Supporter: Greg Tuke

“What should I wear if I do not have a long, loose dress? haha…that may sound trivial but I want to be respectful. Do you get my question?”

Now I generally do not wear dresses, but when I got her text message this morning, I did understand all too well her question. Molly, a 17-year-old student and leader in Mercy Corps’ Global Citizen Corps, is getting ready to lead more than a dozen other students from her high school to a press conference and tour of a mosque in Seattle today.

Global Citizen Corps leader Molly Mus at mosque. Photo: Greg Tuke/Mercy Corps

It’s September 11th, a day of remembrance, and one in which Molly and her group want to recognize as a day to build bridges to understanding as an antidote to fear and distrust.

I understand because earlier this month I faced a similar dilemma.

I had been invited by Charlene Teters, a high school classmate, to come to her annual Pow Wow for her tribe — the Spokane Indians. I had connected with her at our 40th year class reunion last month. We didn’t know each other well in high school, but I did remember her brother, George, quite well as the guy who beat me with uncompromising regularity in competitive wrestling throughout high school!

At the reunion, I learned that over the years Charlene had become a nationally prominent activist, leading to major policy changes so that today many sports teams no longer use Indians as mascots for their teams.

As I got ready that morning to pack and go to the Pow Wow I realized I had nothing to wear that would work.

I pulled out my one clean white t-shirt, with a Seattle Mariners emblem on the back (that seemed OK) but the logo on the front was of Alaska Airlines, with a Native face. I grabbed another t-shirt I had gotten at the Grand Canyon some years ago, and then noticed the image of Kokopelli, a fertility deity worshipped by some Native American tribes in the Southwest. Not OK?

My high-school classmate Charlene Teters introduces her granddaughter to her first powwow, the Spokane Indians powwow in Wellpinit, Wash. on Sept 4. Photo: Greg Tuke/Mercy Corps

I grew up in Spokane, a western town of sorts, so decided to grab my leather belt and leather hat I had gotten in Peru a few years back. Both handmade. And both etched with what some believe to be religious animal symbols, called the Nazca Lines, from the ancient time of the Incas. Another commercial exploitation of Native culture?

My last option was to go a little fancier, and pull out my best western-looking shirt, a black, decorative Cowboy shirt. Eek! Now that would be a real poke in the eye.

We really know so little about each other. Maybe none of this would be offensive, I really don’t know. And I didn’t fully know what to expect at the Pow Wow or, for that matter, what we will see when we go to the mosque today. I have traveled to 26 countries so far in my life, a good number of them in the Middle East, and in all that time, I don’t think I have ever stepped foot in a mosque.

What one wears, or uses for a mascot, or burns, or makes a cartoon about or builds near; these things can seem trivial to some, but to others are critically important. We don't really know why it is important unless we all learn a heck of a lot more about each other. And come to understand what we mean with our actions. For that, we need to step into each others' worlds.

Today is a day to take one more small step. Time to get ready.

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Lebanese men pass their citizenship on to their children. Lebanese women, by law in Lebanon, cannot — unless they are married to a Lebanese man.

I recently learned of this disturbing law. And I immediately wondered how can this be in this day and age? How did it become law in Lebanon some 85 years ago and still hold till this day? What does the man or woman in the street in Lebanon think of this?

Until recently, it was nearly impossible to find out directly the answer to such a question from a Lebanese native, unless they spoke English. Or unless I learned some Arabic real quick.

Sure, there are automatic translations that Google and others can do, but they're pretty lame. It’s like when I travel with my basic Spanish and go to a Guatemala: I can ask directions, find a place to eat and say "hello" just fine, but don’t ask me to explain why I don’t believe in capital punishment to a local. Things really get lost in the translation.

But today, thanks to a new website called Meedan, all that has changed. Whether you write in English or Arabic, what you say gets translated into the other language automatically, a human translator reviews it and refines it, and posts the new and improved translation.

As a result, I found out that lots of people care about this Lebanese nationality law, and in fact pressure has been applied to Parliament recently by many young people there. And now it may be on the verge of changing.

I also found out that the reason for the law is far more than simple discrimination. It relates to past wars — specifically, who lives in the country now and who lives elsewhere as a result. It relates to ethnic and religious reasons.

It is, in a word, complex. Still unfair, I concluded, but now after having written and discussed the issue with numerous Arab-language young people, I understand much better the dynamics of the law. And young people in Lebanon, as a result of the on-line conversations with others around the world, now understand strategies and tactics used elsewhere to change similar kinds of laws.

Last month, our first Global Citizen Corps International Youth Festival brought together 16 young leaders from Jordan, Lebanon, the U.S. and the UK together in Edinburgh for work on peace and conflict resolution, social justice and diversity. Photo: Greg Tuke/Mercy Corps

It would be a human tragedy if we all just spoke one language. Just as it would be a tragedy if our forests only grew one kind of plant. But by being able to communicate accurately across our various languages is a huge step, as noted in a recent article in The Christian Science Monitor.

Nothing will ever surpass the power of meeting face to face to cultivate understanding across cultures. And if our language is different, nothing beats having someone right there who can translate what we are saying to each other. Last month, we did just that when we brought young leaders from Jordan, Lebanon, the U.S. and the UK together in Edinburgh for our first Global Citizen Corps International Youth Festival.

It was great, but it was just 16 youth. How do we do this in a way that affects thousands, even millions? This creates one of the key paths.

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Photo: Greg Tuke/Mercy Corps

“If you visit American city
You will find it very pretty
Just two things of which you must beware,
Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air.”

I first heard this song by Tom Lehrer 30 years ago. Sometimes I think we have made great progress since then. Sometimes I do not. Recently, I was torn between these two feelings in the space of an hour.

I headed out to Silverdale, Washington last week to see what a local Global Citizen Corps (GCC) group was up to on this cold Sunday morning. I heard they were doing something about clean water and climate change, and I had a gift to bring them from their counterparts in Iraq.

As I waited in a lovely waterfront park, I gazed out to the windy sea and saw some surprising signage. Tom Lehrer’s song immediately revved up in my head. Just moments later, the song was interrupted and replaced by a loud and enthusiastic chanting coming from a crowd of 40 youth marching down the street.

They were marching the two miles from Island Lake to Puget Sound — from one polluted water hole to another — calling attention to World Water Day, as well as their efforts to raise money for purchasing incredibly low-cost water filters for families in Ethiopia. They ended their march on top of a giant map of the world next to the sea, and stood in solidarity next to the eight countries where other GCC leaders were taking similar actions this week.

Photo: Mercy Corps Iraq

These young leaders all knew that, if we do want to drink the water and breathe the air, it is going to take all of us across the globe — working together — to make it happen.

I offered them two gifts as we stood there on top of the world: a commemorative tea plate Iraqi youth asked me to bring to U.S. youth leaders, and news that the Iraqi GCC leaders had just planted 1,300 trees and organised 2,000 people to call attention to climate change.

I left the park a little chilled, but at least Tom Lehrer’s song was no longer rattling around in my head.

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The biggest issue that regularly confounds me each time I vote here in Seattle is finding a postage stamp. Despite this, I have become a strong believer in the mail-in ballot, mostly because I don't have to haul myself to the polls at seven o'clock in the morning before I head off to work.

Kardo, a member of Mercy Corps' Global Citizen Corps, shows his ink-stained finger from voting in Iraq's recent elections. Photo: Mohammed Abdul Ameer/Mercy Corps

But, as I learned this week, voting in Iraq presents other challenges. I was talking yesterday on video Skype with my colleague Mohammed, a Mercy Corps staffer for the Global Citizen Corps programme, about the recent Iraqi elections and wondering how it had gone.

"Oh, it's gone quite well, very safe, only a few very small bombs went off," he told me.

Now I don't know about you, but I have a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea of safe "small bombs." More than 100 people were killed in these latest elections in Iraq. So to me, it is a pretty big act of faith to march down to the polls there, dip your finger in ink and make your views known through the power of the ballot box.

But many, like Mercy Corps' Global Citizen Corps member Kardo (pictured here) did. This desire we have to vote, to help shape the way we are governed — well, it is very strong, it seems. And while I would hope I would do the same if I were in Kardo's shoes, I doubt I will ever get to the point of thinking of any bomb as "small."

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Every morning I wake up, grab a cup of hot tea, then read a newspaper filled with stories about some of the worst of what we as humans do. And then I get to spend my workday hearing about some of the best.

When I tell people where I work, the most common response is “Wow, how great of you that you are doing such wonderful humanitarian work!” But the truth is, this does not feel like some noble sacrifice or burden. It is a blast. Nearly every day something happens that deeply inspires me — and yesterday was no exception.

Ahmed Abed, a taxi driver in Iraq, inspired our staff by refusing payment for driving Iraqi youth to a blood bank to donate blood for bomb survivors. Photo: Mercy Corps Iraq

When I'm not traveling in the Middle East to meet with the youth leaders Mercy Corps is working with, I sit in our small Seattle office and talk away on my computer with youth and staff we work with around the world. Yesterday, a little kid — no more than eight years old — walked into our office with his mum, unannounced, and told us he just raised £1,500 to help kids in Haiti. Not only that, but he wants to know how he can help more.

Like I said, deeply inspiring.

And just his morning, I received a photo of Ahmed Abed, an Iraqi taxi driver who recently refused to accept two days of wages for driving dozens of youth leaders we work with in Iraq to a blood bank in Wassit, Iraq, so they could give blood for the first time. “I want to participate in this humanitarian campaign and this is the one thing I can give to help the people,” he said.

Because we work in some of the toughest places around the world, we run into unusual problems daily. Today Mohammed, a local Iraqi staffer, told us that he likely will not be able to travel to Scotland for our first international youth summit next month (where youth from the Middle East, United States and United Kingdom will gather) because he can’t get into Baghdad safely to get a visa. They just had their fourth terrorist attack in Baghdad this week, killing dozens more earlier this week.

Instead, we will plan today how we will do a live video conference between the youth in Iraq and the youth that will travel to Scotland next month. Violence might keep Mohammed from traveling to the summit, but it can’t keep the summit from traveling to Mohammed and the youth leaders in Iraq!

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