The Mamak Chronicles: The Outdoors

Another early tangle with Subang-KL traffic brought us to the MERCY Malaysia warehouse around 9 o’clock in the morning. Our mission for the day was to mantle and dismantle inflatable Rofi tents that would be used as temporary clinics in disaster areas. We had to do this so that our coworkers could write instruction manuals that MERCY Malaysia volunteers would use when they went to these disaster areas. This exercise also conveniently doubled as an internship excuse to drag reluctant manpower out on a Saturday morning, as one of our co-workers so cheerfully described it. We figured that it couldn’t be an internship if we weren’t asked to do some unwanted grunt work once in awhile, so out to the warehouse we went.

At the warehouse parking lot a group of volunteers were already there; some new like us, and some that have been on missions before. The mission vets took the lead, giving out instructions and appointing a team leader. The heavy bulky package needed to be unwrapped, rolled out and stretched out to lay the floor of the tent. This required all eight of us (four to a side) to be on our knees rolling the heavy tent flaps open. Then two people would attach a pump to one of the valves found on the side of the tent and begin to inflate. The inflation has to start at one end of the large tent to the other, and as one end goes up another two people have to march inside the semi-inflated dimness with support beams and place them horizontally between inflating arches to later serve mission doctors as a place to hang IV tubes and electrical wires and such. When the tent is fully erected, everybody has to get out and, grasping the handles found along the tent edges, lift and pull for their lives to ensure that the tent stands straight and steady (and isn’t likely to cave in on a bunch of civil-war patients because of one unchecked rumple under a supporting arch).

In the time it took to set up the tent, ominous dark clouds were rolling in over the warehouse and the sharp smell of dirt accompanied the prickly feeling of approaching rain. “It’s going to rain,” said a coworker unhelpfully as she watched the eight of us from the curb she sat on. “Yeah, we know, what else are we going to do? Leave the tent half-open?” replied a co-volunteer. We could feel the low atmospheric pressure on our backs, and working against the clouds and the clock we managed to stretch out the tent for the final time before those dark clouds broke and a sheet of water thundered down on us. We ran into the tent amid the team organizer’s cries of “real action ma!” and once inside, we watched the rain from the tent door.

“Real action ma!” is one way to describe it. Until then, we’d been holed up in the office writing about situations we’d never seen in places we’d never been. Even though we’ve studied about what happens in a war or a tsunami and the consequences that follow, this was the first time that we could actually visualize it. We could see the volunteers struggling to unroll tarp and put up polls in the middle of a disaster zone. We could see the patients crowding the beds with IV tubes plugged into them hanging from the beams of the tent. The work we’d been doing in the office wasn’t being faxed out into some black hole; it was going to real places with real people.

Sitting in the tent, listening to the rain thud on the tarp above our heads was the best part of our morning. The cool, dark atmosphere instilled a sense of calm in the rush of the day’s activities. Cut off from the world in those few moments, we all receded into ourselves. And that’s when it dawned on the two of us that this very tent that we were in would soon be a temporary sanctuary for the suffering and the dying. So many people will do their last rites here, while for others this tent will be a place of painful resurrection. We looked at the plastic floor covering , the blank canvas walls, the smooth arches: the tent had become a temple. We silently waited for the rain to stop, then walked back out into our lives, with not a wrecked home or a drop of blood in sight.

–

The Mamak Chronicles documents the Malaysian summer of Nour Merza and Khalisah Stevens. With the convenient excuse of an internship, these two half Americans find their way into the heart of Kuala Lumpur, where, in between haggling over souvenirs and missing buses, they sustain themselves by frequenting the food stalls that line the streets of the city. It is in these Mamaks that they discover the lifeblood of all that is Malaysian.

Welcome to the Mamak

“My folks aren’t too cool about me interning in a potential war-zone,” Nour said with a shrug at the dinner table.

“You should go to Malaysia then! We have NGOs there, too!” said Khalisah’s mom eagerly. Khalisah and Nour exchanged a look of interest that conveyed the possibility of working and living together in a vibrant city; a look that glinted with the opportunity of independence, new people, unintelligible languages, spicy food, wacky culture and –

“Argh!” Khalisah flinched. “We haven’t even looked into anything in Malaysia together! The deadline for internships is a few weeks away! It’ll never happen.” Nour continued to smile. “It’ll never happen, Nour.” The smile got wider. Khalisah narrowed her eyes as she said, “I’ll believe it when I see the plane tickets.”

–

Hi, we’re Khalisah Stevens and Nour Merza, the authors of the Mamak Chronicles.  At the end of last spring semester (in between paper deadlines, exams and failed fax machines in Syria) we found ourselves hanging in internship limbo. Our university requires all third-year students to get a summer of training with an approved organization – without such an internship, we would not be able to graduate with our classmates the following year. As our deadline was fast approaching, our chances of getting an internship were fast receding. We were about to resign ourselves to a sweltering summer in Dubai when an email came through.

“It is with great pleasure that we inform you of your acceptance into the Mercy Malaysia Internship Program for the summer of 2009.”

We were psyched.

Mercy Malaysia is a non-profit organization that provides immediate relief to crisis situations around the world. With a background in international relations, we were both interested in aid work, and Mercy Malaysia’s credentials put it right up our street. The organization has projects going on across the globe, from Indonesia and Sri Lanka to Afghanistan and Iraq. Suddenly, our new theme song was “You got me begging you for Mercy, yeah, yeah!” We couldn’t wait to get started.

A few weeks later, we found ourselves in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, battling train, bus and taxi to make our way to and from the office; a process that begins every day at six a.m. and can end as late as nine p.m. Tiring? Yes.

Luckily for us, we find solace in the marvel that is the mamak. Found on every street corner, mamak stalls are greasy havens that provide locals and tourists alike a place to eat, congregate, and watch the latest match between Barcelona and Manchester United. It is in these mamaks where we begin our day with yawns and egg roti chennai, and end our evenings rehashing the events of the last fourteen hours amid the warm bustle of waiters taking orders, cats scavenging for scraps under tables, and motorcycles beeping as they zip by.

These nighttime discussions gave birth to the Mamak Chronicles. So pull up a chair, order a round of cool teh ais, and follow the accounts of our adventures – and misadventures – in Malaysia.

Analyzing the Serve Act

The Obama Administration hopes that the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act will have Americans embrace service of country again.

The 5.7 billion dollar bill is creating approximately 200,000 new AmeriCorps service positions over the next 8 years. It’s an opportunity as the country wrestles with the most threatening financial crises since the depression.

The Serve Act also creates innovative incentives; such as provisions that let seniors volunteer and forward the rewards to family or mentored youth as educational scholarships.

In President Obam’s estimation, the Serve America Act represents “the beginning of a new era of American service.”

“What this legislation does is to help harness…patriotism and connect deeds to needs. It creates opportunities to serve for students, seniors, and everyone in between. It supports innovation and strengthens the nonprofit sector. And it is just the beginning of a sustained, collaborative and focused effort to involve our greatest resource – our citizens – in the work of remaking this nation,” the president said.

Volunteerism is a belief system and a life lesson turned national strategy for team Obama. It is a song they have been chirping since the campaign and a policy they have promised to pursue since winning the presidential nomination.

It is still yet to be seen if the bill truly holds enough resource’s to create a cultural shift of embracing volunteerism. But President Obama’s devotion to “elevating” community service is being given a lot of responsibility for the growing positivity Americans are voicing about joining organizations like the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps.

The Peace Corps alone has seen a 40 percent increase in applications over the last year.

“If you were to compare the days January 20′th, 2008 with January 20′th, 2009 - the day Barack Obama took the oath of office - there is a 175 percent jump in application starts when comparing those two days alone,” said Kate Kuykendall, a Peace Corps public affairs specialist in Los Angeles.

Ms. Kuykendall, who served in China, said that she came back from her service with much more depth in her global understandings and believes that people will benefit in the long run from their experiences serving others.

“The Peace Corps may be for only two years,” she said, “but many continue the life of service for the rest of their lives.”

The president, himself a longtime community organizer, may believe that if he can create opportunities for community service, an actual philosophical change in the country itself is possible.

But the bill deserves to be criticized according to those who see the Serve Act representing a small “band-aid” where major surgery is needed.

“If we took only 10 percent of our total military budget and put that towards social improvement spending, we would be running out of projects for improvement,” said  James Circeloo, the Answer Coalition’s national board member and founder of Marchforward.org.

Mr. Circeloo, a former soldier, says that little help can truly come from this bill if being a teacher is less profitable then being sent to fight wars.

It’s fair to praise the positive aspects that this bill will represent said Mr. Circeloo. “But, when on any given night 200,000 veterans are living homeless,” there needs to be a dose of reality concerning where this bill falls short.