over the chest. Practically every single candidate is posed in the same fashion. There’s even a candidate whose last name means “folded” in Arabic, whose arms are folded. “You may want to know what I’m going to do if elected, but I’m not going to tell you. Just vote for my party’s list.”

Armenian Evangelical Intermediate (Torossian) School Choir at
Armenian Martyrs’ Day commemoration (24 Apr 2018 –
Bourj Hammoud)

            The joke is circulating in Lebanon that if you stand in one place for more than two minutes, someone will come along and hang an election poster on you. But behind this proliferation of multi-storey posters there is, of course, a proliferation of payments being made. Private buildings, public spaces, even taxis have all benefited from this largesse. All the while, the amount of “eyescrapers” (see blogpost 13) polluting the cityscape has skyrocketed, if such a thing were possible.

            Will this infestation of posters be cleaned up after the elections? Yesterday morning’s high winds seemed to take matters into its own hands, displacing banners hung from every highway and bridge in Beirut. My expectation is that the winners will put up new banners in place of the old, and the losers will just take them down as they figure out what to do next.

White powder that kills ants and cockroaches. Of
course it’s safe. It’s certified by the Board of
Health. Just keep it away from children. (6 May
2018 – Beirut)

            Then there’s Armenia.

            Peaceful protests in March against the infestation of self-interest, catering to oligarchs, impunity and corruption in the higher echelons of the government swelled, and by April there was a huge popular movement in the streets of Yerevan, large enough that even the popular media outlets started noticing it. We are still in the fog of it all, so we can’t say what is happening, or what is driving it, but it seems that the people have found their voice. Those currently in power are bearing the brunt of this outburst, but there is enough blame to go around for all of the corruption in all of the years since independence. It is quite entrenched, and the anticipated election of a new prime minister on May 8 will start a clock ticking for that new prime minister (Nikol Pashinyan, I assume) to clean up the house. I hope Armenia has the stamina for that cleanup to come about.

            Maria and I have our own small “infestation” battle we are waging. It is against the residents of our newly-refurbished apartment who have not heeded our memorandums that they are not welcome here. I’m talking about the ants. The little, almost invisible ants. The ones that we encounter on a regular basis. Under the countertop edges. Across the microwave. In the corner of the shower. Around Maria’s desk. On my leg. They’re ubiquitous. We have been told that it’s a seasonal problem, or that they’ll go away if everything is clean, or that this or that insecticide will stop them… but nothing has. I figure that our extermination efforts are probably poisoning us more than them. Having written this, I’m expecting an onslaught of advice, telling us what we should be doing, or what we aren’t doing. Thanks to all in advance.

Beirut International Jazz Day 2018 – the Zela Margossian
Quintet from Australia, featuring the still-amazing talent of one
of my former students from when I was pastor at the Ashrafieh
church and school (29 Apr. 2018 – Downtown Beirut)

            Yesterday we were in KCHAG planting trees. The 50 juvenile umbrella pine saplings were bought at a discount from a nursery in the south. Over 50 youth from all our churches, along with a couple dozen “mature” types, came together for this project. During our opening worship time and orientation session I got to talk a bit about how God has appointed us stewards of the land. And then we set off to the task. Enthusiasm has no age limit, so everyone got into the act. Children and youth were driven by the excitement of doing actual labor in their own campground.  The older generation was driven by the faith heritage they had experienced there, and the tangible evidence they were witnessing of it being passed along to the next generation.

            But it was the result of an infestation.

Young and old, Kessabtsi and not, joining in the fun of
tree planting at KCHAG. Note the brown, diseased pine
tree at the top of the photo (5 May 2018 – Monteverde)

            All across the region a small worm, the “pine processionary moth” larva (known here in Arabic as “doudet as-sandal) has been quietly attacking these pines, which produce not just shade and oxygen and beauty, but also the pine nuts so important to local cuisine. As you scan the horizon from KCHAG, you can see the brown tops of trees that have been infested, hundreds of them, and you know that the trees right next to them will be the next to go. This worm is not new, but its threat is at an unprecedented level. Why are they such a threat?

            Specialists say that there are two reasons, one an easy remedy, one not. The one that is not is climate change. It’s warmer here, and what used to be killed off by colder temperatures is not being eradicated. KCHAG, being below 800 meters above sea level, stays on the mild side, summer or winter. So, putting aside the important work of combating human contribution to climate change, that’s out of our hands on a local level.

LebCat 14: Excuse me. Is there some legitimate reason why you
stopped petting me? (15 Apr. 2017 – Ras Beirut)

            The “easy” remedy, the locally-based one, is actually quite difficult. This worm has a natural predator, the cuckoo bird. It loves this worm. And its flesh is inedible because it eats these bitter larvae. However, it is a bird, and in Lebanon there are hunters with rifles. Hunting is a “sport” here, one that has caused a decrease in the migratory bird population, and has heavily impacted the local ecosystem. And here in Lebanon, the hunters’ motto is, “If it flies, it dies.” If this bird were allowed to propagate, the worm infestation would be under control. So instead the KCHAG committee, with the guidance of experts, is compelled to cut down diseased trees, haul the wood away and burn it, and use a chemical spray to save the lightly affected trees.

            And also to plant new ones. Because despite all of the types of “infestation” in society and nature, there is life, and a future, and hope (Jer. 29.11-12), as long as we trust in God. [LNB]