"Sir, business class is now boarding..." but the lovely round man and his overly made-up wife are indifferent to the lady. They're busy. Busy exchanging frivolities and cheerful handshakes-turned-affectionate grips-of-the-shoulder with the bearded man and his humble (understatement) wife, both in floral print t-shirt and matching hat. Upon first glance they could easily be misconceived for American tourists based on their general attire, but are quickly betrayed by the ukelele-toting bridegroom of the two. They are laughing over their chit-chat about their shared home, Aotearoa, and how just moments ago he managed to lead the entirety of Gate G93 at San Francisco Airport in a communal rendition of the old New Zealand Folk song, "Pokarekare Ana". Happily crooning New Zealanders and joyfully-confused American faces surround me. The teenage Barbie-doll with the vocabulary of 'like' one 'like' word; the modest grey-haired mother and her eye-liner donned teenage son across from me; the fanny-packed many who could scarcely imagine their luck at being serenaded by every Kiwi booked on the flight. These are the moments that make me love Aotearoa and her people. These are the sounds of New Zealand - sounds that unite man, woman and child; Maori and Pakeha; Rich (chubby man and his first-class wife) and not so rich (my ukelele friend)... but then again, what do we know anyway?... I sit back and enjoy the camaraderie, and I'm pleased to be back with "my People". And my people they are. By choice. By adoption. And my heart fills with gladness. A sensation that replace the sadness that still lingers from the gloomy parting of only a few short days ago in my true "hometown"....
'Pōkarekare ana ngā wai o Waiapu, Whiti atu koe hine marino ana e.
E hine e, hoki mai ra. Ka mate ahau, I te aroha e.
...They are agitated the waters of Waiapu, But when you cross over girl they will be calm.
Oh girl return to me, I could die of love for you.'
Moments later the clouds linger like doom at the end of our Boeing 747's wing on the runway at SFO. Just behind them the marvelous colours of the sunset, deep blue descending into violet, to orange and then disappearing. Beauty masked by a temporary darkness. The melodic sounds of my dear friend's latest album in my ear 'I am the wind... I am your friend... and I'll be the one... to carry you home.' Just days ago I sit across a table, and the bottomless cups of coffee, from this now beautiful and pensive man. Just a boy when we met 14 years ago. A meeting that sparked a soul-connection of some kind. Undefinable, but one that has only ever drifted from my heart for short moments of time before returning to my framework of affection. It takes all I have to bite my tongue, to refrain from divulging that I'd willingly uphold our 14-year old pact even now... possibly long forgotten, but never by me. A foolish, childish promise. Of back-up nuptials in the case we both ended up a stranded spinster and [what's the male version of this?] in Menno-ville where people are married by the age of 23. An improbable matrimony, an unlikely union, yet one that I ponder often. And in this moment on the run-way, leaving the thought of him behind once again, his voice echos in my ear providing a soundtrack to my life; 'I wish you were here with me... come home with me.'
I've just left Vancouver. A 2-day reunion with a dear friend from my Camp days, and an inadvertent attendance at a slightly awkward and painful, yet reminiscent and endearing '80s Christian Pop' concert. Only 3 short days ago I was still in Winnipeg, in the presence of my nearest and dearest, my mother and brother (and his beautiful lady love, Samantha); the incredible Martens family, who have adopted me into their family and are always there for me; and my childhood playmates - the kind you grow up with and never leave their side - now with families of their own. My heart aches that I'm so far from them, and yet for now, it's my reality. So I put on my best brave face, stumble through and evening of endless tears and leave them again for another few years. In these times I fear this is the reason I don't come home more often - I cannot bear this part. In living this adventure so far from here, I face the very greatest measure of emotion - the greatest joy, and in the palm of its hand - the greatest sadness. A woman torn between 2 countries, physically sanctioned to only one, my heart resides in both.
The sky turns to black as we inch down the runway and I leave behind six weeks of familiar faces and the sharing of old familiar stories and laughter. The encounter with the old and familiar... and with the newness. Like the newness of life: Baby Thomas, Baby Kaylia and her big sister Anika, Baby Jack x2 (yes, that's right, 2 Jacks - the Millers and the Elias'), Baby Caedmon, Kaila, Darwin the Boxer, and of course the beloved Kira, the 3-year old who goes by no nickname, "My name is not 'muffin', it's 'Kira Rae Orbanski'", well, yes it is! Thank-you. Who, with a squeaky voice and her mother's big blue eyes that melt your heart, looks up and says to me "Auntie Tina, do you want to brush the sugar bugs off your teeth with me?" And I can't think of anything that I'd rather do.
Then there's the newness of skill and vocation, Candace the Nurse; Laura the Addictions Counsellor who got her Masters degree and a real job and finally made her mother proud; Chris who's now a full-fledged Winnipeg City Policeman, and my favourite: Miriam the Midwife. I couldn't be more proud of this dear friend who has overcome all obstacles to fulfill her dream. She's more beautiful than ever, and I sense that this is because she enters the presence of Jesus with every new babe she escorts into the outside world; with every woman who's hand she holds whilst the mother-to-be reaches into the depths of who she is to fulfill her destiny. Her eyes and laughter are like medicine to my soul. She is one of my oldest and dearest friends who, much to my dismay has been absent from my life for too many long years. My heart is overwhelmingly grateful for the time we had together.
I sit and wonder what my return will be like... good to be home... missing my (other) home... "Tina when you got here, you sounded so retarded" he says. This thorn in my flesh, the like-a-brother I wish I never had, the husband of my dear friend Karina, "but now she sounds like a proper Manitoban"; she says, countering his brashness. Six weeks here will do that to you. And yet here I go, back to the cryptic sounds of New Zealand, to her shores and swells, and to another set of people with whom I live and love. The beauty continues... it's unending... my life is rich this way; it's the way I like it. It will never be easy, but why should it be? I have faith in my great "Enough" and I will ever be grateful to Him for allowing me to live life to it's fullest... And as we coast through the darkness, suspended in a sea of black air, the words of my dear friend permeate my ear buds one last time before I watch a bad Matthew McConaughey Rom-Com and fall asleep... 'Don't be afraid, for you or for me, You can't be safe if you want to be free. Don't be afraid, you're coming with me - you won't be safe, no, but you will be free.'
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
wrote this leaving SFO, about my time at home.....
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
25 random things
awhile ago on facebook this thing was going around.. you'd write 25 things about yourself and tag the people you wanted to read them and in turn write their 25 things and tag you back... It was quite a lot of fun so i thought I'd share my 25 things with you all...
25 random things
1. My full name is Konstantina Gille. I have no middle name because Greeks don't get middle names unless they're royalty. I feel this is unjust :) When I was baptised in the Catholic church at the age of 5 i was given my Grandma's name as a middle name 'Irene' but have not since kept it on any legal documents although I could have. Not sure why I didn't. I love my grandma.
2. I love traveling to new countries by myself. One of my favourite things to do when i get there is to walk around the supermarket or market, it teaches me a lot and helps me get my bearings. One of my least favourite things to do is "sight see".
3. I was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1980. We moved when i was 1 and lived my entire life in Winnipeg, Manitoba until I went to Samoa when i was 22. and moved to Auckland, NZ when I was 24, been here ever since and hopefully for awhile longer.... ;)
4. I live in Mangere, South Auckland, one of the most scorned neighbourhoods in the our fine City, and I LOVE IT! I particularly love going to the supermarket and wandering around watching the families interact with eachother, sometimes it's really wonderful and sometimes it's absolutely tragic.. both give me a lot to think about and fill me with all sorts of emotions, I enjoy this process.
5. I LOVE to cook!! In life i want to have enough money to take care of my family and feed my friends on a regular basis, without requiring them to bring anything along. Long live the potluck, but I kind of secretly hate it.
6. I LOVE to eat! I worry that I'm going to become obese because I am in love with food. but most of it is good food, I don't eat copious amounts of sugar and I don't drink sugary fizzy drinks. My weakness is chips.
7. My genealogy consists of 50% Greek, the rest is French, Swedish, and Flemish (Belgium).
8. I get really into watching TV and I like it and yet I also hate it because it's such a time-waster.
9. From the time I was 5 if people would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say "a Mum", truth be told, it's still the only thing i want to be when I grow up, but in the meantime I'll try to do my best at everything else that comes my way in preparation for the hardest/best job on the planet.
10. I absolutely hate the fact that the internet has basically given way for all of mankind to publicly misspell words. I think it looks so wrong to have so many errors in type or print.. at least if it's in handwriting it's not meant to be always right.
11. I would rather drive a greater distance to get somewhere than be stuck in traffic, even if it takes me longer to get there in the end. I hate being stuck in traffic.
12. I enjoy becoming fluent in all international versions of English. moving from North America to NZ and having several British (and other) friends has been helpful in this process. these include but are not limited to: trainers/runners/sneakers/tennis shoes, dummy/soother/pacifier, EFTPOS/Interac/Debit/Bank card, and the plethora of words that the Brits have for dodgy things... the list goes on and on.... I'd now like to move on to other languages, I'd love to speak French and think I should have paid more attention in french class.. i can conjugate most verbs, and ask to go to the toilet, that's about all.
13. I enjoy details. Not like of how things work, but more people details. I like to know how to spell and pronounce people's names correctly, and remember how they take their coffee.
14. I could literally list 100s of foods i miss from home that I can't find here, and am thoroughly enjoying seeing the slow emergence of them in NZ supermarkets.
15. When I was 7 a piece of glass from a light fixture broken in a pillow fight fell square between my eyes missing both by less than a centimeter and cut my nose open. I had 7 stitches to fix it up and that year for Halloween i was a stitch-face clown... not sure why we didn't do Frankenstein or something... you can now hardly see the scar. I use my eyes everyday as a tribute to Jesus for helping me keep them both and i try to show people my face every day as a tribute to the awesome doctors that stitched me up.
16. In the last year I have attended 2 of my friend's home births and never felt more alive... I think one day i will possibly become a midwife, i think I'd like that.
17. My favourite hobby is photography. I particularly love taking photos of people, my friends particularly hate that, apart from Aimee, woks and Janine. ;) they love it. As much as i love taking pictures of people, i really can't decide whether getting into wedding photography is for me. Even more than people, i LOVE taking pictures of food. i would like a macro lens, i would also like a wide-angle lens... i am currently in the market for both. :)
18. i didn't see the ocean until i was 16 in Vancouver, I didn't swim in it until i was 22 in Samoa. My entire life I swam in lakes and loved it, but now it seems strange. Sometimes when I'm in the ocean though I often stop and reflect on how incredible it is and how a prairie girl who never thought she'd leave home, ended up in this beautiful place!
19. I can say the alphabet backwards, I can also pronounce it as one long word, abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz, I learned this from Big Bird when i was 5. I can also recite Flanders Fields, which i had to memorise for grade 6 English when i was 11, and Ice Ice Baby which i had to learn to be friends with Laura and Alana when i was 17. These things just stick. but i forget really useful information on a regular basis.
20. I am a closet country fan.. (because it's incredibly uncool in NZ) but secretly i still love listening to Dixie Chicks, Kenny Rogers and Garth Brooks. I especially love listening to old Tim McGraw and Reba McIntyre hits from the early 90s because it reminds me of those days.... and of growing up with my girls. It was great music back then.
21. I used to resent my mother for not enrolling me in Piano, or dance, or baseball, or anything else of the sort because i felt like i wasn't good at anything. Then i realised that she tried and I always hated it. When i got to High school I participated in every extra mural activity that I could to prove to myself that i was good at things. I think I burned out in high school a few times... ?
22. When I was in grade 6 my teacher Mr Betker never quizzed me on my times tables because I was a "smart" kid. He quizzed all the dumb kids and drilled it into them until they memorised it but never made me do it. To this day i don't actually have my times tables memorised, when i need them, I calculate really fast... i feel this is inadequate.
23. I have had the same best friend since I was 4. We met in my front lawn one day when my brother and I were playing in a refrigerator box. We've been through a lot together. I can't tag her in this note because she deleted her facebook to spend more time with her family... i love her for that.
24. I once watched an episode of the Cosby show when Dr Huckstible removed Rudy's friend's dimples at her 5th birthday party, for many years I thought people who had dimples could remove them, I could never truly figure out how this worked.
25. I am a Christ-follower and believe that one of the most important themes in the Bible is for us to be generous and kind to the poor. I truly believe with my whole heart that there is enough wealth in the planet and in each of our individual nations to eradicate poverty and that we'd all be ok if we learned to give more to other people and less to ourselves. This seems to be a particularly difficult concept for us to even acknowledge, let alone grasp, because we live in a culture where what you can earn and own is more important than the condition of our families and communities, and yet I'm sure that's not who we were made to be. I don't think Jesus was joking or just talking smack when he said 'don't store up treasures on earth' and 'sell all you have a give to the poor'. I think he actually meant it, but we don't want to believe it (me included). I think that's why most of the planet is unhappy. I also sometimes think that if i had better stuff I'd be happier, and yet I know that's not true. I think the only way to break cycles of poverty and abuse is to start with women and children, they're actually very resilient and sometimes just need a bit of a break to get out of shitty circumstances and get their families on track, and I've seen it happen. I'm trying to learn how to be more generous and trying to help other people learn as well, i think it's my life calling. Sometimes I think communism in itself is a good idea but has been screwed up by egomeniacle shitheads and so it's never worked. that's what i have to say about that.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Forced to Move
Just wanted to send this on, to those of you who have taken some interest in my time in Cambodia and my team that I worked with in the slum. I just got this email from my friend Mel explaining a raid that took place in the slum area in Phnom Penh that they work in.
You may recall my saying that the government was unhappy with the location of the slum (in Phnom Penh) and wanting to clean up the town by moving the families out to a new location 20k outside the city. This was happening slowly when i was there and consistently since then, shipping families out one at a time, giving them space in the 'relocation area' and tearing their homes down in the old slum and putting up razor wire so they wouldn't return or rebuild. I saw a few families trying to build walls through the middle of their homes so that it appeared they owned more than one home in the old area so they would be given more space in the new area, I remember being shocked that they had to revert to this. I also remember people frantically trying to get petitions signed to prevent the government from moving them; clearly an unprofitable effort with a corrupt government, but now this sort of thing just seems horrible. Please read on and pray for Cambodia, a lot of the families that are in slums are vietnamese refugees and have no land rights, so will now be completely homeless, a lot of them are Khmer who were once prosperous before Khmer Rouge destroyed the nation in the mass genocide in the 70's, and now have nothing. I can't imagine having nothing. and what little you have being taken from you, from the very people who are meant to protect you and maintain justice for you. I can't imagine scrimping and saving every 100 riel (few cents), hiding it in walls in the house only to have it all taken from you suddenly without warning.
having been there and meeting people makes this really real to me and hopefully somehow to you too... just think we should think of them...
love, tina
------------------------
From: Timothy and Melani Chan
Date: 27 January 2009 6:19:14 AM
Just two nights ago the slum that we have worked in for 5 years was raided and completely evacuated. A large army of men came in with tear gas and sewage water and sprayed the entire area. Families were loaded into trucks with nothing but the clothes on their backs and drove 20 kilometers outside the city and dumped on the land we now call "The New Land." Although, we knew these families would have to move in time, we had no idea it would happen like this. What little these families had: photographs, mattresses, clothes, mosquito nets, money hidden in walls, was completely destroyed. Even the earrings were ripped out of the women's ears!
As we arrived on the scene, people we knew came running up to us telling us their stories. One lady handed me her baby and said, "Please take her, I have no food to give her!" Another lady just held on to me and sobbed. It was so surreal...people who had nothing in the first place, forced to an even greater disgrace of having no home.
This week we are headed for outreach in Siem Reap to join friends who have started a home for girls who want to leave the brothels. We will run training programs for those who have become Christians to learn about teaching kid's club and bible studies, and we will also take time to encourage the new girls and give testimonies of God's transforming power, as well as pray for the missionaries who are serving them full time!
At first we thought we should cancel the trip and minister to those being moved to New Land...but we feel peace that God wants us to continue on this outreach for one week. We hope some relief organizations will help with food and clothes, and when we get back we can focus on helping them long term. We will get with the families to start support groups, community surveys, bible studies, help kid's get enrolled in local school, help with small business loans, getting the kids involved in kid's club and extra curricular activities...fill them with hope that God has a plan and they are not alone!
This is the time to preach the Good News, bind up the broken hearted, and show them they have been set free! Isaiah 61. Please join us in prayer for these families, as well as for our team, that God would fill us up to pour out on those He Loves and has been waiting for so long! Let's pray in the Kingdom of God!!!
With much Love!!
Melani, Tim and Luka Chan
Friday, December 26, 2008
House.
This Christmas i decided at the last minute to embrace a long-lived Gille Grandchild tradition and build a gingerbread house. Every Christmas for as long as I can remember, the grandkids would all go over to Nan and Grandpa's house to design, build and decorate a gingerbread house, embedding candy jewels into it's sweet, sugary design. This is the first time I've done it since i was a kid and after scouring the world wide web for a suitable blueprint, was left to design it myself.
It was a good exercise... in remembering.... i love you Nan!
xx 
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
blogging???
Just as a note of interest... i NO LONGER use my blog as the main source of 'news' in my life... I use it mainly to process and communicate the hard stuff... you know,
challenges, tragedy, emotion... things i really feel like writing about... So those of you from home (or those of you from anywhere) that would like my happy snappy news that i send out from time to time, just let me know your email and I'll add you to my list... it quite possibly could be safer reading.
in the mean time, here are some happy snappys for you: 
my 28th birthday celebrations... left me reeling with amazement once again at the sheer magnitude of incredible and generous people God has placed in my life...
and this... 
Indie Sophia Lucas.
I was present at her home birth... the most incredible experience of my life thus far... Her entry was as graceful and perfect as her little face and I am forever changed by her AND by her mother's invitation to be part of her arrival! I love you Indie!
xx
