Am I a Dreamer?

Am I a dreamer? I think sometimes I am a dreamer, but its only to avoid something unpleasant. Most of the time I am right there, living in reality. What is my reality now? Where do I feel that I fit in to the crazy world? It's something that I know changes all the time. Right now, I am in Kazakhstan. I am volunteering for an NGO that provides training and information to Women's Crisis Centers in Kazakhstan. It's not the work I thought I would be doing when I came here, but its what I am doing. Apparently the Peace Corps does not do direct service anymore. So my program is NGO development, something I have no experience in and something my organization does not want. Go figure. Instead, I have been developing trainings for social workers and psychologists.
Here's a side note, relating to nothing, but which I take the chance to say every chance I get: I have fallen madly in love with someone here, and she is making my life so much better. It is interesting to be with someone who is interested in me, for a change. Who cares about me. She makes me feel so loved, in the most beautiful sense of the word. It makes me happy ;0)

So then, what do I dream of? Having an impact on the world, this much is true. Sometimes here I feel that I could not possibly have an impact on the world. Kazakhstan, where women are told that in order to be women, real women, they must be married and have children, does not seem to want real change in gender relations. They have the terminology down. The talk about equality, and better paid jobs. But I don't see equality in relationships, or in life in general here. I had a 16 year old girl ask me if I went home every night and cried and thought about suicide because I was alone (this was before I fell in love). I said that I did not look to someone else to make me happy, I was happy with myself, and did not define myself based on being with someone. She didn't understand. There is nothing more annoying than being pitied by a 16 year old girl. I wanted to say, in four years you will working, cooking, cleaning, doing your husband's laundry, taking care of your children, and feeding everyone while your husband plays cards on the corner eating sunflower seeds. But I didn't. She should live in her dreamworld as long as she can.

This, however, was not nearly as disturbing as talking to someone who I thought was becoming a friend, and having him tell me that if he had a gun he would kill all suspected gay men. I said, why? He said because he was Muslim. I said, I know many Muslims and not all of them believe that it is ok to kill someone at all, let alone because they love men. He said, predictably, "because it is unnatural". I said, ok, you are allowed to believe that, but why do they have to die? Why can't you just not love men, and leave it at that? No, he said, they must die. It was chilling. I had no response, except to ask the question, but what about women? And he said, no, they can live. They are not unnatural, they are just not using all of their brains. They have been treated badly by men, so it is actually a man's fault when a woman is a lesbian. I was speechless. It was so patronizing. Oddly, its the same thing my grandmother believes. She told me once that my 70 something year old aunt wasn't a lesbian, that she had just been treated badly by men. This was kind of shocking to me, because my Aunt had been out and about for probably close to 50 years at the time, and the only man I had ever heard of her dating had been my grandfather. That is an interesting story, but one for another time. So I had no response for my "friend". The most chilling aspect of this was that I had just come out to him, a decision that I did not take lightly because of the fact that I am in a foreign country whose rules I did not grow up knowing. So to have someone calmly tell me that they would kill gay men if they had a gun, and oh, yeah, I forgot about this part, that he had in the past actually beat up men he thought were gay, just as if he were talking about eating dinner with someone, "Oh, I ate dinner last night with my brother at this great new cafe, and, by the way, if I had a gun I would kill gay men." I was very angry and quiet and when he left my house (yes, he said this to me at my house, at a dinner party I was having. Nice guest, huh?) as he left my house he said, "Sorry if I offended you." I said, "What do you mean you are sorry? Of course you offended me. Violence offends me. Ignorance offends me. Fear masking as religious belief offends me." We also had a discussion about women's rights, and he said that he believed, as a Muslim man, that women should cover themselves. I asked why? He said because men cannot control their sexual urges. I said, "So because men have no self-control, women have to walk around covered from head to toe? Why don't men just learn to take responsibility for their actions?" He said, predictably once again, "It's our culture." (He's Kazakh.) I said, "Well, it is also your culture to live in yurts and ride a horse, but that BMW out there doesn't look like a horse to me." He had no response that time. I must take the time to say that this is not a tirade against Muslims. I think there are many beautiful things about Islamic culture. Islamic scholars discovered science and political thought when the west was still living in the dark ages. Islamic architecture is breathtaking in its simplicity and grace. My favorite poet is Rumi. (Actually, I don't really like poetry at all except for Rumi. Usually I can't get into it. But Rumi is so immediate to me, so personal.) Islamic art is elegant, glorifying God through abstracted calligraphy. In fact, I have a huge tattoo on my back, from neck to waist, that is inspired by Islamic art. The bottom of the tattoo says, "Peace" in Farsii, and a flower grows from the word peace, along my spine, ending on my neck. It is very beautiful. I got it in response to the war in Iraq, which I have always been against, just like I was against the war in Afghanistan. I believe in Peace above all else, and on many levels. But I hate it anytime someone uses religion to justify violence. I am not religious, but it seems to me that violence is the direct opposite of religion.

Anyway, maybe I am living in a dream, grown from the seeds of my first true hearing of John Lennon's imagine, because when I was little, and I heard that song, I believed. I thought, hey, if we can imagine all the people living in peace, than it can happen. Maybe I am a dreamer. But I know, for sure, that I am not the only one.