Just the Beginning

This semester, I wrote a lot. Now that the semester is over, I would love to share my work and thoughts with you from the semester. This is one of the first pieces I wrote for my Modern Composition and Grammar class. I wrote it in response to the assignment: write a personal statement. I had just returned from a trip to Thailand and Malaysia and needed to process the stories I had lived and heard.
“A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end.” Part of my own story that cherish is that I have been the recipient of the stories of others. I strongly desire to understand other people’s stories and I want to help their stories be told from beginning to end.

Beginning. I was a junior in high school, and I needed to find a project for National History Day. I heard a podcast about German soldiers who were kept in POW camps across America doing local farm work during World War II. Middle. That fall, I sat at my kitchen table with a variety of local senior citizens with our cups of tea and a voice recorder, as I listened to their stories of growing up on the farm. They told me about how the enemy came to live among them and joined them in the fields to pick cherries and de-tassel the corn. This proximity replaced fear with safety, and I heard stories about bonding over a hard day’s work, friendships being built, and even some regrets. End. This was so much more than a history project for me: it was the beginning of my passion for the stories of others to be understood.

Beginning. The summer after my sophomore year in college, I traveled to Malaysia and Thailand. I got to spend one week as the English teacher for twenty-one fourth graders. They were your average fourth graders, but as Rohingya refugees, I wasn’t sure what sort of stories these kids had to tell. Middle. When we began to write stories, two of the little boys, V. and M.G. gave me the biggest surprise. The rest of the boys wrote stories about their dreams of being successful businessmen or football stars. But these two boys, wrote about what they loved most. V., who was not quite literate in English, loved his dog, Lucy, so much that he couldn't help but beam as he described his friend and companion. He was persistent to reach his goal of writing a story that honored her. M.G. came out of his shell as he wrote story after story about men who were average until they were kind to someone in trouble and were gifted superpowers so they could continue to save the world with their kindness. M.G. couldn’t just stop at one story, but instead wrote four stories. It was as if these boys had forgotten their refugee status as they told stories that had the power to change the world. End. Although I could only be their teacher for a week, I will continue to be their cheerleader and pray that they can continue to tell stories that show who they are.

Beginning. On my trip to Malaysia and Thailand, my final week was spent in Bangkok. Despite my exhaustion, I wanted to experience what the week held. Middle. That week, I went to the Immigration Detention Center during visitation hours and met Pastor George Naz. Pastor George has kind eyes and a big bushy mustache. He was wearing an orange prison uniform with three big block letters stamped on it: I. D. C. We shouted back and forth, separated by barriers of language and chain link. We struggled to hear each other over the voices of hundreds of other people who were just as desperate to be heard. In the words that I did make out, he told me about how he was persecuted for being a pastor in Pakistan, how he escaped to Thailand, and how he was incarcerated by the Thai Authorities for being an immigrant. His wife and five adult children are back at home in Pakistan, including a daughter around my age. George suffers from heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure, but since he as been at the IDC, he has been unable to receive medical treatment. He and I both knew I could provide him nothing. The only thing I could do is pray. End. I still think of George often. I am unable to do anything but pray and tell a story that is not my own.

It is stories like these that inspire me. I want to continue to spend my life encouraging others to tell their stories and seeking to understand the stories I hear. This is not the end of my story sharing journey, but is just the beginning.