Amsterdam in April

I love bridges. Amsterdam is full of them=
the city is beautiful.

I went to Amsterdam to see my German friend, Hanna.
We worked together in Hamburg in spring last year.
I think our next meeting point will be Portland.

Amsterdam is full of bikes. The bike riders in Amsterdam
are quite aggressive, I think. They seem even more aggressive
than the bike riders in Copenhagen.
Maybe the Copenhagen
bike riders seem less scary to me because
I know all the biking rules;
both the formal and the informal? 

Good times!

A couple of reasons why I hate and love travelling

Why I hate travelling:

1.       Packing is a nightmare! I went to Honduras on a short trip in February, and my luggage never arrived to the destination. I picked it up in Heathrow on the way home. I thought to myself, maybe I should spare myself of the hassle of packing next time and just bring a small hand luggage with the most important items.

2.       When I travel, I become a spectator to a greater or lesser extent. I watch new places and people. Having the role of a spectator for too long, I find tiring. The spectator does not play an active role and observes other people playing their roles in life. When I studied 2 semesters in Spain, I didn’t have any responsibilities besides passing my classes. At the end of my time in Spain, I really started missing having responsibilities (and commitments!) and having an active, long term, role to play in the lives of my friends, family and projects I’m part of at home.

3.       Small talking with strangers is a central part of travelling. I sometimes hate it. I get fed up of telling people my name, my country of origin, what I do, etc., and I start longing for a deep conversation with a good friend. A conversation with a person, I already share history with.  

Why I love travelling:

1.       I love the simplicity. I can only wear what I brought in my suitcase. This sometimes means I just wear what I wore yesterday; it’s relieving to have limited choices. Besides clothes, I only bring a few other items, which means I spend very little time on “moving stuff around” (sorting out my room).     

2.       It’s great to be a spectator for a while. When I go travelling I can (often) leave my responsibilities at home, my calendar is empty and I can just live and enjoy life. This opens up a space inside me where I can start looking at my life with new eyes.  

3.       Small talking with strangers on journeys can be rather enriching. Small talks can turn into interesting and meaningful conversations which gives me insights into lives of people who are very different from me and their life stories and worldviews challenge my view on myself, God and the world.

Thoughts on fighting social injustice and staying a "healthy person"

I'm interested in social justice issues, both nationally and internationally. And I hope I can make just a small contribution to improve the living conditions of people who are poor and marginalized.
Sometimes I get discouraged, overwhelmed and even paralyzed when I'm confronted with human suffering around the world.

These feelings are roughly based in two things:
First I sometimes get caught in a feeling of despair; will things ever get better?
Second I start questioning my own ability to keep being passionate about these issues in the long run and stay a ”healthy person”. Will I be able to keep accommodating the evilness and brokenness I'm constantly reminded of when engaging in issues of social justice without getting cynical, get depressed or becoming a workaholic (as the evilness you can fight does never seem to stop)?

I continuously reflect on how I can engage myself in these issues in a way which is sustainable. These are some of my thoughts (which are not only relevant to people who do social work):

1. I need to give up my need for control:

We are many who like to see quick results of our work.
I recognize the feeling of impatience and the urge for quick results. The impatience is a positive energizing factor that makes me drive projects forward.

At the same time I ask myself: Are the reasons for my urge for quick results a result of me building my identity to an unhealthy extend on my achievements? As a Christian I do believe that that my worth is not depending on what I do but whom I am. This is the message I also want to transmit to others. I can’t transmit something to others which I'm not living myself. I don’t want to transmit to others that they are only worth loving if they can achieve big things; this makes it even more important to me to learn this myself.

2. How can I continue to accommodate the sadness and brokenness of others?

I seek to accept that I'm also a ”broken person” with hurts and weaknesses. I constantly struggle to embrace my own weaknesses and to accept that I'm also part of human suffering. In that way I can see suffering not just as a thing which is distant to me, but a condition we are all part of. I hope accepting my own weaknesses will also help me accommodating others who are hurt and broken.

Recently I had a talk with some friend from my church who are all volunteers in social projects in Copenhagen. We talked about the fact that we often, in our own lives, do not ask for other people’s help or even accept help from others. It seems like we are very focused on being strong and managing our own lives independently. And in that way we may create an even bigger distance to people ”we help”. I really believe that we could become even better helpers and create more equal relationships with people ”we help” if we also let others help us. We are both people who help fight social injustice and people who need help ourselves.

 

My city, Copenhagen

My mobile uploads from Copenhagen.

I have taken the pictures during the last 2 years

on walks around the city.

Bright colors and greyness of life

Houses in Honduras are often painted in bright colors. You see houses that are blue as the sky, pink as a barbie’s dress and green as the colors of flower stems. Inside many houses dreadful things take place. Children are abused, abandoned and undernourished. This sometimes results in children leaving home and ending up on the street. I met some of these children at children’s homes I (with a Danish group) visited in February 2012.

It strikes me how the colors of Honduras seem to be in stark contrast to the sad realities of many of its inhabitants. Simultaneously the colors remind me of hope. For me that hope was personified in people I met in Honduras. Heroes. I call them heroes because I really admire them for chosing to make a change. These are normal people who have chosen to dedicate (each in their own way) their lives to fighting poverty and corruption; factors which keep life in shades of grey for millions of people. These are some of the heroes I met in Honduras:

 

It’s funny with beauty: it refuses to stay invisible and to be ignored. It wants to be enjoyed and reminds us of beauty in the midst of greyness of life. Here the sky is showing off in a poor neighborhood.

Leaving home for pleasure vs. leaving out of need

Today I visited an asylum centre north of Copenhagen. Three friends from my church and I invited the people living in the centre to a hall which we had turned into a café with coffee, cookies, board games, music and table tennis. Every time we have been to the asylum centre we have listened to the life stories of people living there. Stories of persecution, war, violence, separation from family members and long journeys without passports. Stories of leaving home out of desperation.

During my university studies I did an exchange program in Madrid and stayed in a flat with five other people. Four of them were from South America and had come to Spain to work and send money back to their families. Money that would cover school fees of their children and hospital bills of family members. The South American flat mates hardly left the apartment, other than when going to work, in order to not have unnecessary expenses for transport, food/drinks, etc. My 5^thflat mate was a Danish exchange student like me. Attending cultural events and frequenting restaurants, cafés and bars were everyday activities in our exchange student lives in Madrid. We had basically gone to Spain for the experience and excitement of living in a different country and to enjoy life. The South Americans had left home hoping that economic transfers from Europe would improve the lives of family members back home.

In the movie‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ Che Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado leave their homes in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to go on a road trip through South America on a motorcycle. They are upper class young students and go traveling based on an adventurous urge to see and experience new places. On their journey they meet a communist couple who have fled their town due to persecution for their political views. The contrast is enormous; the two young guys left home because they wished to experience something different from their home. The communist couple had left everything dear to them and would rather have stayed at home.

The travel experiences of people I met today at the asylum centre, my South American flat mates in Madrid and the communist couple in the movie ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ represent stark contrasts to my own travel experiences. First, the motivation for traveling differs enormously; it is a question of leaving home for pleasure vs. leaving out of need. Second, I leave home with the assurance that I will soon see my family again. Many people around the world leave their homes and do not reunite with their family back home for years or they may never be reunited.

The visit at the asylum centre today reminded me that being able to choose the timing and destination of a journey and the date for home coming and reunification with family members back home is a gift and a privilege. The free choice of staying at home is likewise a major privilege which many people in the world do not have.

Parenteser
(poem in Danish)

Befinder mig i en overgang fra et til noget andet

I mit hoved indstiller jeg mig på ændringen

Fremtiden er allerede mentalt blevet en del af mit nuværende liv

Lever jeg i en parentes?

Ser ofte mest fremad

Livet nu bliver en parentes

Parentesen synes dog at kendetegne livet

Overgangene kan ikke være parenteser

Overgangene er blevet mit liv

Jeg forsøger at se på nuet

Parentesen bliver langsomt til brødtekst

Og jeg ved at hver dag

er et skridt videre i det der er mit liv.