I, the Woman

On Friday, I picked up a couple of journals from the library at the Lutheran Church in Malaysia headquarters. I was delighted to find some called In God's Image: Journal of Asian Women's Resource Centre for Culture and Theology. I immediately took the latest three journals they had (2000, 2001, and 2002). Disappointed they had apparently stopped ordering the journals or they stopped printing them, I flipped through them, savoring the black and white picture of women in "tribal clothing" and headlines such as "Laws Regarding Women's Sexuality in India." I had found my reading for the month.

In the December 2000 journal, I found this poem by J Jonmoni D Shira. She is a Garo woman of what is now Meghalaya, India and wrote this poem in 1940. They call themselves A-chik Mande, literally "hill people" and are one of the few remaining matrilineal societies in the world. The poem was translated from Garo by Caroline R Mark. Nothing else is said about the author in the journal.

A Garo tribal couple in traditional dress.

I did a quick Google search to see if this poem is well known or published online and found nothing. I think J Jonmoni D Shira's voice deserves to be heard.


I have been born a woman
To bear all kinds of difficulties,
Though I lament my misfortune
I cannot alter it.

Poor Eve committed sin
Before the world;
Bringing heavier burdens and worries
Upon the woman.

From birth, her strength is less
Her face is lovelier,
But I am taught
To be under male domination.

From tender age
I have to live under the control of man,
At the slap of my younger brother
I weep loudly.

I cannot act as I please,
There's not a day of happiness for me
I cannot dream of
Even proposing to travel.

I know and understand
The truth,
The bad and the good, the consequences
And the subject matter.

Yes I cannot
So much as open my mouth
Due to the words,
'Silence, you stupid woman!'

To sit in the dumping place of chaff,
To eat the leftovers, is my lot;
I get ridicule from my fellow human beings
Because of my lowliness.

Though I fall in love
With an eligible young man,
I have been forcibly made to give my consent
To one whom I dislike.

When I fall in love with a young man
I get into trouble,
For a trifling error
They jilt me.

O Young Man, beware,
Deeds do not simply vanish,
Some time, you too,
May fall into a night of sorrow.

Now I am a married woman,
My difficulties have multiplied;
It is now my duty
To suffer agony in bearing children.

For a slight mistake
I am slapped;
The crying child
Keeps me awake at night.

My husband knows not
My hardship and pain,
I succumb
To more diseases.

In the small hours of the morning
I get up and cook,
I spend the whole day
In the field.

I return home carrying a heavy load
And then I work at home,
Though it is very late at night I cannot rest,
For I have to husk rice.

Out of exhaustion my body becomes thin,
I am no more attractive,
It occurs to my husband
To look for someone else.

Nevertheless, my mind
Has pure thoughts,
Though my husband does me wrong
I bear it patiently.

Souls do not keep silent,
You shall not remain superior,
As a reward for your deeds
You will not escape from hell.

You, man, therefore,
Beware,
You must surely look into
The grievances of women.

If my word is wrong,
Refute it,
If you yourself are at fault
Repent now.

Hazed and Confused

The haze is getting to us.

Our morning routine typically consists of hauling ourselves out of bed around 10am (it's a rough life), grabbing a few water bottles out of the kitchen, and remarking about the weather.

"The haze looks like it lifted."
"Probably because of the rain."

"The haze is back again."
"Let's not leave the house today."

We have to go into the open-air hallway to get to the kitchen, so the weather kind of slaps us in the face as soon as we break the subpar seal of our air conditioned sanctuary of a bedroom.

We heard it was going to be bad this year. Actually, we heard that it was already bad this year. But we hadn't really noticed. Until recently.  There's a fun building we can usually see on our way to breakfast or the gym every morning. It looks like something out of Sim City and I enjoy imagining someone on their desktop computer controlling everything about Petaling Jaya and Kuala Lumpur - trading resources and building parks.  But lately we haven't been able to see the building from where we live. The haze has gotten much too terrible.

It is blowing in from Indonesia, where peat fields are burning for no real reason.  The burning and subsequent haze is even worse during dry years in Southeast Asia. This is not only harmful for the people living in haze areas (you know, me and the rest of the hundreds of millions of people here), but it is also harmful to the ozone layer. According to a report on Nature.com, "estimated carbon emissions from these 1997-98 fires were... equivalent to 13-40% of annual global fossil fuel emissions at that time."  And it's not getting any better. According to the same report, "in 2013... fires in Indonesia generated atmospheric pollution that exceeded the previous 1997-98 records over Singapore."

How is this happening, you might ask. Good question. It looks like (similar to most bad, harmful things in this world) big corporations and plantations are to blame. Peat bogs are sometimes drained in order to make room for farming and under the right (dry) circumstances, peat will burn indefinitely. Some peat fires have been burning in Indonesia since 1997. See the pretty map below.

Smoke and pollution from Indonesian fires, 1997.

Now I don't know if any of you have lived in a country with this much pollution on top of this much smoke haze, but I might be able to paint a good picture for you.

Below you will see the area where most of my readers live: Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.  While there are some places with abnormally high air quality indexes (probably because of factories), most areas hover around the 20s or 30s.  Even large cities don't have terrible ratings (around 50).

Now this picture shows where I'm living in Malaysia. This is updated from yesterday, one of the worst days we have had with haze since we have gotten here. All the numbers are above 100. Which is exactly why my eyes are burning while writing this post in an outdoor cafe. 

Curious about air quality in other places? Click here.

So let's just say the haze is getting to us. Between the phlegm, burning eyes, heavy chest, and coughing - we are about done with the dry season. The good news is that at least Indonesia has apologized for it...

What I wanted to say to Kim Davis

Everyone has some opinion about Kim Davis, the county clerk who was jailed for contempt this past week after refusing to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples. 

As a political scientist, I love a good example of civil disobedience. I love American freedoms. Especially now that I'm removed from those freedoms for a year. I particularly love American religious freedoms because they are so vital to equality and equity in this country. 

I don't think people should just blindly follow laws, simply because they are laws. If we did that, the civil rights movement would have never happened. If we blindly followed laws, there would never be change in our society. 

So as a political scientist, there are a few things I wanted to say to Kim Davis as soon as I heard she was arrested. 

I wanted to say, "Yeah girl! Do your thing! Civil disobedience!" 

I wanted to say, "Stay in that jail! Prove your point!" 

I wanted to say, "Good for you! I envy your courage and conviction. Many people would give in after a night in jail." 

I wanted to say, "I'm proud of you for being so committed to your own faith, even if it is different from mine." 

But I cannot, in good conscious, say those things. Because "political scientist" is not the first or most important part of my identity. I am a political scientist. I am an American. I am a supporter of religious freedoms, as many of my fellow Americans are. 

But first and foremost I am a follower of Christ. 

And as a Christian, I can certainly support civil disobedience. I can even support someone who blatantly, purposely breaks the law because her convictions tell her to. 

But I can only support these things if they are for the good of the community. I can only support civil disobedience if it brings about reconciliation, if it brings about shalom. I can only understand and support breaking the law if it brings about the Kingdom of God. (If you need an example of what this looks like, see the Gospel, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Shane Claiborne.) 

What Kim Davis is doing is not bringing about shalom in this world that so desperately needs it. What Kim Davis is trying to prove is not meant to bring reconciliation. What Kim Davis is doing is denying rights to people who legally (and naturally) deserve equal rights in our world. 

Imagine a different scenario: a young non-white American comes into the clerk's office to get a building permit for his house. The clerk declares that his religion (whatever religion it may be) tells him that non-whites cannot own land or build on land and refuses to issue the building permit. This clerk is arrested for contempt. 

Imagine a different scenario: a woman comes into the clerk's office and asks to have the county clerk serve as a notary public to notarize her divorce papers.  The clerk declares that according to her religion, divorce is a sin and she refuses to do her duty as a notary public. This clerk is arrested for contempt. 

We cannot let people pick and choose which laws to obey according to their "convictions" - religious or otherwise. Why, you ask? Isn't this violating First Amendment rights, you ask? 

Imagine a different scenario: a man declares that his religion states that all women should be killed. He then begins murdering every woman he encounters. If we abide by such logic as many conservative Christians who are crying out "a violation of First Amendment rights," we would allow this man to continue murdering simply because it is his "religious conviction."  

I support demonstrating our religious freedoms. 

I support civil disobedience. 

I even support criminals in some cases. 

But I cannot support someone who is divisive, discriminatory, and using her religion to harm others.  

We are called by God to not obey the laws of this world. So I am not saying that Kim Davis should obey the law simply because it is a law. There is a time and a place to rise up against the laws of this land (see Jim Crow laws or look up the women's rights movement).  But this is not one of those times. This time, the law is (surprisingly) in line with the Gospel. 

And it is our vocation as Christians is to declare the Gospel - the reconciliatory, wholeness-creating, community-centered, relationship-based, healing Gospel of Christ Jesus to the world. 

Prepaid Cell Phones & Grace

Ephesians 2:18-22

For through [Jesus] we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

These two verses have been showing up on my Facebook newsfeed a lot lately.  Typically the posts are directed toward conservative immigration reform, but I've been (thankfully) disconnected from American politics for about two weeks now so I have been considering these verses in a different light. 

I am humbled and amazed by the hospitality of the people here in Malaysia.  We have been invited to so many dinners, lunches, and other gatherings over the last two weeks.  People we barely know have picked us up to take us to church and Bible study.  There have been various parishioners who have gracefully corrected our ways of eating traditional meals and were gracious when foods were too spicy for us to endure.  

Even strangers have been incredibly helpful and welcoming to us. One particular story from the past week comes to mind.

We received cell phones from my supervisor when we arrived in Malaysia with the instructions to "fill them up," meaning we need to put more minutes on the prepaid cell card. Totally oblivious about how to do this, we Googled it, hoping we would be able to do virtually everything online for the first few days in-country.  Unfortunately, we weren't able to do anything with our phones online but discovered that we could go to any 7/11 and reload our phones.  

So we went. 

And as if we don't stand out enough as foreigners, we are also probably the only people in the country who don't know how to reload our phones.  So the sweet woman behind the counter refrained from laughing at us, took our money, and handed us the receipt. 

And we looked at her blankly. "So, it's reloaded?" I asked. She pointed to the receipt in my hand and I noticed the long code number printed there. "Umm..." I had no idea what I was supposed to do. 

"I will do it," she helpfully replied.  I handed the phone back over with the receipt and she entered the number, showing me how to reload my phone with minutes.  

Then it was Daniel's turn. For one reason or another, Daniel's code wouldn't go through. It kept directing him to customer service.  So we stood in the 7/11 and tried over and over again. Finally, we went back to the woman behind the counter and asked her to help us.  

The poor woman called customer service, called her manager, re-entered the code, called her manager again, and called customer service again. She was dead set on helping us poor Americans figure out this phone problem. Unfortunately, nothing worked. You could tell that she was just as defeated as we were when we asked for a refund. 

I won't forget that woman. Not because we now know how to reload minutes on our cell phones, but because she was so helpful and so gracious to a completely lost couple in a new place.  She didn't have to stand there for fifteen to twenty minutes trying to solve a problem that wasn't her own.  But she did.  And it made me feel a little bit at home, as if we weren't such silly outsiders in this country.  I don't know why she was so gracious so us, but I am so thankful that she was.