Scandinavia: An Introduction

Hello?

For a while now, there's been something wrong. Somehow, somewhere along the line, this blog became something in my mind which it was never meant to be when it started, it outgrew itself and went through some sort of mid-life crisis - it lost shape and energy, its very reason came under question, it grew inert. The need to write began filling me with apprehension, with emptiness, with fear. Once upon a time it was a way to say hello to friends and loved ones around the world, and just express whatever was in my head, or in the streets and skies and hearts and minds around me - but at some point it became something else, it hung above me threateningly, it taunted me, as if saying "you're not good enough anymore. Your writing is not as intelligent, not as beautiful, not as thoughtful as Bec's or Marty's or Patricks. Your photographs are nothing like the brothers Eaton. Your thoughts are repeats, your emotions thin and familiar. They don't want to read about that, not now".

I know this is a stupid way to think. I know that even if it was true, it shouldn't matter, because this is for me, its for my parents, its for my most forgiving and loving friends, its for my children, its for my memory. It's the only way I've ever found by which I actually maintain some sort of commitment to writing - and I must start again now, before I lose this one last medium, before the doubt and paralysis overtakes completely. I must write regularly from here on out - If I can't do it in this six months, when I'm all the way over here, experiencing these things, learning all that I am learning, then something is massively wrong.

I've been meaning to kick off this "new phase" of the blog for a while. I meant to use it to mark the end of my period in Canberra, and to process my quick return to Perth, and to herald my arrival in Scandinavia two weeks ago. But this has been a hard post to write. I've stalled on it again and again, distracted myself just as I've sat down to write. And for whatever reason I needed it first, as a page break, a border, a full stop, a new paragraph. Hopefully with this posted, we can forget about the lapses over the past few months, and I can just start using this more as I always intended it, with entries frequent, imperfect, and likely rambling. This is ok. At least it is better than silence.

Right now I am living in a school in a small village with an unpronounceable name (Svogerslev) which is a few kilometers from the city of Roskilde on the island of Zealand in the nation state of Denmark. I am living here with 24 others from 9 countries, and we are working together with CISV and with the Youth Association of the Danish Red Cross in a refugee asylum center nearby. The families that live here are mostly on their way out - the system has pulled and shunted them around for up to seven years, but their temporary residence visas are about to run out, and they have been denied permanent residence, so they are due to be returned to their countries soon enough. There is despair, and there is pain, and there is depression in this place, especially with the adults and the teenage kids, who remember life before Scandinavia, and understand completely what uncertainty may come next. The younger kids, meanwhile, the ones we are working with, mostly, are left confused, bored and scared. Boys and girls from Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Kosovo float above the grass in the Danish countryside. We spoke earlier in the week to an Iraqi Kurdish guy who had grown up in the Danish asylum seeking system, and had been lucky enough to be able to stay on in the country. We heard about his family being sent a bill to pay for the bullets that the Iraqi government had used to execute his uncle. We heard about the psychological pain his father went through during seven years of imprisonment, and the damage caused to his mother as she tried to get her children out of Iraq and to keep them in Denmark, and to keep them alive. And these were horrible stories to hear, incredible and hard stories, but they have become so real, working with these kids, watching them move and talk and think and play, and doing all these things with them. It is an honor, and it is devastating.

I am blessed too to be working here with some incredible people, with warmth and intelligence and creativity and real, thick, creamy compassion. I invite (actually I implore) you now to read a blog entry written by one of the girls I am doing all this with, Joanna from Canada, who is 20 years old, and very inspiring - and you should read it because she says everything I have been thinking, everything I want to be able to express, and she says it amazingly well. Her blog can be found here: http://ideas-thegrandtour.blogspot.com/

I will try to write every two days or so for the next six months at least. Maybe more. I really hope it will be no less. Right now its the middle of the night and there are still birds chortling and squeaking outside, like this: "chauuuuchooootwitttercheeeechoootweet". There are always birds making these noises, which makes me think that Danes don't need windchimes. Today I sat in the grass and planned pirate activities and made daisy chains and we fit three grown people on the tyre flying fox. This is the beginning of the Scandinavianised version of the Standard Line Delivery System. Velkomme til.