Irish Feet in Asian Flip-Flops

By Deirdre Kennedy

A collection of stories, anecdotes and reflections on the author's travel and work in Asia, in particular South Asia, spanning 15 years from first setting foot in Asia to present involvement and work with a small Irish charity organisation. The book is humorous, serious, reflective as the author communicates real experiences of an Irish mind grappling with life in very new cultures and a continuing journey of self-realisation, greater spiritual awareness, deeper love and developing life-long friendships.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deirdre Kennedy
• Release date: Apr 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9780957643406

Deirdre Kennedy

Born in Ireland and have worked and travelled in a number of Asian countries over a period of 15 years. I am a qualified and experienced anthropologist, horticulturalist, theologian and engineer. I am the founder/director of a small Irish Charity called Love is a Verb and work with water and children's home projects in South Asia.

Book preview

Irish Feet in Asian Flip-Flops

Copyright 2013 Deirdre Kennedy

Published by Deirdre Kennedy

Smashwords Edition

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Contact for the author: [e-mail]

ISBN: 978-0-9576434-0-6

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Travel Seeds Sown

2. First Stop in Asia, The Philippines

3. Sibuyan Island Import

4. Snow White and the Titanic Freezing

5. Drop down in South Asia: Dogwomandont

6. InDeeAhhh!

7. Mussoorie, Queen of the Hills

8. Monkeys, Men and my Baby Elephant

9. The Irish Connection

10. The Sharpest Elbow Wins!

11. Thousands of Deities, but only 365 days.

12. How’s things your end?

13. Bimla

14. Southward Bound

15. Bengalaru

16. Return to Nepal and a Trip to the East

17. Back to India and a taste of the Northeast

18. Maharashtra and the Wearing of the Green

19. The Boys’ Home, among the Firs

20. Water of Life in the East

21. Rajasthani Possibilities

22. Bless the Beasts and the Children.

Afterword: Love is a Verb

Preface

Flip-flops have been my faithful companions through fifteen years of work and travels in Asia. Some of them have left me before they had reached their old age. One pair, in India, was chewed by dogs on a compound where I stayed. Another pair, in Thailand, was hidden by Simon, a boy who loved playing jokes. Embarrassingly, for young Simon, he hid them in a bin that was emptied the next morning and that was adios to my flip-flops, but Simon and I are still good friends. One more pair was stolen from the front of a friend’s home in Nepal, while I visited and did the customary thing of leaving shoes at the door. I reasoned that the thief probably needed them more than I as I made my way home in my friend’s husband’s shoes, two sizes too big.

Asian flip-flops have carried me to the homes of new friends, soon-to-be dear friends and led me on the paths to what were to be last goodbyes to some now gone home friends. Thank you Asia for your flip-flops, but more than that, thanks for the journeys that have enriched my life with dear people, never-dreamt-of experiences, greater personal awareness and deeper love.

1. Travel seeds sown

As one who was very shy during childhood and early adult years, I had no intention of ever leaving home, never mind travelling much of the world. I grew up a child of the late 70s and 80s in Ireland when a typical weekend involved parents watching Dallas to see who shot J.R. and of course, Sue-Ellen wince her mouth for the hundredth time as she downed another glass of bourbon. Weekends also included our national TV chat show with Gay Byrne on the Late Late Show. I didn’t personally like Dallas that much but there was something comforting about the traditions of weekend TV; activities that could be relied upon as weekly events that symbolised togetherness. On nights when Mam and Dad were invited to a party, someone would scramble to find a blank video to record Dallas while Mam put on her makeup at the dining room mirror. I hated the nights they went out. I would often fall asleep, fearing that something would happen and they would not come back and we would be left alone. Looking back, I can see that I carried the fear of the loss of home more than I realised then. So, why in the world would I ever choose to leave it?

One of the highlights of the week, for me, was getting up on Saturday morning. It wasn’t the anticipation of a school-free day, because I didn’t actually mind going to our small primary school in the village of Two-Mile-House. As a very introverted child, being in a class of nine was manageable. The school was in a small village on a hill and looking from the village church, through the fields, I could see the roof of our house. I loved learning through all subjects and playing football with the boys during lunch break.

But, Saturday morning was the ritual of making breakfast in bed for Mam and Dad and I loved doing that; walking up and down from kitchen to bedroom with a couple of breakfast courses. And then Saturday morning TV was a time to watch heroes, be exposed to ideals and begin to form dreams. While impressed with what Irish animators could do with magic marla (plasticine) on Anything Goes, I persevered through the adventures of Gregory Grainneog and Bosco, waiting for American TV shows such as the Man from Atlantis, Grizzly Adams and the Batman series from the 70’s. These were TV programmes that ran with themes of beating the baddies, bringing better conditions for people and communicated ideas of peace and freedom. Yes, go out and fight evil, bring justice and peace to those in trouble and then go home to the tranquillity and safety of a log cabin with a pet grizzly bear. Batman with webbed feet and a Grizzly Adam’s beard sounded like the perfect hero. Notions of fighting injustice and having a safe place to live were sown in my mind and began to develop as strong values. Just how strong was not to be clear to me until much later as is often the case that through adult eyes we can unravel and make sense of the thoughts of a childhood heart.

Around this time, I was also influenced by my uncle who was training to be a priest with an Irish missionary order. After his ordination, he headed off to Kenya and for me, he and others like him, were a tangible embodiment, in my world, of heroes like Batman. He was a priest with a real heart for the welfare of people. Individuals like Mother Teresa, who I read about as a 10 year old, and others I came to know at that time, further watered the seeds in me that a fulfilling thing to do would be to work where physical needs were great and the sadness of poverty could be fought. As a child, I never reflected on these things or their influence on my thinking or entertained the thought of leaving home but the values were being formed nonetheless. Days back then were not for contemplating future work but were for school, being at home then playing with our dog or building camps in the many road-side ditches near our house. After homework was done, time was for playing football with the boys or making bows and arrows from the young ash trees that lined our road.

Being Irish too, there was probably sensitivity towards injustice and the notion that, as people, we could do something about the suffering of others. I never felt that in a superior we are better kind of way but more in a we are people altogether in this world way. With a not-so-distant history of famine in Ireland, it may have been that something about the annual Lenten Trócaire campaigns struck a chord with people? Loving music and avidly listening to the Top 30 every weekend, I was exposed to pop music in the 80’s that began to address social issues of poverty and injustice: The Specials and their song Nelson Mandela, Eddy Grant with Gimme Hope Jo’anna and Irish man Bob Geldof who formed the super group Band Aid to actively fight to reduce poverty. All these things and my uncle’s direct involvement with Kenya and the fund-raising we were exposed to as children, mixed with other personality traits and impressions to point me towards a journey that would involve some kind of personal involvement in something beyond my childhood world and lead me to subsequent travel that I never imagined in my wildest dreams.

The year my uncle headed off to Kenya was the year I started secondary school and I hated the place with a passion. The jump from a co-ed village school of 100 to an all-girl’s school of 350 students in a town seven miles away from home was daunting. I was bullied by a classmate which made my shy personality go inwards even more. But I loved the classwork and somehow persevered to do well enough, under the circumstances. I didn’t have very close friends and kept to myself quite a bit. I never shared what I really thought with others because I was not actually in touch with what was inside me or believed that I had an opinion that others would be even interested in hearing.

Being in an all-girls school now, I missed the straightforwardness of the boys from primary school. Where were my football buddies now who knew more about a quick blow to deal with a problem rather than bitching for days and falling in and out of friendships? Some lunch times I would go to the other side of the convent school to sit quietly in the nuns’ chapel to escape the crowd. But sitting there made me feel lonely after a while and I missed company but was not quite sure what company I missed. Yes, my football buddies for sure but in hindsight, I longed for deeper, safer connections.

Coming home in the afternoon to our dog Paddy, a Labrador retriever waiting at the gate was the best feeling in the world. She loved to be with me and was always there. On warmer days, it was heaven to lie on the grass at home with her head nestled into my armpit. The view of the clouds through the trees took me away to another world. Then some days there was the smell of Mam’s freshly baked rock-buns as I walked into the kitchen from school. Yes, home was the place to be and thoughts of heading out in the mornings to school were torturous.

Life took a bad turn the week, in my fifteenth summer, that Dad unexpectedly left our home. School, after that summer, was even more unbearable as I would cry in class most days, drawing unwanted attention to myself. But I could not push down the sadness and loss and the easiest thing was to just not attend. Being a capable student, teachers realised how this was affecting my studies and many reports read Deirdre could do better if she attended school. Despite poor attendance, I got through the last 2 years and did well enough in the Irish Leaving Certificate but I knew I could have done much better and could have reached for higher places academically at that point.

Life and what I valued just seemed to be collapsing around me. The very thing that meant the most to me was breaking up before my eyes: Home! Fears that I held inside as a young child began to be realised and there was nothing I could do to stop it or nowhere to escape the pain. I heard the saying a few years later from a friend in Norway that described the feeling inside perfectly: sometimes the world is a couple of sizes too big for us. As a 15 year old, the world was bigger than what I could cope with and there was no hope anywhere to be found.

Two years later I encountered faith in a new way and the only thing that gave me hope and began to make sense to me was the temporariness of this life and a heavenly father who had a better after-life in store. As a 10 year old, I had asked Santa Claus for a Children’s Bible, which was an unusual request from an Irish Catholic child, because we didn’t have a religious culture of Bible reading. Anyway, Santa delivered it and I devoured it. Later as a 17 year old, I read the New Testament through for the first time with eyes that desperately needed hope and the knowledge of unfailing, permanent love. Not found in a church or in a religion, but in a person. The only person I could see this love in was Jesus and his personality, as presented in those pages, was one so radical, so loving, so just and so perfect. He was the embodiment of someone I could begin to trust. Now if only he could still be around and touch the pain. I cannot explain it scientifically, (but neither can I explain emotion or the spirit inside me scientifically) but his love somehow came in and began helping me to cope with the sadness inside. Major trust had been broken and so too started the long journey of learning to trust again. It was at this time that the real awareness of someone bigger than my world helped me through and pulled me back from the edge of hopelessness. Looking back, this is what I believed saved me, at the time, from deeper depression, drug-abuse or the ultimate response to loss: ending my life. I really didn’t have anything to live for anymore.

Not having much of an idea about career direction after secondary school and after a summer job working on a plant nursery beside our house, I drifted into Horticultural studies. But, the desire to work overseas in the development sector became stronger and stronger. I completed a degree in Theology with a focus on multi-cultural studies. I was fascinated by the Cultural Anthropology modules and enjoyed reading descriptions of other belief systems and the many world views that lay behind other cultural behaviours. Not only that but specifically how various theologies feed into behaviour patterns.

I checked out an organisation, that I hoped to work with, and went ahead to do their pre-membership course in the U.K. in 1995 to check my suitability. During that course, the human resource staff did personality and career tests with us. With the Myers Briggs test I came out as ISTJ and very strong on the introvert side of things. Other strengths were loyalty and being responsible. And of course, with strengths were negative flipsides of traits that needed to be worked on. With the Holland’s Interests Careers test, the two strongest letters scored seemed to indicate that I should be a plumber or a gardener. But that afternoon, if I had answered one question differently, I could have been a linguist.

To the jolly English gentleman directing our futures that week, he had a pigeon hole for each of us. In front of the group, he looked at me and my score, and donned in his tweed hunting jacket and tan leather shoes, said Yes, Yes, we need people like you for cutting the grass and pruning the roses etc. etc. while he looked out the window towards the gardens. I looked at him in astonishment and with an attitude that could just not take him seriously. But nervously, I had a quiet chuckle inside. Ironically, the other women on the course were extremely happy that I had fixed the shower in the women’s quarters the day before and their eyes chuckled with mine knowing my heart was set on more than mowing lawns or fixing showers in England.

Maybe it was something Irish, non-conforming and refusing to be pigeon-holed that rose up inside me that made me speak up and inform him that Actually, I would like to do language survey in Asia. He was taken aback and declared But how, when you are so introverted? At that point, if there was an extrovert pill on the market, I was going to be its greatest customer. I would do anything to escape his judgment for my future career. Stronger than my introvert tendencies was a drive to get out to Asia and thankfully, someone other than Mr Tweed jacket had their hand on the steering wheel. I would have missed out on some great people, experiences and much needed personal growth.

Other course trainers gave differing input and I was given the green light to head in the direction of overseas work. A few months later, I signed up to study applied linguistics and a year later was ready to go. During that year, the draw to South Asia and India in particular became stronger and stronger. Logically, I reasoned in my head that I would work as a linguist in West Africa as I already had French. Nonetheless, the drawing was to India. I knew very little about the place apart from what I had read of Mother Teresa and the container of curry powder we had at home that came out of the cupboard every now and then and transformed a stew-like pot into what we knew as curry!

Like many who go overseas to work in a development context, I had aspirations of being a great help to the people I would rub shoulders with and a hope that I would have something to give. But I discovered that much of the journey was one of learning a lot more about who I was and finding that those I encountered had a lot more to impart to me than I had to them. When you are faced with people from different backgrounds, values and belief systems, that scenario often lends itself to self-reflection and realisation. When culture shock hits, there is a tight rope walked, between hating the new culture on one side and despising your own reactions on the other. Culture stress, at times, leads you to responses that are regretted later but I found that saying sorry to new friends and apologising for being a dumb foreigner strengthened the bonds.

I learned many other things like: what being Irish meant to me, lessons on a spiritual journey and aspects of my personality that needed to lighten up and laugh at myself, even though painfully at times. Coming home after a few years and doing a Masters in Social Anthropology helped me piece some more thoughts together and time for research and reflection threw light on some of the questions I had gathered during my years in Asia.

My years overseas also meant a deeper journey in the area of relationships and I learned more than ever that there are no one-way streets when it comes to human relationships. With our family dog Paddy, relationship was very straightforward. She liked to be with me no matter what I was like, the representation of absolute unconditional love. But conversation wasn’t too great! Being out of my own world, in a completely new one, I began to realise the need for greater connections and that life is about give and take all the way. The people I met and the friends I made enriched my life and experience. I was stretched beyond stretching at times but the experiences, both good and bad, broadened my narrow mind and opened up a world far beyond the one of lying on the grass in our garden at home with my best friend. People taught me that there was a wealth of good human friendships to be made and they helped me to begin the long journey of learning to trust and the rewards of taking the risk of moving outside my very introverted shell. The following stories are some from the journey. I hope they inspire you on yours.

Paddy – a girl’s best friend

2. First stop in Asia – The Philippines

Before heading out to South Asia, I was required to go on a kind of jungle boot camp course for three months in the Philippines along with others