Best Laid Plans

This post isn't about reminiscing.

Three years ago almost to the day, I ventured with my dear friend Sári on an overnight train in sleeper class to Jammu in Northern India. The train was followed by an approximately 12 hour journey in the cramped rear seats of a jeep along the winding road through the western Himalayas to Srinagar, Kashmir. Misty, magical Srinagar, where we stayed with Ferooz and his gorgeous family on their modest flower farm, holding baskets of hot coals under our traditional cloaks to keep warm in the chilly April air, taking jerrycans full of hot water to keep our beds toasty, wandering through manicured, Mughal-era gardens and playing with the sassy toddler and red-cheeked newborn in the house. 

In the fall of 2014, severe floods affected large portions of Jammu and Kashmir, and Ferooz and his family's home and farm fell victim.

The sign on the left is for the family farm.
The water covers what is usually a busy road.

Across the street. These planters are about five feet tall. 

The lakeshore is normally 10+ feet to the left of the planters.

The family home

The green tarp hangs over the flooded greenhouse

According to Oxfam, over half a million people throughout Jammu and Kashmir were displaced by these floods, which were reported to be the worst in over 100 years. Roads that usually swarmed with traffic and bustle were now traversed using traditional shikaras, the long boats propelled by hand with small heart-shaped paddles normally used to shuttle tourists and traded goods across Dal Lake. "Yep," Ferooz said, when I asked him how his family had fared in the flood. "Too much water." After completing "some repairs," Ferooz and his family returned to their home where they began to rebuild the contents of their nursery from scratch in order to restore the family's primary source of income. 

But this post isn't about a flood. 

After a painless thirty minute flight from Kashmir to Delhi, Sári attended a wedding in Patna and I spent the next three months traversing Southeast Asia and Australia on my own and with spontaneous, wonderful companions. By October, I had begun my Master's degree in Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies at King's College London, living in student housing and spending the same amount of money for a beer as I would have on a week's worth of groceries in India. I hoped that this degree would allow me access to the field of peacebuilding and conflict resolution that I had envisioned being a part of for so long. My professors were knowledgeable and (mostly) engaging and my classmates hailed from all over the world. They provided unique insights and experiences to create a rich basis for discussion of some of the most pressing issues of our time. 

But arguably the most important lesson I learned in this Master's program had nothing to do with the ins and outs of Track I diplomacy. Maybe the lesson I most needed to learn was that a job that does not involve working with children for most of the day will not work for me.

Fast forward to January 2016, when, after applying to dozens of jobs and experiencing a mounting sense of disappointment and rejection, I was hired for the position of Youth Facilitator at a charter school in Oakland that had been recently founded. I was told that my primary responsibilities in this position would involve leading exercises to nurture teamwork, build trust and educate students to effectively and nonviolently manage conflict. Yet the school's major structural, administrative and academic failings precluded my ability to do meaningful long-term work with the kids. Within the first week, it was clear to me that I had been hired to do a job that did not exist; I had been warmly invited onto a sinking ship and then left to bail myself out with little or no support. Two months after I had been hired, I was laid off when the administration chose/was forced to discontinue the sixth grade and send the students to other schools. (There are many more details to this story which are irrelevant to this discussion of my current plans and whereabouts.)

As luck would have it, my roommate/landlord informed me a month ago that I would have to move out, as the house's faulty foundation had possibly led to mold inside the walls of my room. And so I find myself back where I started a few months ago, without a place of my own or a job to speak of. Last fall, however, I did create a Plan B, taking exams and applying to teaching programs. I was accepted to UC Berkeley's Developmental Teacher Education Program, through which I will obtain a Master's in education and a K-8 Multiple Subjects teaching credential. My hope is that working as a teacher will allow me to work with children in an extended and meaningful way, and will eventually lead to a path that incorporates elements of peacebuilding and conflict resolution into educational systems. Or that's the dream, anyway. The program starts in June, which gives me about three months to make the most of before I become a student again (for hopefully the last time, though my mother has her eye on a PhD that I feel uninclined to pursue). 

And so we reach the reason for this post after such a long hiatus. I think the theme of my past year has been restarting, relearning lessons I thought I had learned, repeating mistakes I swore I would never make again, and emerging with a whole new set of plans. Because you can cultivate a nursery full of seedlings and hybrid flowers in your own backyard, the safest place in the world to you, and then floods come and suddenly you find yourself sitting in a rowboat, peering into the second story window of your house. I played my cards right, went for a degree in something I thought would lead to what I wanted, completed a lengthy interview process for a fellowship that was offered and then rescinded, was rejected from jobs that I knew I could do with my eyes closed, and offered a job which made me doubt myself and my abilities in profound ways. And yet I find myself with an acceptance to graduate school, surrounded by some of the kindest and most supportive friends imaginable, trying to take deep breaths and feel calm, content and accepting of whatever comes my way.

That last part is easier said than done. My new plan is this: 

On Tuesday, April 5, I fly to New York where I will hang out with my family and other people I love, help my mom settle in to her sweet new digs, sort all my possessions, which have been in storage since I went to India four(!) years ago, and eat a bagel or twelve (before Passover, of course). 

On Sunday, April 24, I fly to London, from which I will travel via rideshare to Calais, France. Calais is the current site of one of Europe's largest and most notorious refugee camps. It is the main French port on the English Channel and has housed a camp, with varying degrees of state sanction, for refugees and asylum seekers since the late 1990s. I spend eight or nine days volunteering there with Help Refugees, a UK-based charity that  is working to distribute resources and provide basic services for the estimated three to six thousand refugees that are living in the current camp sprawl. I have requested to work in the kitchen and will be posting again soon with more information about the work being done and how you can support the humanitarian efforts there.

On May 4 or 5 I return to London, where I will enthusiastically and joyfully snuggle the future newborn of Neta and Rotem, whose delightful two-year-old nugget I had the pleasure of caring for after finishing my (first) Master's. Neta is due on April 19 and I'm going to hang out with them and other London people I love until May 15, when I fly back to the Bay Area to look for an apartment once and for all! Or until it gets moldy, I guess. Words cannot describe how excited I am to see Alma again, the baby I nannied for who is now a year older than when I saw her last, or how thrilled I am to hang out with a neonate. Did I mention I love babies?

Who knows how this plan will work out, but at least it exists! If you will be in New York, Calais or London when I am there, and you care enough about me to have read until this point, I would lovelovelove to see you. Cheers to the waiting period between floods!