My friend, who is a UN expert in Africa
tells me about a story when he worked with a large international NGO in Europe
that was partnering with many member NGOs from other countries. Apparently, this European NGO
had four member NGOs in a particular African country and 22 other NGOs were in
the process of applying to become a member since the parent European NGO was
financially supporting the member NGOs.
Extreme poverty doesn't allow boundaries for ethical behavior...
My friend was sent to visit each applicant and member NGOs to verify that they were credible and deserved the financial support they were receiving or requesting. Through that visit, 3 of the 4 members lost their member status since the money they were receiving from the European NGO was going to the “professional” NGO founders’ bank accounts with no documentation of any of the work they had promised to do being accomplished! Of the 22 only 3 deserved membership and funding.
My friend was sent to visit each applicant and member NGOs to verify that they were credible and deserved the financial support they were receiving or requesting. Through that visit, 3 of the 4 members lost their member status since the money they were receiving from the European NGO was going to the “professional” NGO founders’ bank accounts with no documentation of any of the work they had promised to do being accomplished! Of the 22 only 3 deserved membership and funding.
Poverty may hit the eye in different shapes in Africa versus
Another unbelievable story: Another European NGO transfers 2200 pounds to an African NGO. The bank employee by mistake wires 22,000 instead of 2200 by adding an extra 0. Despite numerous attempts for the African NGO to return the excess payment made to them, they never pay back. My friend tells me he has all the reason to believe that the money most likely went to buying land or a house for the director of the NGO, instead of being used for NGO purposes. No wonder my friend is so cynical and skeptical about Africa. In fact, many Europeans, having understood this dynamic, prefer raising funds in Europe and sending European people to deliver the services with those funds, how sad.
We deserve a
beer on the beach after the tension this interaction created. We find another restaurant and settle at a table on the beach. They do have Guinness, my only favorite beer! The sun sets beautifully to our left one more time as kids play in the infectious waters of Lake Victoria. I wonder where the truth is: Are these waters as dangerous as they are portrayed to be to us Westerners? Are they safe enough as Africans clearly experience it by swimming in it in a non-chalant manner just as I would do in the Aegean? Or is it somewhere in between... Won't know the answer at least during this visit. My friend tells me that there is an interesting economy here. Most of the food naturally grows all around; mangos, bananas, jack fruit, passion fruit are some of the food items that nobody pays for. There is also an exchange economy among the neighbors with no money exchange. Thus, there is a baseline food availability that doesn't require a formal economy. The rest of the economy on the other hand, that requires governmental organization suffers big time due to corruption and ethnic wars that cripple many African countries.
Symbiotic or parasitic life forms?
Claire tells me that the eggs we enjoy every morning come from her mother. She enjoys quite a bit of services, though, I assume she is able to do with the income she receives in USD from her tenants. She hires a taxi-driver, Ismail, available to her at any hour of the day to pick up and deliver her guests to and from the airport, a brief 10-minute ride. She has a security guard Ali, who is on the premise 24/7, and perhaps lives there. She hires help, Janet for the house-cleaning. Janet not only cleans the rooms for guests but also cleans the entire house. Quite a businesswoman that Clair is. When my friend needs the taxi service to the airport a day before I, Claire gets serious and tells him, he will have to pay for it since she provides only two pick-up/deliveries for her guests. Understandable and my friend obliges gracefully. Why is there a tense expression her face though? Did she think, we wouldn't want to pay that extra? Was she getting ready for a "fight" with assumed "small-mind" on my friend's part? Who knows. When my friend complies, she relaxes right away, that's what counts.
A restaurant in the neighborhood! I didn't dare trying it...
The restaurants on the coast are mostly for the visitors and the rich Africans. Thus, the service is accordingly. Staff is smart and consider making clients comfortable even with the lake flies phenomenon: They turn all the lights to red after dark to avoid the attack of lake flies, apparently they come only to white light. We are happy to eat our cream of mushroom soup, vegetable pizza, and goat stew with sweet potatoes, the latter being the best food I will have in Entebbe. After dinner, we enjoy our watermelon that we purchased from a vendor in downtown Entebbe right after our boat trip at the end of the day. Paul, Claire’s sweet son is still awake and will enjoy some of the fruit along with us.
Claire tells me that the eggs we enjoy every morning come from her mother. She enjoys quite a bit of services, though, I assume she is able to do with the income she receives in USD from her tenants. She hires a taxi-driver, Ismail, available to her at any hour of the day to pick up and deliver her guests to and from the airport, a brief 10-minute ride. She has a security guard Ali, who is on the premise 24/7, and perhaps lives there. She hires help, Janet for the house-cleaning. Janet not only cleans the rooms for guests but also cleans the entire house. Quite a businesswoman that Clair is. When my friend needs the taxi service to the airport a day before I, Claire gets serious and tells him, he will have to pay for it since she provides only two pick-up/deliveries for her guests. Understandable and my friend obliges gracefully. Why is there a tense expression her face though? Did she think, we wouldn't want to pay that extra? Was she getting ready for a "fight" with assumed "small-mind" on my friend's part? Who knows. When my friend complies, she relaxes right away, that's what counts.
A restaurant in the neighborhood! I didn't dare trying it...
The restaurants on the coast are mostly for the visitors and the rich Africans. Thus, the service is accordingly. Staff is smart and consider making clients comfortable even with the lake flies phenomenon: They turn all the lights to red after dark to avoid the attack of lake flies, apparently they come only to white light. We are happy to eat our cream of mushroom soup, vegetable pizza, and goat stew with sweet potatoes, the latter being the best food I will have in Entebbe. After dinner, we enjoy our watermelon that we purchased from a vendor in downtown Entebbe right after our boat trip at the end of the day. Paul, Claire’s sweet son is still awake and will enjoy some of the fruit along with us.
Our last
morning together is bitter sweet for both of us. The wonderful days we had
together will get integrated into the memoire of our indispensable friendship.
Who knows when we will see each other again, looking at our history, we bumped
into each other, as hard as we tried, every ten years or so since departing from
med school. Our special history started with a "could be perceived as a very negative interaction: We both attended a special college-prep middle-high school in Turkey where the educational language was English. Since we had to pass a two-level national exam to be excepted to that school, most families hired private tutors to prepare their children for the exam series. Thus, most kids that made it to that school came from affluent, wealthy families, but not all of us. 
I am proud that the new generations of my high school are of protests spirit, too... "Resist Gezi Park, Bornova Anadolu High School is with you"
My friend calls the ones, who didn't have private tutors but made it to the school "the peasants" since we all came from either rural Turkey or urban working class families. The moment I had walked into our school, I had figured out "if I want to survive among these rich kids, I must study hard". Coupled with my father's oppressive "you have to accomplish anything and everything at 100% level", I did work hard. Throughout my childhood I was always fearful to get less than 100% on my exams. A score of 95 out of 100 would meet my father’s condescending “What, you think, this is good, come to me when you get 100 out of 100” statement. How sad, I spent all my childhood to gain approval of and praise from my father that I was good and enough. It took me 40 years to understand this was a form of child emotional abuse: Parents trying to fill in the void in themselves by forcing their children to the limits
There was a time we had a very lengthy homework to complete over a
weekend for one of our classes. It was unthinkable for the 13 year-old Resmiye
not to have completed her homework. Thus came Monday, I had 20-30 pages of that
voluminous homework done, ready to display to the teacher, who would always
check the homework before starting every class. After recess, I came to my
desk, took out my notebook in which the homework was… rather was supposed to
be. I looked though all the pages with no avail, my homework had disappeared.
This is the kind of notebook we would be using 40 years ago in Turkey in our schools
As I was enveloped with anxiety around “What will I tell the teacher?” I
noticed a chunk of paper underneath the two staples that held the pages of the
notebook together. “My homework was ripped off of my notebook” landed on my
head like a hammer! Sitting in the front row of the class, the nerd I was, I always sat in the front row, I turned around to see if I would catch a face that would tell me who had done it. No clue… What started pounding in my head at that moment was “Somebody hates me in this class…”, was it only one body hating me or the entire class?
This might have been the reflection of my inner turmoil on my face 40+ years ago that day
I had never known despair the way I was acquainted with
that day. I turned around, silent, sad, ready to cry, but still holding
together. When the teacher asked about the homework, there was such uproar
about how difficult it was, how long it was, and how we needed more time, yes
indeed, I also needed more time! The teacher gave in and started teaching the
class without checking the homework. As the day wore away, the question in my mind was “What did I do
for them to hate me like this?” I knew the answer, though... I was such a hard working
student, exclusively indulged in it, I probably made other students feel bad about themselves. 
I could have easily been this mini teacher- substitute in my elementary school
“Did I help
them enough?” followed since in elementary school, the teacher had used me
almost as a substitute teacher and I was a helper. But not in this school,
everybody was equally smart here, it had never occurred to me that some might
have needed my help. What to do next was the big question in my mind: I
couldn’t tell my parents about this. They could come to school and escalate the
issue that would create more tension and perhaps more hatred toward me.
My high school class
generated many national and international leaders including Tunc Soyer, who is one of rare honest politicians in the country
I cried three days in a row, in bed, alone, without being able to
share this with anybody. Devastated with being hated by at least some body,
most likely by a lot of “bodies” in what had become a place of existence for
me. Hopeless, not knowing even where to look for a voice of wisdom to help me
out of this mess. I knew deep in my heart, it was me, myself, and I alone that
would get me out into the light. 
Another friend Rasit Tukel, a professor of psychiatry and head of Turkish Medical Association was recently arrested by the Turkish government for informing the government that the civil war was a public health issue!
Alp Ayan, another psychiatrist from my class has been a staunch activist for human rights in Turkey and received scholar at risk status from Harvard University
My dear friend Onder Ozkalipci has been an expert working with numerous human rights organizations all over the world
Our cheating technique was no different than this
Did I ever feel guilty? Once: At the end of the semester, our teacher came to class and proudly announced “I finally taught Turkish grammar to all of you. You should be proud of yourselves”. Nobody giggled, neither did I. My heart cringed, I don’t know if he ever found out about our conspiracy… We mastered our in-exam learning practices in a variety of ways pulling other nerds into the group: 4-5 students including me would take on one of a,b,c,d,e options in math tests. If the answer to a question were “a” for instance, and I were the “a” designee, I would find something in the foil of the question I pretended I couldn’t read or understand and raise my hand to ask the teacher. That would be the cue to the entire class that the answer to that question was “a”.
We were more inconspicuous than this, of course... Out of a 20-question test, if 5-6 such public questions were asked, everybody would get at least a quarter of the test right!! This continued almost a year until the teacher must have smelled something fishy and reprimanded me with a “No more questions, answer as best as you can with what you read on your test”. That was the end of it, but everybody passed their math class that semester!
This is exactly how I felt my friend was telling me the truth
I don’t know how and where I found that
courage and inner wisdom to confront myself with what I was doing wrong rather
than developing a defensive negativity to what somebody had done to me. Was it
my mother’s kindness and openness to all ways of human existence that she had
instilled in me without my knowing it? Most likely…
Alp Ayan, another psychiatrist from my class has been a staunch activist for human rights in Turkey and received scholar at risk status from Harvard University
I made a decision; I had to change my attitude toward my friends
and success. I had to help them somehow, I had to focus on lifting all of us
together rather than on my own success. It wasn’t an easy path. The first was
easier: Although I didn’t have the communication skills to reach out to my
friends to offer help with classes in a tactful way, I found a way to help them
with their scores… Perhaps not the most ethical way, but it won me their
hearts, and we discovered the technique of learning together while taking
exams!
My dear friend Onder Ozkalipci has been an expert working with numerous human rights organizations all over the world
In Turkish literature class for instance, our teacher, who had
exceptional command of Turkish grammar wanted us all to do the same. In every
exam, half the score was on identifying all types of clauses in an almost page long
one single sentence: solving a grammar puzzle! Being in love with languages
including my own mother tongue, I loved such exercises and was good at that.
During each exam, I would “solve” the sentence for myself and transfer the
solution to four small pieces of paper, folded into a pea size bullet, each one
of these would go in four directions of the classroom, traveling as far as they
could throughout the exam hour…
Our cheating technique was no different than thisDid I ever feel guilty? Once: At the end of the semester, our teacher came to class and proudly announced “I finally taught Turkish grammar to all of you. You should be proud of yourselves”. Nobody giggled, neither did I. My heart cringed, I don’t know if he ever found out about our conspiracy… We mastered our in-exam learning practices in a variety of ways pulling other nerds into the group: 4-5 students including me would take on one of a,b,c,d,e options in math tests. If the answer to a question were “a” for instance, and I were the “a” designee, I would find something in the foil of the question I pretended I couldn’t read or understand and raise my hand to ask the teacher. That would be the cue to the entire class that the answer to that question was “a”.
We were more inconspicuous than this, of course... Out of a 20-question test, if 5-6 such public questions were asked, everybody would get at least a quarter of the test right!! This continued almost a year until the teacher must have smelled something fishy and reprimanded me with a “No more questions, answer as best as you can with what you read on your test”. That was the end of it, but everybody passed their math class that semester!
This is exactly how I felt my friend was telling me the truth
Months went by after the notebook incident: This very friend who
is with me now in Uganda and I were in the classroom during lunch hour one day,
all alone. He asked me out of the blue “Resmiye, did you ever wonder who ripped
your notebook months ago with that homework?” I was startled “Is he going to
tell me who did it? Why, after so many months?” I found the courage to say “I
don’t know, I guess it is not important, I was so self-centered I thought I
deserved it.” He looked at me piercingly as he always did throughout our lives
when he wanted to get a point across and spilled these three words out “I did
it.” 
I am glad in all my loneliness, I was able to see what happened to me at age 13, exactly like this
My heart sank a bit, but I appreciated his honesty as I always would
throughout our friendship. Since that day, we became best friends, despite
distances in time and geography, our friendship always continued flourishing to
this day. Years later, I learned that in fact it was not him but another dear
friend of mine, who had ripped my homework off of my notebook!!! Even in that
testing moment, he was being big, bigger than life. I love my friends… Little did I know, that seemingly and slightly violent act and the
seemingly insignificant decision that I had made after three days of crying
would change me forever and set the first foundational stone in my life: Do
good for the WHOLE, you get lifted as much as others are lifted…
How could I know semi-hostile punishment by my friends would teach me this great lesson at age 13
And now I am learning that Buddhist philosophy is teaching the same non-duality and interconnectedness and inter-being as Thic Nhat Hanh would say: Indeed, we are all inter-connected, we can neither be happy nor save our own skin without reducing if not eliminating the pain and suffering of others. I have learned over the last decade that simply dedicating your life to big causes doesn't cut it, either. The greatest fulfillment comes from doing acts of kindness for individuals, be it a friend, an acquaintance, a beggar.... Yet, one also needs to be careful about how much we give out and how much we take care of ourselves. After four decades over those days, having found my path to mindfulness, meditation and Buddhist philosophy, I am now trying to conquer the balance between compassion for one’s self and for others.
And now I am learning that Buddhist philosophy is teaching the same non-duality and interconnectedness and inter-being as Thic Nhat Hanh would say: Indeed, we are all inter-connected, we can neither be happy nor save our own skin without reducing if not eliminating the pain and suffering of others. I have learned over the last decade that simply dedicating your life to big causes doesn't cut it, either. The greatest fulfillment comes from doing acts of kindness for individuals, be it a friend, an acquaintance, a beggar.... Yet, one also needs to be careful about how much we give out and how much we take care of ourselves. After four decades over those days, having found my path to mindfulness, meditation and Buddhist philosophy, I am now trying to conquer the balance between compassion for one’s self and for others.
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This sums it all, to be kind to others, we must be kind to ourselves... Easier said than done..
Following our last breakfast when my friend and I enjoy our mango and watermelon, we chat about Buddhist Philosophy and Psychology. I wish I had been exposed to both much earlier in life. I probably would have dealt with my childhood anxiety in ways that would have brought less stress and more joy to my life. But… Never too late, better than never, I will move on with doing my best to be mindful of my breath, my thoughts, my feelings and bodily sensations when faced with especially stressful situations as well as positive experiences with a hooking quality. As Pema Chodron recommends, “swim in the middle of the river, don’t crave to get to the shore, enjoy the swim…”
A lot of times, what makes us dissatisfied is not appreciating the beauty and treasure we already have right around us
As we give each other our last hug, one more time, I feel deeply what a good, kind, and caring friend I have in him and how deep and strong our friendship is. I wish English had had the word equivalent to “Dost” in Turkish. Friend, which is “Arkadas” in Turkish doesn’t cut it for me to define “Dost”. Dost in Turkish is one that you can open your naked soul to, who will be there for you in good and bad times to help, to protect and to care for you, with whom you may dive into experiences and get out intact with a renewed sense of connection. He is my dost and I am his, we both know this.
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| Dostluk, deep friendship doesn't require to be side by side all the time. It is to have the deep souls and hearts facing each other (Rumi) |
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