Right this minute I’m on a flight over the Atlantic. And someone on that flight is probably farting.
I recently test-drove a pair of anti-flatulence underwear on a flight out West and wrote about the experience. The piece hasn’t been published yet (where do you pitch such works of art), but I decided to read it during a recent appearance at West Texas A&M.
Here’s what I’ll be doing over the next 6 weeks. I hope you’ll follow along here, at the Nothing Personal blog, the Nothing Personal YouTube Channel, on twitter @kelseytimmerman, and @0_Personal.
I’ll keep blogging if you keep reading!
I’m not jazzed for the World Cup, I’m much too wrapped up in American sports in which players are allowed to use their hands, but this commercial on ESPN is awesome.
Take it Bono!
There was a fish between the moon and me.
Pausing right there in the center of the silver ring. It was a parrotfish eclipse. That or a signal to the crime-stopping Parrotfish Man.
I floated 20-feet beneath the surface just off the sea floor, as if in space. A bubble of air escaping from my mask, rising like a shooting star.
Inside my lungs, a gulp of salty air. Outside, the Atlantic Ocean. I held my breath. I breathed in the sight.
The night was a gift. The surface of the water, indiscernible from beneath, didn’t even have a ripple, allowing the moon and the stars to appear as untouched as if I were on the surface.
Minutes passed, but were forever captured.
I’m not sure how many times the Earth had rotated around its axis since the first of the year. But it was Earth Day. Well, not an actual day, but a moment, a moment unique to Earth.
There was life-giving gas in my lungs, an embryonic ocean surrounding me. A universe that stretched light years in which any closer or farther from the slowly rotating planets and stars, the moment would not be possible.
I shared the moment with a parrotfish. It swam from the moon leaving a galaxy of sandy poop. I broke the surface and took a breath.
Because on Earth that’s what we do.
After sitting next to an anti-Socialist socialist of Hungarian descent who was worried our country was slipping toward torture chambers on a flight the other day, I was reminded of an old column I wrote about visiting a torture chamber in Budapest.
I thought I’d share it. It’s kind of a like a Scooby-Doo episode without the dog, chase scenes, leaning towers of sandwiches, and layers of masks. Okay it’s nothing like a Scooby episode. But I do get trapped in a bathroom and the title is….
Trapped in the House of Terror
It’s a rainy day in Budapest.
The capital of Hungary is renowned for its cosmopolitan atmosphere and its romantic feel. The city “straddles a gentle curve in the Danube” that divides the hills on the western bank from the plains that spread out on the eastern. At least this is how Budapest is supposed to look, so says the black and white pages of my guidebook. I am too busy wallowing in self-pity to notice “leafy boulevards,” “architectural gems,” and “gentle rivers.”
There’s a Museum – Who cares? Here’s an Opera House- Big Whoop!
Rain thumps against the hood of my coat pounding out a depressing rhythm. Cars race past searching for mud puddles to splash through and onto me. Moisture slowly climbs up my pants from cuff to knee.
I spent the last month zipping through Eastern Europe. I am tired, hungry, but most of all, alone. I look with longing into bustling restaurants with backslapping patrons and at pairs of tourists meandering about, pointing with excitement at things of interest.
I am walking down the “leafy boulevard” by the name of Andrassy ut, counting cracks and studying their form. I miss my electric tooth brush, running shoes, Charmin toilet paper, David Letterman, home cooked meals, and the list goes on.
It starts to rain harder and I duck into a building with large banners on the outside proclaiming it to be the “House of Terror.” It’s an escape from the wet, but not the drear.
The “House of Terror” acted as the headquarters for the secret police of the Nazis around WWII and later the secret police of the Communist Party. Converted to a museum, it highlights the mistreatment and execution of Hungarian Jews and non-communists.
The upper floors house flashy videos and oppressive background music, black and white photos of helpless victims, defaced religious artifacts, and even a Russian tank in the atrium. But it is the basement where the terror really hits home.
The Nazis used the basement as a prison and to carry out executions via a frightening chair rigged with pulleys, ropes, and sharp objects, too sadistic for comprehension. When the Communists took over they turned the holding cells into torture chambers. There were rooms designated for the usual beatings and electrical shockings, but some were far more disturbing - strange sorts of deprivation rooms. All were dark, damp, concrete, and toilet-less. One is three-feet tall preventing its occupant from standing, its evil opposite was two stories tall but otherwise of coffin dimensions. Its victim would be unable to sit or lie down.
Fortunately patrons of the “House of Terror” have the luxury of plumbing and I seek out the bathroom. I enter the clean white, almost happy room, with thoughts of what it would be like to be trapped in a small space, living in your own excrement. The lack of hygiene alone could kill a man. I wash my hands and turn to exit. But wait…The door won’t open. I realize that the mechanism inside the door is worn out as I helplessly turn the knob 360 degrees.
I catch my reflection in the mirror - he looks panicked. In disbelief I try the door again - nothing. I’m trapped in the House of Terror!
The bathroom is just off a hallway in the middle of the exhibit and I can hear people shuffling outside. I meekly knock on the door. As I wrap harder, humiliation and panic grow.
Ten years from now: “Now class if you’ll notice the bathroom to your left - an American tourist was trapped in there for over two years. Visitors to the museum during this time dismissed his moans, cries for help, and incessant pounding on the walls, as part of the exhibit. Amazingly, the man survived on urinal cakes and an assortment of hand soaps. He later died of gingivitis.”
The door is pulled open and I look down into the face of a small dark cleaning lady, broom in hand. She looks at me with disbelief. A class of school children is herded along the opposite wall by their teachers, as far as possible from the strange tourist who can’t find his way out of the bathroom.
I wildly pantomime the failure of the door knob. The schoolchildren laugh and point and the cleaning lady shakes her head in disapproval. Humiliated, broken, and defeated, I head towards the exit.
The last room of the exhibit is filled with thousands of tiny lights - one for each victim of the House of Terror. The longings for my electric toothbrush, running shoes, and Charmin toilet paper fade.
Stepping back onto the street, it is still raining.
It’s a rainy day in Budapest. It could be worse.
Home is where your heart is.
Home is where your story begins.
Home is where you are enslaved to your cat, poopy diapers, and lawn mowing.
Home is a lot of things. Even the ones that don’t exactly fall under the “awesome” category are missed when you aren’t home.
I’m leaving my home in a few days. Next Tuesday I’ll be in Nairobi, Kenya. I’ll be sure to continue the “$10 for Tuesday Project” there. I expect I’ll find some very interesting and worthy causes and people to support during the following 6 weeks, which will lead me from Kenya to Ethiopia, Uganda, and Ireland.
I’m giving my $10 this Tuesday to Muncie Habitat for Humanity because they physically build homes for folks to house all of their emotional treasures. I hope you’ll consider supporting your local Habitat for Humanity too.
-
Way back in 2003 when my home was just outside Raleigh, North Carolina, I wrote an essay about home. Here it is…
//HOME//
What do I miss most when I travel?
Sneakers, blue jeans, and basketball shorts. Come to think of it any item of clothing I don’t have to smell before I put it on. Doggy kisses. Phoned in sports updates from my father, fresh off of ESPN, free of charge. Pizza King. A regular schedule. Kicking my feet up in my own space, in my own recliner at the end of the day. Control of the TV remote. Having a phone. Sitting across a warm bowl of chips and a fresh cup of salsa at El Meson with a certain brown-eyed girl. Having someone to bitch to. Not being stared at. Brownies. The stack of books beside my bed. Fed-EXed cookies from Mom. Kitty stares. My truck and the ability to go where I want, when I want. Brotherly rants via witty e-mails, which are actually not that witty. Charmin toilet paper. My CD’s. DVD’s. NPR on FM. Knowing where I am. Not having to convert all currencies to dollars before making a purchase. Houseplants. My computer. Are you actually still reading this list? Flip-flops. Tick-tocks. Bling-bling. The library. Being alone. Not being alone. The smell of Home.
In order to travel you have to leave familiar people, things, building, smells, and sounds. You have to leave Home. Home is something different to everyone. Even a homeless man has a familiar way of life.
Why do I leave? To meet new people, experience new cultures, smell new smells, taste new tastes, and hear new sounds. Ever been on a trip and seen the sign: “If you lived here you’d be home.”? The imagination longingly turns. If I lived here that man would be my neighbor. This would be my favorite restaurant. In my free time I would go here and do this. When you leave your Home you’re exploring someone else’s.
Visiting a friend who is a fine wine and cheese kind of guy, he asks me, “What’s your favorite cheese to eat with red wine?”
I turn the question over in my head searching for the perfect cheese or at least one that sounds like it: American, Swiss, French (is there French cheese or only dressing?), Colby, cheddar, smoked cheddar with bacon, Velveeta. “I don’t know? I’m just a simple small town Ohioan. I actually include Velveeta on my mental list of fine cheeses.”
“Oh now, don’t give me that. You’re well-traveled; surely you have a favorite cheese with red wine.”
He was right. I have spent a lot of time away from Home, but that doesn’t make me some kind of find food and wine connoisseur. Maybe I am well traveled, but I traveled poorly missing certain lessons along the way, too wrapped up in thoughts of Home to attain certain wisdoms.
When I travel I don’t attain some greater wisdom or some inner knowledge of who I am and what I want to be. I did not leave Switzerland with an aristocratic appreciation of cheese. An extensive vocabulary partitioned by —Types of cheese—- and what they go best with. To me it’s all Swiss cheese. It just so happens that some Swiss cheeses taste better than others. Between us, some are repulsive.
I am happy with being able to place names, faces, and experiences with certain places. Kosovo and Bosnia were always dark “No Man’s” lands dominated by the violence of warfare, until I played PlayStation with a 22 year old Kosovar, and before I discussed the siege of Sarajevo with a Bosniak over dinner. Hawaii would just be a tropical paradise if I hadn’t neared hypothermia at the summit of Mauna Loa. I would not follow the civil war in Nepal if I wasn’t able to remember the kind, smiling faces of individual Buddhist monks, the young street beggar girl who attacked me with a stick, and the smell and buttery warmth of salt tea.
If I have gained anything from my travels it’s not a well-traveled savviness, envied by others, but an increased caring. I care more about other nations and their people, having visited them. I listen to the news not for entertainment, but with concern. I care for them because I appreciate their differences, and most of all I recognize our similarities. It’s their Home I visit and realize how not so different it is from my own.
Before boarding the plane on my first trip with no definite return time, I was excited and nervous. A one-way ticket “outta here” is a thing to be excited and nervous about. Where will I be in a month? What will I be eating? Where will I sleep? What the hell am I doing? Who knows?
On the other end of things, stepping onto the last plane- the one Home- is always the best. Home, for me, never changes. Sure, buildings, faces, smells, and dogs, may come and go, but Home never changes. After all it’s where the heart is, no matter how far away.
Running through the sprinkler. The back porch. Reading the newspaper. Samurai Jack. Thick chocolate milk shakes. Everyone knows my name. Comfortable silences. Garfield. The alarm clock, much better than a watch’s. Memories and photographs. My basketball. Customer service…
The woman next to me works for FEMA. She is employed by the government but hates the direction our country is going. She has all the talking points down – Obamacare, cap and trade, socialist agendas. She’s proud of her Hungarian ancestry and worried that American dissenters will be shuffled off into death camps and torture chambers in the all to near future.
She tells me all of this as if I surely agree. As if I hadn’t contacted my congressmen encouraging them to pass healthcare reform. As if I thought Beck and Limbaugh were the greatest Patriots since Mel Gibson in the Patriot.
I nod, wondering if she could see disagreement on my face or how my eyes have glossed over. And then I go into self-defense mode. I do what everyone should do when confronted with this situation.
I started to ask about her life. I try to find some level of connection on a personal level because there definitely isn’t any to be had on a political level.
She was married for decades. Her husband wouldn’t allow her to have a job. She got a divorce. Her husband never thought she would make it on her own, but she got this job with FEMA and travels the country helping people cope with disasters. Whether in her professional or personal life she helps people. She relays stories of immigrants, single moms, and mascara-still-running widows. She talks about her passion of helping the poor. She quotes Mother Teresa. She criticizes the wealthy.
She kind of sounds like a “socialist” but I don’t point that out.
I rarely talk politics or religion, especially with strangers. I’m always amazed that people like this woman, who is in her 60s and ought to know better, do.
I do, however, talk people. I wish more of us could move beyond regurgitated talking points and strict ideologies and connect on the personal level.
This woman’s politics turned my stomach, but her story warmed my heart. When we deplaned, I could’ve given her a hug.
A week from now my bags will sit at the stair landing in my home, waiting to be thrown in the back seat of my car, lugged onto a plane, and tossed across my shoulder on African soil.
I’m not really excited. I never get excited to go anywhere but home or tropical beaches. I’m a mix of complex feelings. I know when I spend my first week in the slums of Nairobi with Life in Abundance the feelings will grow in complexity.
If I didn’t write about them, I would never make sense of the feelings. Writing helps me make sense of the world.
Last week an email was sent to the team members making the LIA documentary. In that email, Justin Narducci, Director of LIA, explored the complex feelings which the slums of Nairobi stir up in him. It’s a powerful piece of writing and he was kind enough to allow me to post it here in full.
/// Real and Raw ///
by Justin Narducci, Director of Life in Abundance
To be honest, it is easy to say that the poor will always be poor and there is nothing that can be done about it. This is especially true, if you see the tremendous needs that are present in Africa in light of and the tremendous amount of resources that have been poured into the continent over the last twenty years. At the very same time, this disposition also comforts those of us who are looking for a self-justifying way of not being involved with the plight of the poor, though few of us would probably admit to it.
Even me, as I walk the streets of Nairobi with my wife and children over the past few days, my gut reaction is indifference and apathy rather than compassion and grace. Naturally, I want to walk as fast as I can through these ‘uncomfortable’ alleyways with the implied purpose of ‘getting my family out of there as fast as possible’. ‘These streets are dangerous,’ I further reason, ‘these cars could easily hit and kill my toddlers’, or ‘these men could easily abduct my wife and do who knows what to her’ are the thoughts raging through my head. My body sweats, my heart pounds, my alertness seemingly suffocates any form of rationalization. This still happens to me and I have been working among the world’s poor for the past five years!
Whether you are someone who, from the comforts of our suburban lifestyle, have relegated poverty to a broad ‘issue that just cant be turned around’, or you are someone who feels threatened when encountering the poor in a personal way, I’m here to confess that I’m guilty of both of these feelings. Over the past few years, however, I have learned a very important lesson: the way that we feel is simply not reality.
This statement will resonate with anyone who has felt ‘fat in these pants’ when the reality is not such. Or, this same is true of the golfer who made a dramatic swing change that ‘feels so different’ but in reality looks exactly the same as it used to! Our feelings can be deceptive in light of reality. Our feelings can also lead us to reason with faulty logic.
Think back to the first paragraph. If the feeling is true in your mind, then of course, you would logically not give any of your time, energy, resources, or even prayers because the ‘system is broken’ or at least it feels like it is broken. In the second example, you would simply disengage from the actual people who suffer on a daily basis from a grind of poverty – relegating them to an issue rather than a mother and her child that have a name, a place, and story just like my kids, my wife, my parents.
Now, imagine walking into Kibera with one of our LIA staff who work in this, sub-sahara Africa’s second largest slum. Can you begin to smell the burning trash, the raw sewage, and the body odor? You walk further and begin to feel overwhelmed by the filth that these children live in, the filth that lives on them. Your heart races as you suspect the men looking at your bag to steal or pick-pocket from you. You press on and are ushered into a small ‘church’ where the community has gather to present to you they ways in which they are serving their neighbors. You, subversively, start to think about how much money you have in your wallet to give to them, but instead you just listen. Children and their single mothers begin to disarm you as you hear their stories.
Tabby is a mother of a child who is eight. Tabby is infected with HIV and was regularly beaten by her husband because of her ‘status’ (which he ironically gave to her because of his promisuity) until she took her child away from that man. Without the support of family because of her disease, Tabby is forced to find the least expensive rent possible, which happens to be in the slums of Nairobi.
Tabby doesn’t want your pity and she doesn’t even want your money. Tabby wants a job so that she can pay for her son to go to elementary school. She wants access to medicine that will help her feel better and prolong her life, because she knows that it is out there, but she simply doesn’t have access to the systems that provide this medicine. She really doesn’t even want to leave the slum; she just wants to be able to repair her dwelling so that the rains don’t flood the floor where they sleep, every time that it rains.
At LIA, we believe that persistent poverty is the global injustice of our day. We also believe that there is a new way of serving some of the world’s poorest people/communities in a way that is empowering. We know that equipping local churches to meet the needs of their neighbors in a sustainable fashion is an effective way of truly meeting the comprehensive needs of the poor.
In the very same breath, we realize that the reality that most of us exist in is not based on much more than unexamined feelings that we have. The purpose of this film project is to bring the ‘people behind the issues’ to reality in a way that changes the perception you may have about the poor or the way that you choose to interact with ‘them’, accordingly. These slums are gritty, dirty, nasty places where neither you nor I would want to raise our children.
At the very same time, in this darkness, powerful rays of light are emerging. Seeds of hope have been planted. Injustices are being confronted by passionate local believers. Tabby and an entire group of 50 women now have the ability to provide for their children. Their children are going to school and are learning. They are sleeping in dry dwellings, which prevent them from regular sickness and infection. And, Tabby is able to take medicines that have her feeling better than she has ever felt before, though still infected.
Tabby’s story needs to be told and our purpose is to join LIA in humility, to tell that story. This journey will not be fun, but it will be an experience that changes me forever. It does every time that we serve alongside Tabby and her friends. Thank you for your support in telling this story. It is important.
Why?
Because it’s Tuesday.
Because this dude drives a 1990 Ford Taurus and he owes on it! (My favorite shorts aren’t even that old!)
Because he works at Wal-Mart.
Because he wrote this letter:
Dear Kelsey, I believe it is a great ministry to others for you to give them $10. Money really does add up. If I could only find someone to give me $60,000 to pay off my loans that I’m stuck with now that college is over, that would be amazing! It’s a bummer I’m unable to use my degree as I have wished since the economy is low. I attended Bethany Bible College for five years in Sussex, New Brunswick, Canada. I’m originally from Michigan (which is the worst economy in the United States) and have been relocated to New Jersey where I did my internship. I’m currently working at Wal-mart which doesn’t give much pay, therefor I’m living with a family I stayed with during my internship. I have two separate loans to pay off including the cost of a car (1990 Ford Taurus! I pray to God is never breaks down, or I’m a goner), room and board and food. And money needed to take my Woman out! In due time I know things will look up, and it may not be for awhile, but I’ll get there somehow. Well there’s everything in a nutshell. Thought if I was to receive $10 from anyone, midas well give you something worth reading. I really would love to give money away to many people, help my family and friends get out of debt, help the homeless here and over seas. O joy what it would be!
God Bless You!
Sincerely,
Gary Woods, Jr
Gary also referred to the $10 4 Tuesday project as a ministry, which makes it seem to have a higher purpose and is good for my ego. That said, I just emailed Gary for his address. $10 will probably pay half of what he owes on his car!
I got a response and a free Aerobie out of this letter. So I thought I’d share it here.
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Dear Aerobie folks,
I’m a journalist and author of the book “Where Am I Wearing” and since 2001 I’ve been traveling the world writing about people near and far. There’s only one item that has been with me the entire time – my Aerobie Superdisc.
I don’t leave home without it.
My Superdisc is so much more than just a fun way to pass some time, including:
A de-adulter: Turns adults into kids in a matter of a few tosses.
A language decoder: Pull out your disc and language won’t matter. Laughs in Mandarin, Nepalese, Thai, Khmer, Spanish, French, etc. all sound the same.
A friend-maker: Throw the disc and run after it, trying your hardest to catch it before it hits the ground. This is impossible, but will win some sympathy from onlookers. Continue the game until you spot potential buddy material and “accidentally” throw the disc at their feet. If they take the bait, you got ‘em.
A plate: Flip it over and you got yourself a plate. Be sure to wash it before and after you use it. Air dry.
I’ve played in Kosovo. I taught the children of a remote village on the Mosquito Coast of Honduras how to play Ultimate Aerobie. And the Superdisc was front-and-center during one of the most powerful experiences of my life.
I was visiting the Phnom Penh (Cambodia) city dump. Burning trash spilled forth acrid smoke. Dump trucks backed up, dumped their loads, and adults jumped on the pile of fresh trash looking for recyclables. The adults earned $1 per day. They had moved from their villages when they heard about the “opportunity” to work at the dump. The dump was the closest thing to Hell on Earth I’ve ever seen.
Away from the trucks, on a plateau of trash, a group of kids picked through older trash. They earned 25-cents per day.
The sight and the smell were nauseating and tear wrenching. I could have puked. I could have cried. I fought the urge of both. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I marched up the plateau of trash to visit with the kids, reached into my bag, and pulled out my Aerobie Superdisc. For the next 30 minutes we laughed and played. They were the only laughs and smiles I saw the entire time at the dump.
It was a magical moment in which joy triumphed over suffering and desperation. I will never forget it. It wouldn’t have been possible without my Superdisc. Here are a few pictures from the experience.
Unlike other throwing discs, the Superdisc is so easy to throw that adults and kids that have never tossed a disc in their life do so with ease.
Thank you for making such a quality product.
This June I’ll be working in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, and I’ll be taking my Superdisc (and perhaps a few extra to leave behind) with me. You can bet that more than a few impromptu games will be had courtesy of my well-used Superdisc.
Kelsey Timmerman
hi@kelseytimmerman.com 
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