The Epitome of Ordinary

Margot, Kim and I order a combination of traditional fry bread, tosei (a plain Indian crepe) for Margot, roti telur bawang (flat bread filled with egg and onion) for me and roti pisang (filled with sugared banana) for Kim, from Restoran Nasi Kandar Rafiq, the mamak across from our apartment complex in Taman Cosas. A man skirts around the hard-backed yellow chairs crammed under every available surface in the open-air cafe, and arrives at our table in one well-timed, head-waggling flourish. He drops our plates, one by one, onto the table, and nods politely, eyes averted, as we thank him, before sidling back towards the busy grill. We wait, cutlery poised, as a second, much younger Bangladeshi man with a burgeoning pot belly, and a shy smile that lights up his boyishly good-looking features, comes teetering over with small bowls of chunky Indian dahl.

On weekend mornings, I sometimes venture over to the mamak with my book, currently the humanitarian epic, “Three Cups of Tea”, and sit in the far back corner reading, and nursing three cups of my own Teh 'C', hot tea with evaporated milk, and sugar on the side. Rafiq, the owner of the mamak, always stops by my table to ask about Yoda, with a warm smile that reaches his kind, brown eyes. “Where is your baby?” he inquires, with his soft, accented, English. Sometimes Kim, who steals wi-fi from the laundromat up the road spots me on her way by, and swoops in in her long black dress to sit across from me, ordering 'iced kopi” or iced coffee with condensed milk. After each order, we take turns remembering to say, “kurang manis”, which translates to “less sweet”, since every drink in KL seems to be garnished with a pound of sugar.

On weekdays, we catch the T304 into work, which leaves every half hour from the bus stop directly in front of the Astaria. More often than not, I catch the bus at 7:30 am, moving about the apartment stealthily so as not to wake Kim and Margot, so that I can go to the gym for an hour before work. Sometimes, I sleep in, and Margot, groggy with sleep, her hair frizzy and wild, croaks, “are you awake” through the crack in my door. When I answer, I hear her floral patterned pink and turquoise slippers retreat across the linoleum, and I roll onto my side to greet Yoda, who coils himself around the door jamb and approaches my bedside, ready to be scooped up for an early morning cuddle.

Sometimes, when I am in the apartment alone, it rains. And the rain is so heavy and sweet, that I stand out on the balcony with Yoda cradled in my arms and we watch the big watery drops splash into puddles that span the length of the courtyard. And in this silent reverie, a thousand memories wash to the surface. An image of the swollen river near our house, working all of the garbage that collects along its rocky outcrops downstream, so that it looks almost clean when we cross over the steel bridge above its raging surface on our way home from the “pasar malam” or night market, where we purchase thick wedges of sponge cake and drink fresh coconut water, straight from the husk. Of four salty heads bobbing in the ocean during a particularly violent storm in Kuantan, rain whipping salt water into our throbbing eyes. Of my first days in the city, giving myself over to the streaming skies, pummeled with the feeling of letting it all go. 

And these routine moments in my life here, which seem too banal to write about, are the things that I will ache for when I go back to Canada. For the way that Margot runs screaming from the rats that come scurrying out of the rancid pile of garbage near our stairwell. For Kim and Margot doing the tango as we return home from the Green Man, their oblong shadows dancing along darkened street sides. For the shirtless Chinese man, who waves to us each morning from his balcony, as he lights incense and places ritual pineapples on his well-tended altar. For the dodgy looking hamburger cart, that wheels itself into place like clockwork each night across from the 7 Eleven outside of our apartment. For the Arab shop where we take our lunch each day. For guitar lessons with entirely too much eye contact. For the taste of a Tiger beer.

When I first arrived in Kuala Lumpur, I was disoriented by the stark contrast between my life in Canada and the way that people live here. But now, this place just feels like home. And as I prepare Yoda for his long journey back to Canada, contemplate saying goodbye to Kim, Margot and Danae, and begin to wrap up the loose ends of my life here in Malaysia, I am deeply saddened that this chapter is almost over for me. I have found so much of myself here in this place, through the people I have met, and the many experiences I have had. But, as with every story, where there is a beginning, there must be an end. And so, it is with a heavy but hopeful heart that I prepare to leave this city, and embark on my next journey. Because, in the end, life will evolve, and there will always be new places, and spaces, and moments in time to move into. But this place, and this experience, has shaped me in ways I cannot even begin to describe. And that is something that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

Margot, Kim and Danae - Girls night out at La Bodega

You Must Earn Your Name

Sometimes, I revel at the idea that I am alive at precisely this moment in time. Humans were first recorded on Earth about 6 million years ago. Our evolution took place 200,000 years ago. Civilization as we know it is 6,000 years old and industrialization started in 1800's. And here I am, a 29 year old Canadian student, rife with privilege, sitting across from a woman, who is according to her case file, 3 years older than me, a thousand lives lived behind her eyes, shaking my head no.

"We can't help you with that," I say, meeting her eyes, dark brown and rimmed with an insatiable desire to be seen and heard, "the UNHCR has certain criteria for expediting registration, and..." I pause, and leaf through her case file, as if to demonstrate my commitment to her plight, "you don't have any... vulnerabilities... according to them."

The interpreter, a refugee named Khaled, shifts uncomfortably in his seat, and turns towards the woman in the patterned hijab, translating my words into Arabic. He knows, as well as I do, how ludicrous it is to tell a refugee or asylum seeker in Malaysia that they "don't have any vulnerabilities."

The woman's eyes well up, and I force myself to meet her gaze directly, my eyes soft and steadfast, resistant to the intense urge that spreads itself through me, to stare into my lap and let my own tears fall freely. The registration process for UNHCR (or the United Nations Refugee Agency) is a long and drawn out one. I see it in the downcast of her eyes, that it has taken its toll on her.
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A truck bomb in Damascus.

A harrowing journey.

We meet the smuggler, Qays, a friend of a friend of my dead brother, a local man, his face pock marked, and mouth set permanently into a hard line, on an overcast afternoon in September of 2013.

"Malaysia has signed an agreement which ensures protection for refugees from Syria," he says, voice unwavering, eyes hard, "you and your family will be safe there."

He shows us the passports, our faces gleaming next to names I don't recognize.

"Memorize your details," he says gruffly, "we leave on Saturday."

My husband, Azad, pays Qays, $18,000.00, and we return home, to prepare the children.

I tell Azad later that I have heard stories about traffickers diverting migrants to secret camps near the Thai-Malaysia border, holding them for ransom and killing and torturing those whose families cannot pay up. He looks into my eyes, and he whispers, "that will not happen to us", brushing my tears away with the pad of his thumb. That night, I cannot sleep. I find myself in the dining room, running my fingers along the exotic, tinted wood table that my father had constructed in his woodshed only a few years before, thick eyebrows frosted with sawdust, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose. I cannot reconcile this image with the reality of his current situation, kidnapped by the government of Bashar Al Assad, whereabouts unknown.

I let my grief take me then, falling to my knees in the dim light of the sliver moon. Clutching at one of the last remnants of my father, to steady myself, his words echoing in my ears.

"You must be brave, Najdah, that is how you earn your name."

Supported by the firm ground, and bolstered by my father's memory, I feel for the first time, a sense of calm, in the dense folds of my grief, my fear congealing into an intense resolve. I curl up beneath my baba's table, patterned wood blending black and brown, and drift off to sleep.

The journey itself is long, especially for Aashif and Amina, who are quiet and withdrawn, vulnerable to the anxiety that permeates into the fabric of every day that follows our decision to leave Damascus. We arrive in Malaysia in tact, shuffling through immigration, brandishing our documents and muttering prayers, as Qays, pockmarks glistening in the filtered light, talks to the guards. Their eyes linger on us, a look of disdain settling into their features, which are different from our own. I adjust my hijab, and they slam big square stamps into our passports.

Qays smiles for the first time, revealing a mouth full of rotten teeth, and motions for us to follow him.We crowd our way into a waiting car, and Aashif tugs at my sleeve, looking around bewildered, as we make our way, through a dense jungle of palm trees, into the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. We arrive at Merdaka Villa, a shoddy apartment complex, windows barred and laundry hanging from every balcony. The rotten teeth flash at us once more, and Qays hands us a set of keys. He directs us to a small flat on the 3rd floor in Block D. We climb the stairs with our suitcases in tow, everything we managed to salvage of our lives in Syria. Amina tugs at my skirt, and I offer my hand, which she slips her small fingers into tremulously.

The apartment is sparse, with one bedroom, a living area, a small kitchen and a bathroom. But it is also quiet, a light breeze blowing in from the balcony, a small brown bird chirping on the balcony grate. Qays introduces us to our landlord, a heavy set man with grey hair, and an Iraqi accent, waiting in the entry way.

"The rent is RM800 a month. You pay your utilities by taking the bill to the post office. Your deposit has been paid. I'll give you my card, if you need anything, don't hesitate to call."

Azad thanks the man, and he leaves.

"I should be off as well," says Qays, apologetically, and makes his way to the door.

"You're forgetting something brother..." says Azad

Qays turns towards us, his eyes unyielding, "I'm sorry, Azad, but these," he holds up our passports, "are not part of the deal. I recommend you go to the United Nations Refugee Agency and.. explain your situation to them.... they will be able to help you."

Before Azad can react, Qays turns on his heel, opens the door and is gone, just like that... We stare at each other in disbelief. The children can sense the cauldron of rage and panic brewing in the room, its vapors poisoning the air.

Later that week, we make our way to the UNHCR. The language barrier proves a challenge, and we end up paying twice the regular cab fare, because the driver forgets to start his meter. We wait in line, Aashif and Amina wrestling with each other, bumping into people who turn towards them, faces long and withdrawn, eyes vacant. Hours pass. The children are hungry. And we wait. At the end of the day, we are issued an appointment card - a thin piece of paper laminated in plastic, a UNHCR number on the front, and an appointment date on the back.

October 18, 2014.

We have no other form of documentation.

We return home. Eat chicken kabobs and rice for dinner, spread out on the floor like a picnic. And things seem OK for a while, until the police begin to crack down on our neighborhood, stopping Azad twice in one month on the street. The first time, he returns home boiling with anger.

"They robbed me in the street, Najdah," he sputters, "300 ringgits... lining their filthy pockets now."

I try to touch his shoulder but he swipes my hand away, his eyes black, the sense of promise they once held, all but extinguished. But he keeps going out. Because he needs to find work, if we are to survive here. In Damascus, he was a lawyer, a political activist. After 3 months of searching in Kuala Lumpur, he finds an under-the-table job as a waiter at an Arabic restaurant. He works 12 hours per day,  6 days a week, for RM 1200.

The second time he is stopped by police, they take half of his month's salary, and we dip into our emergency fund to pay the rent. Amina and Aashif are restless. Azad loses his temper. It only happens once, and I threaten to divorce him. I see it in his eyes, that he has lost himself, and he asks for forgiveness on his knees that night, his body stretched out in prayer.

The days blur into nights into days into weeks into months, until finally our appointment at UNHCR arrives. We are given printed, plastic cards which are meant to offer us protection from the police. They call us asylum seekers. We have also found a local organization, the Malaysian Social Research Institute, which offers support to minority refugees and asylum seekers from places like Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Palestine and Syria. We are registered with them, and use their family health centre to obtain a referral for Aashif, who has lost hearing in one ear from the bomb blast near our home in Damascus, which claimed the life of my only brother, Aashif's uncle, Sabir.

Amina has developed asthma from the haze in Malaysia, and she keeps me up at night, coughing into her pillow. I think I should take her to the hospital, but there is no point. I can't communicate the problem, and they can't communicate the solution. And even then, the cost is exorbitant, since we are charged the foreigner's rate. At MSRI, the health center is free, and provides an interpreter, so I hunker down with Amina for the weekend, stroking her hair and monitoring the dark tinge which is spreading into her cheeks and across her chest, and lug the two children to Ampang Point on Tuesday morning, to sit in the waiting room for four hours, waiting to see Dr. Veena.

We want to register the children at the MSRI school, but we are told classes are overloaded, so we put our names on the waitlist. We recieve a letter from UNHCR, informing us that our RSD interview is scheduled for December 12, 2018. The RSD interview is the one that makes or breaks a person, as far as displaced people are concerned. It determines your eligibility to meet the criteria of "refugee", which means you are entitled to international protection, and may be eligible for re-settlement. There is also the possibility that you will be rejected, which means any support offered by organizations like UNHCR and MSRI are revoked, and you are left to float alone, in a sea of uncertainty, jobless, stateless, hopeless. I do not want this for my children.

The weight of 2 more years in this place sets down into me. My body, an anchor, weighs me down, threatening to pull the vessel of my life under. I go to MSRI's community centre, Amina and Aashif in tow, and schedule an appointment for open day. Azad has lost his job at the Arab restaurant, the owner accusing him of stealing money from the till. To compensate for "his losses", he withholds Azad's salary for the month. Our savings are gone. We eat one meal a day, and the children have been out of school for almost 2 years. Azad sets out each morning, to scour the city for work, returning home each night, dejected, forlorn. I find out that I'm pregnant again.

And finally my appointment for open day arrives. I climb the stairs, my bones creaking and groaning in protest, past the beauty parlour on the first floor, the family health centre on the second. Siti Hajar, the woman who runs the community centre sits at her desk, and I read out my name to her. After an hour, a young white girl wearing a red flannel shirt and tight brown pants exits the room, her hair cut into a short bob, laughter tinking out, as she collects a file and says something to Siti Hajar.

She turns in the room, and says "Najdah?"

She smiles at me, and I follow her obediently to the interview room, shuffling apologetically in her energetic wake. We sit at a small table, surrounded by plastic chairs, and I notice that another interview is taking place on the opposite side of the room, a young man sitting with a tall, springy haired woman named Gloria, who interviewed me on my last visit.

"What are you here for today?" says the young girl, leafing through my file. She looks at me with kind eyes, and I catch myself wondering about her life, so different from my own.

"We haven't heard anything from UNHCR in over a year," I say, pleadingly, and the interpreter passes my words onto her. I have no idea what he is saying, or if he is getting my message across in the way that I intend it. She nods, and looks at me, her mouth turning down at the corners slightly, in an expression of concern. I forge ahead.

"We would like for you to contact UNHCR on our behalf, to speed up our case," I say, getting the words out as quickly as I can.

"You must earn your name, Najdah", says the voice in the back of my mind.

I see her leaf through my file once more, searching for something. She re-reads her notes.

Children are hungry - eating only one meal a day. Husband cannot find work. Robbed by police 5 times in past 6 months. Husband detained for 3 days. Rent is overdue by two months - landlord threatening eviction. 

I see something that resembles pain cross her face, and I know my answer, before she speaks.

"The UNHCR has certain criteria for expediting registration, and..." she pauses, leafing through her case file, as if to demonstrate her commitment to my plight, "you don't have any... vulnerabilities."

The interpreter sits with her words for a moment, then shifts uncomfortably, before he turns to me and translates their meaning.

"I'm so sorry," she says, "but we can potentially offer you some food support... rice, oil, things for cooking... and some livelihood support for now. You might also qualify for our 'support a family' program, which would ensure a more regular source of income, until your husband can find another job..."

I think of Amina and Aashif, of my unborn child, a numbness flowering it's way into my extremities.

I nod, and whisper, "that would help... thank you", tears leaking down my cheeks.

She hands me a box of tissues.

What more is there to say.

Alice in Border Land

A hand, calloused and brown, etched with a long history of days spent working outside, ratcheting bolts and rubbing grease into wheel wells, shakes me awake. 

"Passport", says the man's voice, thick with an accent I assume to be Indonesian. 

"What time is it?", I mutter, my voice cracking with fatigue. I don't expect a reply.

The man, tall and slender in his driver's coat, looks at me blankly, and, with an apologetic shrug, continues down the narrow aisle, his hands finding the thickness of other shoulders, arms and elbows; shaking to life limbs weighted down by the remnants of sleep. 

Slowly, I peel my cheek away from the dimpled, white-washed wall of the SJS executive coach, gingerly moving my head from side to side, stretching out my neck, which has been bent at an inconceivable angle for hours.

The road from Pontianak, Indonesia to Kuching, Malaysia, which resembles a hunk of cheese grated haphazardly around the edges, has been long and arduous. And the weight of the journey still bores into my physical body, throwing me off balance in the newfound stillness of the muggy night air. 

I gather my bag, clutching my passport to my chest and stumble out of the bus. The lights hit me first. Spotlights. Blaring into the darkness, and casting oblong shadows onto the gathering throng of people, pushing steadily towards a steel sliding gate, set into reinforced concrete walls. A large white sign, emboldened by a menacing arrangement of red block letters, reads "Imigrasi". 

It is my first time passing through immigration, and a tension sets into my shoulders and works its way into my jaw, which clenches and unclenches, my eyes searching for something, anything, familiar, which might ground me back into myself. What I find instead is a sea of dark eyes, watching me; watching each other. An energy, the kind you can feel buzz inside of your skin, ripples through the crowd as the padlocked gates begin to rattle. And then, as the gates swing open, a sudden surging forwards, of skin on skin, a frenzy of hands lingering in mid-air, as if poised to push and claw and fight, should the need arise. 

As I am jostled along, a sudden fit of terror coils itself like a viper into the pit of my belly. 

I turn in the dense horde, my eyes darting from side to side.

"I don't know my bus number." 

Cars and buses have begun to stream past on a side road, headlights cutting through the dense fog of the rain forest. 

More frantic now.

"I don't know my bus number." 

I count 7 buses crunching along the gravel road, before I am forced to turn back towards the gate, carried along by the swarm of people winding their way along the worn-out dirt path which leads to a second padlocked gate. My eyes flick back to the steady stream of traffic, an anxiety blooming inside of my chest like a poisonous flower.

As more people pour into the clearing in front of the gate, we wait for what seems an eternity, an uncomfortable intimacy swelling into the empty spaces between us. A man spits. A weathered brown face with charcoal eyes shoots me a rotten grin, and I smile back, a little too wide, my eyes crinkling like purple grapes, left to wilt in the sunshine. A woman coughs, and smears something into a suspiciously brown handkerchief. A smell, like sour garbage, fills my nostrils, and then retreats, a steady ebb and flow. 

When the metal grate finally slides open, and the herd pushes forwards once more, I see men in uniform, and I smell fear. For some odd reason, my thoughts are suddenly swarming with the images of all the faces of the refugees that I have come into contact with in the past couple of months. I realize that, at some point in time, they must have made this harrowing journey across the border themselves, with so much more at stake. Fake passports clutched to their chests, their frightened children tugging at their sweat drenched skirts, praying to god, to allah, to deliver them from evil, to give them a better life.

I feel close to them in this moment, because I feel some small inkling of their uncertainty, their vulnerability. I don't know the language, I don't know who to trust. This place feels dangerous, and I am alone. But I am buffered by my nationality, the fact that I am Canadian. And I know that, at the end of the day, I will come out of this experience unscathed. Even if I miss my bus, or am detained for questioning, or I am lost in this sticky, sweaty mess of unfamiliar faces, I know that I will eventually find my way home. 

I am once again, faced with my own privilege - defined by it. 

Lost in my reverie, I don't notice a large man, dressed all in black, with a smile like the Cheshire Cat, beckoning me from the shadows. 

"Miss! Miss!" he calls out, his grin practically splitting his face in two. 

I look around, perplexed. Surely he's not talking to me. 

"Come with me," he says, his voice a riddle. 

"Are you from the bus company?" I ask, and he nods, a slyness dancing in his eyes, his head bobbing up and down.

Without fully understanding why, I follow his teeth, blaringly white, as they make their way through the stream of people. Suddenly, we are at the front of a queue, which has formed in front of a small wooden building. After waving his hands, and speaking erratically in Indonesian, the man inserts me in front of an elderly woman, hunched over, her dark hair gathered in a precarious little bun on top of her head. 

She smiles generously at me, and I smile back apologetically.

Two young men begin pointing at me, shaking their heads and yelling at the man in Indonesian. Just as I'm about to scuttle off, the grin is back. 

"Stay," he says, his voice a steady drawl, "Pay no attention to them"

So many teeth.

"Stayyyy."

And just like that, my passport is stamped, and he is tugging at my arm.

"This way. quickly", he murmurs, and then we are off again, half running along another dusty track until we reach a second round of queues. Again, he draws me close, and with an air of authority, he pushes through the trunk of bodies, his smile stretching before me, as endless as the ocean. 

He jostles me in front of a young man, who smiles uncertainly at me, unsure of whether or not he's been swindled.

"Stay," says the Cheshire, his voice thick and reassuring, "Stayyyy"

He then sidles away from me, and surreptitiously hands a young man wearing a black hoodie a wad of cash.

"What in the fuck is going on?" I think to myself, amidst a fresh wave of jeers and cat calls.  I want to crawl out of my own skin and disappear into the night, but I stay put, gritting my teeth. 

When it is "my turn", I shuffle up to the booth guiltily and a somber looking man takes my passport. He turns it over in his hands. 

"Canada?" he says, and I nod, trying to look at ease.

"Lucky you", he says, as his stamp lands on a blank page, dancing with maple leafs.

I breathe a sigh of relief.

I am back in Malaysia. My requirement to leave the country every 3 months to renew my visa is fulfilled. I'm safe now, and everything is OK.

The Cheshire cat grins, and motions for me to follow him again. Miraculously, he leads me back to the SJS executive coach, and after exchanging some words with the driver, tips his hat and scampers off into the early morning mist. 

Bewildered and disheveled, I climb back into the bus, take my seat and exhale. I think again of my privilege. Of those weary and weathered faces gathered at the gates of the United Nations Refugee Agency. Those pleading eyes. 

Before long, the engine rumbles to life, the sound of it filling my ears. Those faces, languishing beneath my closed eyelids, blend together then into a turbid soup, and I drift off, once again, to sleep. 

The Hungry Caterpillar

When I think about change, I think about caterpillars.

Like that hungry one in the storybook, all lumpy and green, emotionally eating his way through a wide variety of foodstuffs before pupating and emerging as a butterfly.

Sometimes I feel like that caterpillar, spinning a cocoon – up, up and around myself.

But other days, it’s like I’m going in reverse. Disassembling my own potential, thread by thread.

This has been a hard couple of weeks. I’ve been dealing with a lot of anxiety, which clings to me in a way that only anxiety can cling to a person. I knew that taking this internship would not be easy, and that I would struggle with some parts of myself that I have always tried to push away. But that process is painful. And there is nothing I can do but grit my teeth and let it run its course.

I think part of my anxiety comes from struggling with change, even if that change is a good thing for me. In this past 3 weeks, many things have shifted for me. I was living in Lantana Villas, in Bukit Antarabangsa with another intern, Danae, and a 50 something year old English man named Dave. Dave turned out to be a super huge ASSHOLE (I will not go into details), so I needed a quick solution to get out of a bad situation.

Over Hari Raya, which is a 2-day public holiday in Malaysia, to celebrate the end of Ramadan, I moved into a new apartment called The Astaria (pictured below), with another intern from my university (Kim) and an MSRI employee (Margot).

It’s a little bit ghetto…

While the place seemed too good to be true (it’s quite difficult to find a 6-month lease in Malaysia), we quickly realized that we had a bit of a cockroach problem, so I spent most of my week hyperventilating into a paper bag and sleeping with my eyes taped open.

Despite our rocky start, the landlord has been very accommodating, repairing windows, fixing showers and sending “the roach guy” to spray the kitchen and look at potential entry points, which are, for the record, EVERYWHERE, since cockroaches can flatten their bodies to fit into extremely small spaces, including cracks that are only 1/16 of an inch (1.5 millimeters) thick).  PUKE.

Anyways, although a lot has happened as of late, I have found it a bit challenging to keep up with my blog. I want to keep up with my writing, but since I am in a going through a hungry, stressed-out, undergoing some kind of great change caterpillar mode, I’ve decided to forego my usual storytelling to post instead some of the things that make me happy in Kuala Lumpur. And in life in general.  

1.) Reader’s Paradise

I found a little shop in the Ampang Point mall, close to my work, called Reader’s Paradise, where you can rent books for 6 ringgits, or $2.00 Canadian.

So far, I have read 3 books.

It is an exciting thing, when you open a book, and fall in love with the first passage. It is even more exciting when you stumble across a valley of words and letters that somehow, together, spell out ideas that you have always carried with you, but have never known how to articulate.

My favorite quotes, from each book, that I had the forethought to earmark, are below.

From Love in the Time of Cholera

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

From The Gift of Rain

“When you are lost, in this world or on the continent of time itself, remember who you have been and you will know who you are. These people were all you, and you are them.”

From The Kite Runner

“For you, a thousand times over.”

2.) Rat Fights

In addition to the hundreds of stray cats that wander the streets near our apartment, there are also SO many rats. Like, I see about 5 – 6 rats per day. And they are enormous, much bigger than Yoda. The other day, my Italian roommate Margot, who makes me laugh more than anyone I have ever met, glanced over to the patch of grass near our house, and said, in her sing-song Italian accent.

 “There are two rats fighting over there.”

And so there were.

And,  as we discussed what they might be fighting about (ex: cheese,  ex-girlfriend, bought the same sweater, etc.), I thought to myself, how strange it is to be here, in this moment that I will never be in again. 

3.) Burnout Fitness Centre

When I arrived in KL, I bought a 6 month pass for a gym really close to my work, called Burnout Fitness. It’s the most ridiculous gym I have ever been into, but it has become a staple in my routine. I go 2 – 3 times during the week during my lunch hour. I love it because it’s almost always empty + they blast electronic music SO LOUD and sell Gatorade from a grass hut.

4.) Yousician

About 2 weeks ago, I bought a guitar, and I have been fiddling around with this super awesome app on my phone, called Yousician. It’s kind of like playing Guitar Hero, except you’re actually learning an instrument.

The app teaches you chords, and notes, and technique. I think I will eventually take some lessons with a real live person, but for the time being, this is enough.

5.) DuoLingo

I am learning Spanish! Every night, Margot and I sit down for half an hour and we practice nuestros Español with an app called Duolingo. I can now say really useless sentences like “los hombres necesito el bano” (the men need the bathroom!) and “tengo una gata” (I have a cat!).

6.) Yoda

I think I have decided to send Yoda back to Canada, which fills me with the utmost happiness. And so, I must now go through the process of getting him vaccinated, and organizing his “pet passport”. I love the idea though, of coming home after a year away, to the best little souvenir a girl could ever ask for.

7.) The Family Bundle

The Family Bundle is a Malaysian vintage clothing store where I go with Margot and Kim from time to time. I like to try on all of the old dresses.

8.) A Man Wearing a Plastic Bag on his head for No Apparent Reason

This needs no introduction

There are many more things, that I have not been able to capture in this blog post, which fill me with joy. It is in abundance here, and weaves its way into the fabric of every single day I have spent in this place.

And as I move through this land, all chaos, and dirt, and head-tilted, gap-toothed smiles, I know that I will be OK. And all of this hard work, and all of this joy, is transforming me. I may never be a butterfly. But maybe, just maybe, as I sit in my half-constructed cocoon, its walls perpetually growing and shrinking, I will learn that being a caterpillar isn't so bad. That maybe I'm not meant to be different, and the real change comes from accepting myself just as I am. 

A Crack in the Concrete

"All living things contain a measure of madness that moves them in strange, sometimes inexplicable ways. This madness can be saving; it is part and parcel of the ability to adapt. Without it, no species would survive."
- Yann Martel, Life of Pi

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! 

My eyes open slowly, blinded by the darkness that has settled into my room, as my right hand fumbles for my phone, which has found its way onto the floor at some point during the night. I turn my alarm off, struggling to keep my eyes open, and drop my head back onto my pillow with a resounding WUMPH. I turn my face to the side, and in the dull grey hue of morning, a small figure darts across my room and into the shadows. A smile, which stems from the very depths of me, makes its way onto my face. 

"Yoda?" I call out in a groggy sing-song voice. 

"Mroww"

A pause. Some rustling. 

"Yodaaa?" Again, that same sing-song. 

"Mewrrhhh"

Another pause. And then, a faint sound of purring, which intensifies as he draws near. 

"Come here baby," I say, my voice flowering with tenderness, as I lift him from the floor with one hand. 

He lands on my chest, and presses his soft, warm nose into my face. I pull him away and try to make him hunker down under my chin, to cuddle into the soft folds of my shirt, so that I can stroke his fur and drift into the abyss once more. Instead, he viciously bites my hand, and flips onto his back, exposing his little pink belly. His back legs kick back and forth as he clamps his razor sharp nails into my skin. I sigh, defeated, and turn on the light. 

"C'mon," I say wearily, lifting myself from the mattress and planting my feet on the floor, "breakfast time". 

It's Ramadan. And I have half an hour to eat before I go into lock down mode. I make my way into the kitchen and throw two pieces of toast in the toaster, as Yoda winds around my feet, crying and crying and crying some more. He is still bottle-fed and ready for his own breakfast, a scoop of goat's milk powder mixed into hot water followed by 3 mL of antibiotics, 2 mL of probiotics, and an array of other medicines that have to be jammed down his throat with a syringe. I hate this part, and it takes me the better part of 15 minutes to get it all down. I remember my toast, which is cold by now, and spread a thick layer of coconut butter on top, with a second layer of tropical jam: sweet juicy pineapple. mouthwatering mango. crisp coconut flakes and hint of lime. I cram it into my mouth and wipe my hands on my pants. The knowledge, that this is the last thing I will eat for 12 hours, sits heavy on my mind. 

Yoda, still howling, for what I do not know, tramps behind me back into the bedroom. I get dressed, brush my teeth, and swaddle him tightly in a light blue towel, patterned with elephants, which seems to be the only way to calm him down when he is being fussy. He sits, bound in his terry cloth prison, and stares at me with big blue eyes. His mouth opens and shuts softly, like he is murmuring to himself. Eyelids get heavy, and I shove him under my burnt orange sweater. 

I call a taxi with an app on my phone (similar to Uber), and then hurry down to Jalan Kelab Ukay 5, which is the closest address listed for pickup. It takes about 7 minutes to arrive, and I barrel in with Yoda, heavy on my arm. 

As soon as I'm settled in the back of the cab, Yoda wakes up, and begins to wriggle out of his swaddle, howling uncontrollably. I feel a warm puddle begin to form on my lap, and I run my hand through my hair, which stands on end. The driver glances into the rear view mirror suspiciously, and then cranes his head towards me, his dark eyes settling on my sweater, which has taken on, more or less, a life of its own.

"You have kitten?" he asks menacingly, and wracked with guilt, I nod, lifting the burnt orange fabric to expose Yoda in all his glory, arms thrashing and face, deranged. 

"So cute!", he exclaims, delighted, and tells me that he has 10 cats at home. This is not uncommon in Malaysia. I do my best to dry my pants while he talks, stroking Yoda's ears, to keep him quiet. 

At work, Yoda stays in a pink basket on the window sill, where he sleeps, plays with his orange ball, howls for his bottle and basically does cat things. I feed him 3 - 4 times during the day, and then, when work is over, we go straight home. The people at work have, with knowing grins, started calling me, "kucing ibu" which means "cat mom" in Malay, and recently, at an iftar dinner (which is a break fast dinner for Ramadan), a Malay grandmother who spoke not a lick of English, asked her granddaughter if I was breastfeeding the cat. Everyone laughed. This is my life now. 

I am a starving cat mom. 

When we arrive home, Yoda prances around the house like Matt Rempel at a music festival, and I sit, with fork and knife clutched in hand, waiting for the call to prayer to sound out across the city. It's been a long and stressful day. But I am happy. 

Because Yoda is happy. 

And even though he shits on my bed and spreads litter all over the house and bites my face while I'm trying to sleep and cries for milk at all hours of the day and night, at the end of the day, he has shown me how resilient life can be. 

And, in this month of Ramadan, like a flower, growing up through a crack in the concrete, how resilient I can be. 

And that is an important lesson to learn, any day. 

Yoda - the day we found him - severely malnourished and covered with fleas

So tiny!

Bottle feeding when he first arrived (pre-medication!)

Swaddled in my burnt orange sweater!

"What's that mom?"

"I'll just sit here..." 

Helping me with my blog!

The Danger of a Single Story

In 2009, a Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave a TED talk called “The Danger of a Single Story". It is about what happens when you boil the stories of millions of complex human beings down into one single narrative. 

When I was a little girl, we didn't have cable. We had 5 channels, and other then Saturday morning cartoons (which I lived for), I spent a lot of time channel surfing. Since I refused to go outside, especially on nice days, and was even more averse to cleaning my bedroom, I ended up wiling away countless hours, stretched out lazily on our lumpy green couch succumbing to my fate. The World Vision one hour special. 

Looking back, I now realize that I spent an inordinate amount of time watching colonialism in action. An old, grey haired man strolls into a remote African village, where the people live in squalor, a bank of flies teasing their nostrils, climbing into their eyes and ears. This man (think Bill Clinton), looking particularly well-kempt in this setting, kneels in his khaki pants (always khaki!), one knee in the dirt, to reach the child's height. Placing an arm around the malnourished, fly-ridden body of the young person, he looks directly into the camera and asks, rather implores, for help. For the good of the child. For the good of the community. Because they do not have the capacity to save themselves. 

And so, with my spongey little nine year old brain, I learned that Africans are nothing more than the passive recipients of white benevolence and that Africa itself is an undesirable, poverty-stricken, heat-ravaged, fly-infested dust bowl of a place. 

Sadly, I held this conception for a long time, because nobody showed me another truth and I didn't take it upon myself to learn more. And this, my friends, is the danger of a single story. 

I now know that Africa is one of the largest continents in the world, comprising 54 distinct countries, which encompass more than 1500 region-specific languages and countless cultures, as well as a tremendous wealth of natural resources. It is home to a vast and fertile landscape, enormous rainfall, good soil and plenty of sought after minerals, like diamonds, salt, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite and silver, in addition to a plethora of other resources like petroleum, cocoa beans, woods and tropical fruits. 

In the past, when I have conjured up images of Africa, they have been two-fold.

"Extreme hunger in drought-ravaged East Africa"

OR

African Safari

My own misconceptions, and my failure to examine my flawed belief systems, led me to see Africa as one homogeneous entity. This TED talk, "The Danger of a Single Story", shed some light on how we, as people, are prone to categorizing other people, places, cultures, religions, and more, based on our own black and white interpretations of what we THINK we know. Africa is not homogeneously poor - in the way I was led to believe. And things are not always as they seem. 

When I started writing this blog, I wanted it to be diverse, to showcase every aspect of my trip. But I also need to be careful about the way that I tell my own stories. For example, while police officers in Kuala Lumpur are notoriously corrupt, that doesn't mean that they ALL are - and even the ones who do fit this description aren't always all bad - one might shake down a refugee for every penny they have on them in the afternoon, and be home in the evening to sing their baby to sleep. 

As far as I'm concerned, there is a Jekyll and a Hyde, a good and a bad, in everyone and everything. And there are a million sides to every story. Understanding this is an important part of being human. There is no black and white. People are complicated, multi-faceted. One problem can have 10 different solutions, each one as good as the next. 

I have come to realize that it is my job to sift through all of the information presented to me - to identify the gaps and to do my own research, to find my own truth. That is what I aim to do in this internship, and outside of it. This life is meant for digging, And the deeper you dig, the more you will find :) 

Algiers (the capital city of Algeria) 

Abuja (the capital city of Nigeria) 

Snow in a small ski town in South Africa

The Danger of a Single Story

A Rude Awakening

The midnight air is frigid, the A/C blasting its icy breath into the back of the cab, as Danae and I make our way home from "The Green Man", an English pub in the heart of downtown, Kuala Lumpur, on our first Friday night in the city.

"I am seeing this word, Jalan, everywhere..." Danae proclaims loudly, her words glauming on to one another excitedly, as she pushes her large brown satchel to one side, "I'm going to ask the taxi driver, what does Jalan mean?"

I see his shoulders sag.

"Excuse me, sir. sir? Can I ask you..." she taps him on the shoulder, "Sir? Yes, Sir. What does Jalan mean?"

"It means road," he sighs, and stares longingly at his GPS, willing it to call upon our final destination.

Peals of laughter erupt from the backseat, and I can almost see him roll his eyes through the back of his head. Then, the mood shifts in the car quite suddenly, as we come over the crest of a steep hill and begin to descend the long and winding road towards home.  I notice, all around me, for the first time, flashing lights. A nervous energy winds itself, like a persistent weed, into my body, and I hear my voice, urgent and strangled, ring out in the darkness.

"Is that a police blockade?"

The taxi driver, his fingers wrapped tightly around the steering wheel, nods, and turns towards me for the first time.

"Yes ma'am. Very bad for us..." he smiles apologetically.

"But it's OK right?" I hear myself say, as if from far away, "because you haven't been drinking".

"No ma'am," says the driver in his indistinguishable accent, "they are not checking for the drinking... they are checking for the passports."

My blood freezes in my veins.

I don't have my passport with me, and neither does Danae.

"It's OK", says Danae quietly, all of her previous gusto evaporated, along with my confidence, "we can show them photocopies".

I'm not convinced. The Malaysian police are notorious for taking bribes, and arresting travelers who are unable to show documentation.

As we near the check-stop, a car up ahead is being searched, and I am horrified to see that every officer in the vicinity is sporting an automatic weapon, which resembles an AK47.

Pretty much, this was happening

One heavily armed officer approaches the window, and taps the butt of his gun against the pane. The driver rolls it down hurriedly.

"Yes Sir," he says, timidly, as the police officer ignores him, and sneers into the back of the cab.

"Passports," he says gruffly, and I can tell, for lack of a better expression, that he is not fucking around.

"We don't have them," I state plainly, my voice wavering slightly, "they're back at the house."

"That is not my problem," he says, a callousness buried deep in his voice.

"We have photocopies though", says Danae, a little too brightly, and begins to dig through her wallet.

"You can't produce REAL passport...", he says, "you go downtown".

He opens Danae's door, and motions for us to get out of the cab.

As he turns to speak to another officer, I violently stuff 600 ringgits (about $200.00 Canadian) from my wallet into my bra, and refuse to step foot out of the taxi.

After much pleading, we manage to convince the officers to let me leave Danae at the checkpoint and return to our apartment to fetch our passports. I take her phone, since mine is dead, so that I can use Google maps to find my way. It takes half an hour to get back to her, and the entire time, my heart beats out of my chest.

After an hour of negotiations and travel, I return to the scene of the non-crime, in my opinion, to produce our shiny navy blue passports for inspection. And then, just like that, we are on our way.

One of the things I have thought about often since this incident is how lucky I am to be Canadian. How lucky I am to have a passport. Most of the refugees living in Kuala Lumpur don't have any form of documentation. Nor do they have any ways to obtain that documentation. And for them it means random police checks turn into human rights violations on a daily basis. They are robbed, assaulted, strip-searched, and oftentimes detained indefinitely by police. The system is incredibly broken, because it allows people (and particularly, men) in positions of authority to exploit the most vulnerable populations.

And why is it that I'm special and they're not? Why is it that I can move freely across borders, and my story does not end with violence or humiliation or degradation or detention? Why is it that my face in a little booklet, worth $120.00, tells the police officers in Kuala Lumpur that I mean something?

The more I learn about the refugee plight, the more I realize that the world is not fair.

And it probably never will be.

And that's just not OK.