Remembering

 A new season has begun in Nepal. The dark and damp winter haze is lifting out of the Kathmandu Valley, replaced by puffs of white clouds that flirt with the bright blue sky and glossy white mountain peaks. Even against the filth of Kathmandu, this change still manages to bring a promise of adventure and possibility. As the Mt Everest climbing season approaches in April, the streets start to fill up with the most determined of climbers set on summiting a mountain that while not the most technically difficult  (that prize belongs to a peak in the Annapurna Range) is still considered the most intimidating and of course, the highest.  Soon the newspapers will give harrowing details of climbers gone missing, climbers gone to the top, and other climbers who have gone for good.  Avalanches, accidents and reflections on previous expeditions and the “art of the climb” will continue to present a curious narrative of what has been done before and what remains to be done. Words will revolve around remembering and hoping.

April is also an important moment in my own personal memory. The end of March starts that remembering. One of the loveliest things to me about memory is how such a storehouse can connect seemingly disparate moments together in ways that then later make perfect sense. I had such a time last night in Bangladesh. 

30^th March 1999: as a newly minted “aid worker”, I was 5 days into a new position before being quickly deployed as part of the Emergency Assessment Team to Tirana, Albania. Tasked with helping to establish a new office for responding to the rapidly exploding Kosovo refugee crisis, I’ll always remember this flight date as it is my mothers’ birthday. In March 30 of that year, I felt exciting promise that I would soon move from being 30 to 31 years of age. A sense of permission and evolution to move ahead into a time of more maturity and connection.

Traveling with a new colleague, a retired former Marine Colonel who was in charge of security and also overall management of this yet to be understood humanitarian crisis response, I left Atlanta with a wariness over knowing my parents were deeply concerned about this trip. My German mother, having spent her WWII childhood surrounded in Berlin by bombings, various military troops and in the end, even receiving several bonafide CARE packages, did not smile over seeing her daughter head towards such a conflict. My Chinese father, another survivor of war but of the Japanese invasions and civil conflict that meant chronic displacement and fleeing throughout the China eastern seaboard, was even more bothered by all this. They did point out the peculiar “western” idea of people from one country roaming to other countries to engage in this kind of work. But as always, they shared themselves with me without guilt, without control and without hesitation.

The details of that journey to Tirana shuffle like a deck of snap shot cards–Atlanta flights to Boston and then Italy, long train rides from Milan, portside hotel rooms where red neon store signs flashed outside; I recall a deep in the night ferry ride from Italy’s east coast over the Albania, surrounded by BBC journalists, aid workers and even some former CNN colleagues who were discussing critical elements such as if anyone had remembered hotel reservations and driver/local support. Arriving into the coastal ferry port, I saw a crush of humanity so dense and dominated with men in low dark caps, long leather jackets and non shaven faces that I felt for sure I would simply dissolve into the crowds. Driving through the black night towards Tirana, we came across many police checkpoints where stern but young looking officers flashed bright lights onto our tired passenger faces. The main thing I remember next was tumbling onto a very soft hotel room bed, fully clothed and waking up in the morning in the exact same diagonal display of fatigue.

After a few days of predictable emergency moments –endless coordination meetings, finding office space, meeting CARE colleagues and doing the rounds at respective embassies – a little deployment team was ready to move out into a field operation. A few days later a team of us drove up towards Kukes, on the Albania/Kosovo border in one of the bluest mornings I have ever experienced. With a solid Mercedes jeep, seat belts fastened in front and back and a young driver winding the 5 of us up and down the steep winding hills, that day also seemed full of possibility and promise. And it was.

15 minutes and 500 feet later far off  the mountain cliff road, I was pulled out of a crumpled car that had been driven too fast and too soon around a descending switchback and as a result soared into the sky to capitulate, careen and crash land with a loud bang in the valley below. My marine colonel colleague had been yelling “stay alive” over and over as the car flipped and spun and bounced its way down, down and down. A group of amazingly strong Albanian women, wrapped in colored scarves and thick clothes, pulled me out of the car as if I was a newborn. They carried me to a patch of grass and took charge of stroking my face and hair and patted my cheeks while murmuring softly in my ears. My eyes fill even as I write this now to remember that moment, and my mother always takes comfort to know her daughter was cared for like that by total strangers at the bottom of a Balkan mountain. Local transport brought us into the chaotic capital and after an overnight stay in an Albanian hospital, we were delivered to the NATO airport clinic.

The efficiency and speed of a NATO diagnostic medical theater is breathtaking: a patient arriving laced to a stretcher is unloaded out of the ambulance onto the airport tarmac and hustled into the medical tent. She is then unstrapped and body-lifted by 4 military officers onto a table who then together with a loud yell announce that “patient Claudia M. Chang available now for treatment post mountain car crash. 30 year old female conscious and conversant.” (newsflash: even after such an accident I’m still managing to have a chat). Seemingly seconds later, several take-no-prisoners medics and nurses descend upon the unsuspecting patient to simultaneously pull away any clothing blocking a let’s-just-say-very-thorough head to toe inspection. One doctor takes charge of speaking to the patient, introducing himself and asking her name along with questions about location, what happened and how many fingers is he holding up. The rest of the team is each assigned a particular limb and body section: more ID wristbands are strapped on, an IV drip is started and eye pupils are examined for dilation. Toes and knees are tapped to test for reflex damage while abdominal areas get prodded and poked to look for internal bleeding. Next, gentle but firm hands all together now turn the patient on her side to check the back of the head, neck, “posterior” area, legs and ankle mobility. Leaving Albania for Germany and the Ramstein Airbase, it is the only time in my life I have traveled internationally without going through immigration. 

After two weeks in an extremely efficient hospital and daily little paper cups of colorful and soothing pain meds, I then moved to one of Germany’s top rehabilitation clinics in Bonn for 6 weeks of physical therapy. As would be imagined, that experience warrants its own separate narrative. Returning home to my house in leafy Atlanta months later was a sweetness I could never capture on paper.

People often say “I’m so sorry that happened to you. “ I’m not. Most of the time actually, I wonder what I did to deserve such a gift. And being with people last night in Dhaka who generously listened to my words also reminded me of why I’m not. Without interrupting, they simply listened to what I had to say. I realized later how I appreciated that basic gesture and choice to hear aloud my story during the time of year when it’s particularly significant for me to tell it. Flying back into the blue Kathmandu sky also reminds me why I’m not sorry. That’s the thing about remembering - it helps to keep the sense of promise and possibility alive, even if you yourself really shouldn’t be after events of April 7^th 1999. 

April 6th, 1999.

April 7th, 1999