MOUNT EVEREST

BASE CAMP,
N E P A L Hundreds of
international mountaineers
journey to Mount Everest
each spring hoping to
make a successful ascent
of the world’s highest
peak. The vast majority of
their time, however, isn’t
spent climbing up the flank
of the mountain. It’s spent
resting, acclimatizing, and preparing at the mountain’s two principle base
camps, one on the Nepal side and one on the opposite side of the mountain
in Tibet. Life at base camp is an odd mix of mundane domesticity, logistical
challenges, and the occasional flash of life-or-death drama

Since commercial climbing trips began on Mount Everest in the 1990s,

tourism to the peak has soared, creating a bustling city at 17,500 feet at the
base of the Khumbu Glacier in Nepal. Here is a look at some points of interest
in the temporary, thin-air metropolis. Heli-pad, south: Helicopters help
evacuate sick or injured clients for care in Kathmandu. In recent years, the use
of helicopters has increased greatly in Nepal. National Geographic Camp: For
the 2019 climbing season, a National Geographic Society team is busy doing
scientific research. Everest Link: Climbers stay connected with the rest of the
world through pre-paid high-speed broadband Internet cards. Nepali-owned
Everest Link sells the cards to both guided clients and locals. Everest E.R.
tent: The Himalayan Rescue Association’s “Everest ER” provides walk-in
services for basic ailments. For more serious concerns, patients are evacuated
to Kathmandu via helicopter. As climbers move higher up the mountain, their
bodies are increasingly at risk for a number of ailments, including pulmonary
edema, cerebral edema, and blood embolisms. Big Dome Tent: The guide
service Climbing the Seven Summits has a huge dome tent in the center of
camp, which has clear panels for epic views of the surrounding
peaks. Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee Camp: This NGO established
in 1991 by the people of the Khumbu region manages solid waste removal from
camp and along the trekking trails. Heli-pad, north: Helicopter services are big
business in Nepal, where aspiring climbers trek for a week to arrive at base
camp. Those willing to pay the high fees can hire a helicopter to reduce travel
times between villages.
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A tale of two camps

There are two principle routes to the summit of Everest—each with its
own base camp and unique flavor of tent-dwelling experience. The North Ridge,
on the Tibet side of the mountain, offers easier access: It’s possible to drive
vehicles all the way to base camp. Many North side expeditions originate in
Kathmandu, Nepal, and then drive across the border into China to reach the
mountain.

The South Col route, meanwhile, is accessed through Nepal and

typically requires a week of trekking to reach the foot of the mountain, though
helicopters have taken a big bite out of the relative remoteness of this side of
the mountain.

Both camps are pitched in two mighty glacial valleys. To the north, the
Tibet base camp is located below the terminal moraine of the Rongok Glacier.
And to the south, the Nepal base camp is located on top of the rock-covered
Khumbu Glacier.

Camping at the limits of physiology

Both camps are pitched at about 17,500 feet for good reason.
Somewhere between 18,000—19,000 feet, the human body enters a state of
decay, above which life is not permanently sustainable. Scientifically and simply
put: You don’t want to try living any higher than here.

A well-provisioned base camp provides mountaineers with a home base

from which they can dash up the mountain for three to five days at a time, and
then return to recover in the relative comfort of thicker air.

A catered experience
According to popular Everest blogger Alan Arnette, Nepal's Ministry of Tourism
has issued 375 Everest climbing permits for the 2019 spring season; on the
North side, there are reportedly 144 foreign climbers. It’s illegal to simply show
up at base camp with a climbing permit, pitch a tent, and try to climb the
mountain. All foreigners must climb the mountain through a locally licensed
logistics company, which supply base camp accommodations, meals, and basic
bathroom facilities.

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 For every one foreign climber, there are three to four local workers
living in base camp as well—either climbing sherpas working on the mountain
itself or base camp staff—the cooks, dishwashers, servers, and team managers
who all look after the guided clients.

This small army of service industry workers are overwhelmingly Nepali,

though not all ethnic Sherpas, and they are the engine that keeps base camp
humming.

So, what’s for dinner?

It’s been said that an army fights on its stomach, and it's the same on
Everest. Expeditions invest massive amounts of effort and resources to provide
their clientele with the best food they can. Most commercial expeditions strive
to provide three square meals a day, which include a protein, carbohydrate,
and some form of fruit or vegetables. Staples like rice, pasta, eggs, canned fruit
and vegetables, and flatbreads (locally known chapati) form the bulk of the
ingredients, but a creative chief will find ways to keep the diet interesting.
Regular shipments of fresh produce delivered via yak, helicopter, or jeep help
immensely.

In between mealtimes, there’s plenty of hot drinks, dried fruit, candy

bars, and the omnipresent can of Pringles potato chips for snacking.

A separate mess tent serves Nepali food (almost exclusively tea and a
traditional Nepali stew of boiled rice and lentils called dal bhat) to the local
workers.

The kitchen is where the magic happens for head cook Subash Magyar.
Rice, pasta, eggs, canned fruit and vegetables, and flatbreads (locally
known chapati) form the bulk of the ingredients for the three meals a day.

Big city problems

Expedition campsites are generally taken on a first come, first serve basis. Some
savvy organizers even send local representatives to stake a claim to prime real
estate months in advance. With hundreds of people camped out in a few square
miles, base camp organizers face many of the same problems as urban planners
in small cities.

At Nepal's Khumbu Glacier base camp, the Sagarmatha Pollution Control

Committee insures that basic sanitation standards are upheld. Chinese officials
perform the same function at the at the Rongbok Glacier base camp. Bathroom
tents are constructed so that waste can be removed in trash bag-lined plastic
barrels, to be hauled to lower elevations and disposed. Trash is likewise
collected and removed. Although these practices ensure modern camps are kept
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relatively clean, venture off the trail a bit and you will discover large piles of
trash—the remnants of expeditions from earlier, less enlightened times. On the
Nepal side efforts are ongoing to gradually remove all this trash. This year, in
an effort to limit the amount of trash and waste, Chinese officials restricted
access to the Tibet base camp to climbing expeditions, forbidding tourists from
visiting.

Just getting to Everest Base Camp in Nepal requires a weeklong trek,

but once there, visitors can keep in touch with the world at large with pre-paid
Internet cards via Everest Link, a

High-altitude glamping
Like all cities, there are some “neighborhoods” that are better than
others, which is to say not all Everest teams enjoy the same accommodations.
What separates a high-end camp from budget accommodations? The fanciest
commercial outfitters now provide walk-in wall tents with beds, unlimited
electricity through gasoline generators, hot showers, strong reliable Wi-Fi,
projectors for after-dinner movies, and even dedicated tents for yoga and
stretching. But such creature comforts don’t come cheap. The most luxurious
operators charge upwards of $100,000; while budget outfits cost between
$25,000 - $40,000.

Don't show up at Everest base camp looking for disco balls and epic
parties, however. Most teams remain relatively insular and turn in early—until
they've summited, at least.

At the end of the season, most guided climbers beeline it for home as
quickly as possible, but there's still weeks of work left for the base camp staff
to dismantle everything and see that it transported down valley for safe storage.
Many operators rent storage space in nearby villages to avoid the long journey
back to Kathmandu.

Base camp 911

Many large expeditions have their own doctors embedded with the
teams. Otherwise, organized medical services are limited on both sides of the
mountain. If you have a serious medical issue, it’s imperative to leave base
camp as quickly as possible and descend to lower altitude.

At the Khumbu Glacier base camp, the Himalayan Rescue Association’s

“Everest ER” provides walk-in services; patients with serious issues are
evacuated via helicopter to Kathmandu as quickly as possible. At the Rongbok
Glacier base camp, there’s primary medical care in Tingrit, a four-hour drive in
a four-wheel drive vehicle.

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You either love it or hate it
For some, base camp is a form of purgatory—a temporary asylum
where one must spend four or five weeks in exchange for the chance to climb
Everest. For others, it’s the ultimate summer camp, a place and community
unlike any other on Earth. Either way, for those who want to ascend to the
highest point on the planet, these are the two starting points.

Kahlil Gibran on the Courage to Weather the

Uncertainties of Love
“Think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy,
directs your course.”

“Love is the quality of attention we pay to things,” poet J.D. McClatchy wrote
in his beautiful meditation on the contrast and complementarity of love and
desire. And what we choose to attend to — our fear or our faith, our
woundedness or our devotion to healing — determines the quality of our love.
How we navigate our oscillation between these inescapable polarities is
governed by the degree of courage, openness, and vulnerability with which we
are willing to show up for and to our own hearts. “The alternations between
love and its denial,”philosopher
Martha Nussbaum observed in
contemplating the difficulty of
knowing ourselves, “constitute
the most essential and ubiquitous
structural feature of the human
heart.”

That is what the great Lebanese-

American poet, painter, and
philosopher Kahlil
Gibran (January 6, 1883–April 10,
1931) explores in one of the most
stirring passages from The
Prophet (public library) — the
1923 classic that also gave us
what may be the finest advice
ever offered on the balance of
intimacy and independence in
healthy relationships.

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 Speaking to the paradoxical human impulse to cower before the
largeness of love — to run from its vulnerable-making uncertainties
and necessary frustrations at the cost of its deepest rewards — Gibran offers
an incantation of courage:

When love beckons to you, follow him,

Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the
garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that
quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the
earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread
for God’s sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your
heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s
threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter,
and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

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In a sentiment John Steinbeck would come to echo a generation later in his
beautiful letter of advice on love to his teenage son, Gibran adds:

Think not you can direct the course of

love, for love, if it finds you worthy,
directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfill
itself.
But if you love and must needs have
desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that
sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much
tenderness.
To be wounded by your own
understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart
and give thanks for another day of
loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate
love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with
gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the
beloved in your heart and a song of
praise upon your lips.

The Prophet remains a timeless trove of wisdom and a mighty clarifying

force for the turbidity of the heart. Complement it with Gibran on why we make
art and his stunning love letters, then revisit Adrienne Rich on how honorable
relationships refine our truths, Erich Fromm on the art of loving and what is
keeping us from mastering it, Leo Tolstoy on love and its paradoxical demands,
and this wondrous illustrated meditation on the many meanings and
manifestations of love.

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The Chernobyl disaster: What happened, and the
long-term impacts
The accident at a nuclear power plant in Ukraine shocked the world,
permanently altered a region, and leaves many questions unanswered.

On April 25 and 26, 1986, the worst nuclear accident in history unfolded
in what is now northern Ukraine as a reactor at a nuclear power plant exploded
and burned. Shrouded in secrecy, the incident was a watershed moment in both
the Cold War and the history of nuclear power. More than 30 years on, scientists
estimate the zone around the former plant will not be habitable for up to 20,000
years.

The disaster took place near the city of Chernobyl in the former USSR,
which invested heavily in nuclear power after World War II. Starting in 1977,
Soviet scientists installed four RBMK nuclear reactors at the power plant, which
is located just south of what is now Ukraine’s border with Belarus.

A few months after reactor 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant went
up in toxic flames in 1986, it was encased in a concrete and steel "sarcophagus"
to contain the radioactive material inside. That aging structure, seen here, was
covered with a larger, newer containment housing in 2016.

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 On April 25, 1986, routine maintenance was scheduled at V.I. Lenin
Nuclear Power Station’s fourth reactor, and workers planned to use the
downtime to test whether the reactor could still be cooled if the plant lost power.
During the test, however, workers violated safety protocols and power surged
inside the plant. Despite attempts to shut down the reactor entirely, another
power surge caused a chain reaction of explosions inside. Finally, the nuclear
core itself was exposed, spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere.

Firefighters attempted to put out a series of blazes at the plant, and

eventually helicopters dumped sand and other materials in an attempt to
squelch the fires and contain the contamination. Despite the death of two
people in the explosions, the hospitalization of workers and firefighters, and the
danger from fallout and fire, no one in the surrounding areas—including the
nearby city of Pripyat, which was built in the 1970s to house workers at the
plant—was evacuated until about 36 hours after the disaster began.

Publicizing a nuclear accident was considered a significant political risk, but by

then it was too late: The meltdown had already spread radiation as far as
Sweden, where officials at another nuclear plant began to ask about what was
happening in the USSR. After first denying any accident, the Soviets finally made
a brief announcement on April 28.

A child who was only one-year old at the time of the Chernobyl disaster
undergoes an ultrasound test to see if there are any long-term effects of
possible radiation exposure.

Soon, the world realized that it was witnessing a historic event. Up to

30 percent of Chernobyl’s 190 metric tons of uranium was now in the
atmosphere, and the Soviet Union eventually evacuated 335,000 people,
establishing a 19-mile-wide “exclusion zone” around the reactor.

At least 28 people initially died as a result of the accident, while more

than 100 were injured. The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects
of Atomic Radiation has reported that more than 6,000 children and
adolescents developed thyroid cancer after being exposed to radiation from the
incident, although some experts have challenged that claim.

International researchers have predicted that ultimately, around 4,000

people exposed to high levels of radiation could succumb to radiation-related
cancer, while about 5,000 people exposed to lower levels of radiation may suffer
the same fate. Yet the full consequences of the accident, including impacts on

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mental health and even subsequent generations, remain highly debated and
under study.

What remains of the reactor is now inside a massive steel containment

structure deployed in late 2016. Containment efforts and monitoring continue
and cleanup is expected to last until at least 2065.

The city of Pripyat was built to house workers of the nuclear power
plant in the 1970s. It has been an abandoned ghost town since the accident,
and is now used as a laboratory to study fallout patterns.

Long-term impacts
The impact of the disaster on the surrounding forest and wildlife also remains
an area of active research. In the immediate aftermath of the accident, an area
of about four square miles became known as the “Red Forest” because so many
trees turned reddish-brown and died after absorbing high levels of radiation.

30 YEARS AFTER CHERNOBYL, NATURE IS THRIVING

Today, the exclusion zone is eerily quiet, yet full of life. Though many
trees have regrown, scientists have found evidence of elevated levels of
cataracts and albinism, and lower rates of beneficial bacteria, among some
wildlife species in the area in recent years. Yet, due to the exclusion of human
activity around the shuttered power plant, the numbers of some wildlife, from
lynxes to elk, have increased. In 2015, scientists estimated there were seven
times more wolves in the exclusion zone than in nearby comparable reserves,
thanks to humans’ absence.

The Chernobyl disaster had other fallout: The economic and political
toll hastened the end of the USSR and fueled a global anti-nuclear movement.
The disaster has been estimated to cost some $235 billion in damages. What is
now Belarus, which saw 23 percent of its territory contaminated by the
accident, lost about a fifth of its agricultural land. At the height of disaster
response efforts, in 1991, Belarus spent 22 percent of its total budget dealing
with Chernobyl.

Today, Chernobyl beckons to tourists who are intrigued by its history

and its danger. But though Chernobyl symbolizes the potential devastation of
nuclear power, Russia never quite moved beyond its legacy—or its technology.
As of 2019, there are still 11 operational RBMK reactors in Russia.

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 HOW MONKS INVENTED SIGN LANGUAGE
FOR MILLENNIAL PEOPLE with hearing impairments encountered
marginalization because it was believed that language could only be learned by
hearing the spoken word. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example,
asserted that “Men that are deaf are in all cases also dumb.” Under Roman law
people who were born deaf were denied the right to sign a will as they were
“presumed to understand nothing; because it is not possible that they have
been able to learn to read or write.”

Pushback against
this prejudice began in
the Renaissance. The first
person credited with the
creation of a formal sign
language for the hearing
impaired was Pedro
Ponce de León, a 16th-
century Spanish
Benedictine monk. His
idea to use sign language
was not a completely new
idea. Native Americans
used hand gestures to communicate with other tribes and to facilitate trade
with Europeans. Benedictine monks had used them to convey messages during
their daily periods of silence.

Juan Pablo Bonet's 1620 Reduction of the Letters of the Alphabet and
Method of Teaching Deaf-Mutes to Speak provided detailed illustrations of
signs.

Earliest evidence for cannabis smoking discovered in ancient tombs

Building on Ponce de León’s work, another Spanish cleric, priest and

linguist Juan Pablo Bonet, continued exploring new communication methods.
Bonet criticized some of the brutal methods that had been used to get deaf
people to speak: “Sometimes they are put into casks in which the voice booms
and reverberates. These violent measures are by no means to the purpose.”

In 1620 he published the first surviving work on the education of people

with a hearing disability. Bonet proposed that deaf people learn to pronounce
words and progressively construct meaningful phrases. The first step in this
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process was what he called the demonstrative alphabet, a manual system in
which the right hand made shapes to represent each letter. This alphabet, very
similar to the modern sign language alphabet, was based on the Aretina score,
a system of musical notation created by Guido Aretinus, an Italian monk in the
Middle Ages, to help singers sight-read music. The deaf person would learn to
associate each letter of the alphabet with a phonetic sound. Bonet’s approach
combined oralism—using sounds to communicate—with sign language. The
system had its challenges, especially when learning the words for abstract
terms, or intangible forms such as co junctions like “for,” “nor,” or “yet.”

In 1755 the French Catholic priest Charles-Michel de l’Eṕ ée established a more
comprehensive method for educating the deaf, which culminated in the
founding of the first public school for deaf children, the National Institute for
Deaf-Mutes in Paris. Students came to the institute from all over France,
bringing signs they had used to communicate with at home. Ep ́ ée adapted these
signs and added his own manual alphabet, creating a signing dictionary.
Insistent that sign language needed to be a complete language, his system was
complex enough to express prepositions, conjunctions, and other grammatical
elements. Ep ́ ée is known as the father of the deaf for his work and his
establishment of 21 schools.

Juan Pablo Bonet's 1620 book on educating the deaf.PHOTOGRAPH BY

BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA
́ ée’s standardized sign language quickly spread across Europe and to
Ep
the United States. In 1814 Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, a minister from
Connecticut who wanted to teach his nine-year-old, hearing-impaired neighbor
to communicate, went to France to train under Ep ́ ée’s successor, Abbé Sicard.
Three years later, Gallaudet established the American School for the Deaf in his
hometown of Hartford, Connecticut. Students from across the United States
attended, and just as at Ep ́ ée’s school, they brought signs they used to
communicate with at home. American Sign Language became a combination of
these signs and those from French Sign Language.

Thanks to the development of formal sign languages, people with hearing

impairment can access spoken language in all its variety. The world’s many
modern signing systems have different rules for pronunciation, word order, and
grammar. New visual languages can even express regional accents to reflect
the complexity and richness of local speech.

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 My mother's journey as an overseas Filipino
worker
With millions of Filipinos working abroad, one woman reflects on
overcoming the distance that grew between her and her mother.
“YOU HAD PIGTAILS and
didn’t speak any English at
all,” my mother says,
telling me the story of our
move to the United States.
It was probably the
thousandth time I’d heard
this story, but I didn’t
mind. My mother, like
many Filipinos, is an
excellent storyteller—very
expressive. She’d
emphatically move her
hands, shimmy her
shoulders, and even do
impersonations.

But I couldn’t see any of that this time because we were talking on the phone.
My only visual of her was the word “Mom” glowing in white text on my phone’s
black screen. I could still imagine every motion she was making and every glint
in her eye, as I heard her smiling through the phone.

These calls, where I’d envision my mother’s mannerisms from memory, are how
many of our interactions go these days. Years ago, I moved to Washington D.C.
for graduate school and work, hundreds of miles from my parents’ house in
Tennessee. Trips home became more difficult and less frequent.

For my mother and me, distance has always been a constant. But as the
decades went by, the veneer of normalcy began to fade as the sacrifices of my
mother and our family in the Philippines came to the fore. (Why 10 million
Filipinos work overseas.)

It is quite common in Filipino families for parents and children to live apart.
Many parents travel abroad to places like Japan, the United Arab Emirates,
Germany, the United States—anywhere they can go to make a living—even by
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taking care of other people’s children. Today, an estimated 10 million Filipinos
are working overseas. They send home an estimated $27 billion a year in
remittances.

Of the many Filipino professionals that travel overseas to work, some of the
most well-known are nurses. My mother is one of those nurses.

Our story began in 1955, when my mother was born in the rural town of San
Jacinto, Philippines. Her father, a bus driver, was the sole earner in their
household, struggling to make his earnings stretch and support his wife and six
children.

The stories my mom tells about this time in her life take on a somber tone as
she talks about family meals that only included rice, water, and salt. Her father
would try to persuade his children to eat, constantly promising meat in their
next meal, knowing that it was a promise that he could rarely keep.

But by the time my mother, the youngest daughter, was a teenager, my

grandparents had saved enough money to invest in something that would
change their future: sending my mom to nursing school.

Nursing was not my mother’s dream career at the time. As a teenager, she
loved to draw and sew, and she even dreamt of a career in fashion and design.
But my grandparents asked my mom to consider nursing. My grandparents had
seen for other families that nursing helped provide the financial stability their
family desperately needed.

They enrolled my mother in Lyceum-Northwestern University. My mom

graduated as a registered nurse in 1978.

Then in 1983, after years of gaining hands-on medical experience, my mother

joined the ranks of many Filipino nurses who came before her. She accepted
an offer to work abroad, at Abdulla Fouad Hospital in Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

She recalls the day she left for the job. At the airport in Manila, Philippines, she
prepared to hop on a plane for the first time. Her father was sad to see her
leave, and my grandmother cried incessantly. It would be a long time before
they’d see their daughter again. (See millions of Filipino workers return home
for the holidays.)

As part of my mother’s work contract, she could only return to the Philippines
once a year. Each stint home lasted for about 45 days, enough to catch up on
what had happened with family in the past year, before having to reset the
clock and return overseas to work.

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Like many other Filipinos working overseas, my mother sent the majority of her
pay back to her family. Her parents needed her support as they grew older and
as my grandfather became unable to work as much. Some of her siblings fell
into financial hard times. While working abroad separated my mom from her
family for years, it allowed them to leave a life of poverty and gain a better,
more stable life.

Growing up, I remember seeing photos of my mom in Saudi Arabia. She would
be posing with friends and co-workers, and she’d often wear either pressed,
white nursing outfits or casual 80s wear that showed off her petite figure. But
a few other photos had her posing in a large, flowing mumu—showing off a
baby bump.

In 1986, she returned home to give birth this baby: me. I was her first child
and the start of her own little family. But about four weeks after giving birth,
per her work contract, she had to return to Saudi Arabia. (Follow Filipino
workers as they figure out life in the gulf countries.)

I was left in the care of my mom’s parents and one of her brothers. They raised
me as if I were their own, until they were granted an opportunity they couldn’t
pass up: moving to the United States.

They then left me in the care of one of my mom’s sisters and her husband. I
would grow so close to them that I’d call them “Mommy” and “Daddy”, rather
than the usual Tita meaning aunt or Tito meaning uncle. I’d see their children,
who were technically my cousins, as my brother and sister.

My aunt would send my mother cassette recordings of me talking or singing as

a toddler. My mom said she’d cry every time she listened to them. And when
she would take her yearly trip back home to see me, she was met with a baby
that cried because she didn’t recognize her.

Soon after Marlyn Henning and Angeli Gabriel arrived in the United States, they
went to Universal Studios in Los Angeles, California. They took a photo with
Fievel, a cartoon character from the immigrant story “An American Tail”.

My mom knew that her hands were tied. She felt that she couldn’t leave her job
because so many family members back home were depending on her. That was
the responsibility she bore, even if it meant only being able to see her own
daughter once a year.

This part of our story is one my mom doesn’t tell that often. But when she does,
her usually animated demeanor fades. I hear a tightness in her throat as she
tries to speak. When she talks about this in-person, the only thing I can really

15 | P a g e
do is give her a hug, because this period in our lives was just one of several
times to come when she and I were separated.

After a few years, when our family was in a better place financially, she decided
to move back home. She knew she wasn’t going to find a nursing job that paid
as well as the one she had in Saudi Arabia, but she was willing to make the
sacrifice so that she and I could be a family.

But rather than staying in the Philippines, she decided to set her sights on
America. Her goal soon came to fruition when she was given an offer to work
at Physician and Surgeon Hospital in Midland, Texas.

It was like a dream come true: she would be sponsored to immigrate to America
and have guaranteed employment. The catch: she’d have to work a certain
number of hours and pass an exam in order to stay employed and in the United
States; if she failed, not only would she be sent back to the Philippines, but
she’d have to pay back every cent invested into her travels.

When Gabriel was ten years old, she became a Raiders cheerleader for
Fairview’s local peewee cheerleading squad. She would later cheer during
middle school and high school, become captain of those squads. She later was
offered a chance to cheer for college.

My mom decided to take that gamble and up the stakes. She only agreed to go
if she could take her daughter with her. Her terms were accepted.

So there we were, on a plane to America. My mom was ready to start a new

life with her daughter, dressed in pigtails.

But soon after we arrived to this new country, we were split apart yet again.

My mother needed to focus on her job. Our future and ability to stay in the U.S.
depended on it. So, she sent me to live with family in Long Beach, California,
where I was reunited with two familiar faces: my grandparents.

My grandfather was working as a janitor, and my grandmother stayed home to

care for me. We went to church every Sunday, joining a Catholic congregation
made up mostly of Filipinos. We also visited their senior citizen community
center and catch up with other Filipino elders. I have fond memories of my
grandparents on the dance floor, holding each other close, as they’d done for
decades in the Philippines and now, in America.

In 2002, Nanay and Tatay went to live with their daughter and granddaughter
in Fairview, Tennessee. They would often attend “The Music” on Friday nights,
where they would dance to live country and bluegrass music.

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Although life in the U.S. was not as easy as they’d hoped, they recognized how
many opportunities it could still hold for me – even if it came at a cultural cost.

This was most evident in their determination to have me learn and speak
English. They, along with my mother, believed that the best way to ensure this
was to stop speaking to me in our native Tagalog and our dialect Pangasinan
and to only speak to me in English.

At one point, I not only learned how to speak English, but I also learned how
to pick up the phone and call my mom. I’d ask her, “Ma, why am I the only one
here who doesn’t have a mom?”. According to my grandmother, I was
frustrated by how my mom could never visit. I’d point at a U.S. map during a
call with her and say, “Texas is there, California is here. See? It’s not that far.”

Years later, on Mother’s Day 1993, my grandparents and I parted ways, and
my mother and I reunited. She had passed the requirements for us to remain
in the U.S., and we were able to become a family once again.

I was sad to leave my grandparents, but this reunion did grow our family by
one. While in Texas, my mom met and fell in love with a fellow nurse at the
hospital, and she brought him to meet me.

When Gabriel was about eight years old, she and her parents Dan and Marlyn
Henning (far right) took a road trip from Nashville, Tennessee to Long Beach,
California to visit family.

Originally hailing from Oklahoma, my stepdad introduced me to another side of

American culture. I have fond memories as a child, waking up to songs by the
Beach Boys or George Strait playing from the kitchen. I’d find my dad, a burly,
6-foot-tall white guy, tending to homemade sausage gravy simmering on the
stovetop. When he’d see me, he’d start doing silly, dad-joke-level dance
moves—anything to make me laugh.

His lightheartedness was accompanied by a deep respect for my family’s

struggles. He recognized the pain of my mother’s and my near-constant
separation, and he did what he could to reacquaint us after years of being apart.

Change was afoot once again, but this time, we experienced it together.

We moved to Tennessee for my father’s job, and we ended up establishing

roots in a small town called Fairview. Unlike Long Beach, which was a bustling
town of grey, city blocks, Fairview was calm, quiet, and lush with green. Our
first home there was nestled in the woods.

To acquaint themselves with this new town, my parents decided to partake in

one of Fairview’s popular activities: attending the high school’s football games.

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But on their first visit, my mother recalls looking around the bleachers and
noticing another difference from Long Beach—everyone at the game was white.
Knowing that I would stand out in this community with my black hair and brown
skin, she couldn’t help but wonder how I would fit in.

Gabriel poses with childhood friends during her birthday party at a roller skating
rink. Her parents gave her her first tennis racket that day and set Gabriel on a
path that eventually led her to play for the high school tennis team.

Turns out that my mother had nothing to worry about. Classmates took an
interest in my background and life in the Philippines, and they and their families
treated me and my parents with respect and kindness. I grew up virtually
clueless that I was any different from my blonde, blue-eyed, and freckled
friends. I even picked up a little Southern lilt.

While my mother and I were finally together again, establishing roots in this
new hometown, we began to drift once again. The distance we’d encountered
time and again in a geographical sense began to manifest itself culturally.

My mother developed expectations of me that were rooted in traditional Filipino

values, whereas I had expectations of myself that were rooted in American
values. For example, what she perceived as disrespectful behavior, I perceived
as standing up for what I believed in.

Despite our cultural disagreements, while I was in high school, my mother

decided to bring us further into the American fold by having us become citizens.
When I ask her about this decision, she brings it back to opportunity. “At the
time, you had to be a citizen to apply for scholarships,” she said. “I wanted you
to have all the education opportunities.”

I remember quizzing my mom about U.S. history to help prepare her for the
citizenship test. We’d often sit on the front porch of our house to do this. It was
usually dark, since we’d get together after she came home from work, and we’d
flip through the list of questions by the warm yellow glow of the porch light.

Who was the first president of the United States? What do the stars and stripes
on the American flag mean? My mother, educated in the Filipino school system,
had to learn another country’s history from scratch.

Then, in 2002, she took and passed the text, and we became American citizens
together.

In addition to learning about U.S. history, my mom and I learned about one
crucial component of becoming Americans: You must have the ability to handle
the distance from your home country, from loved ones, and from yourself.

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My mother took ten years to afford our first trip home, after that initial flight in
1991 took us further away from the Philippines in ways we never expected. She
spent years apart from her parents, her siblings, and her own daughter, missing
countless milestones in their lives.

Now in her sixties, my mother has scaled back the hours she works and spends
her new free time with my dad and herself, having for the first time the space
to reflect, appreciate, and heal from the many turns her journey took.

Although she and I are once again apart, with her in Tennessee and me in D.C.,
we do our best to maintain a closeness we’ve been deprived of for so long.

While it would be ideal to be by her side as she tells her many stories, watching
her as she motions through the air and seeing the expressiveness of her eyes,
something as simple as a phone call, where I could hear her smile resonating
through the line, is still as priceless a connection.

How the Treaty of Versailles ended WWI and

started WWII
European countries dealt a harsh punishment to Germany for its role in
the First World War—a move that would soon come back to haunt the
world.
On June 28, 1919, on
the outskirts of Paris,
European dignitaries crowded
into the Palace of Versailles to
sign one of history’s most
hated treaties. Known as the
Treaty of Versailles, it formally
ended World War I—and at the
same time laid the foundation
for the Second World War.
Though it was preceded by a
peace conference that lasted
over a year, the treaty was
disliked by every nation that
signed it.Over 65 million people had fought in World War I, and more than 8.5
million military members and at least 6.6 million civilians died. The
war decimatedfarmland, towns, and battlefields around Europe. And according
to many, Germany was to blame. Though contemporary historians are still
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split on who should be held responsible for World War I, the treaty blamed and
punished Germany.

During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson had proposed

the Fourteen Points, a blueprint for world peace that included establishing an
association of nations to ensure European security and prevent nations’ abilities
to enter into secretive mutual protection treaties. Much of that idealistic plan
was scuttled during negotiations when the other Allied nations shifted their
priorities toward reparations.

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European leaders signed the treaty in the Palace of Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors—
the very place where the German Empire had been created, and Wilhelm II’s
father made emperor, in 1871. It was a slap in the face to Germany, whose
residents saw the famous “war guilt” clause as a humiliation. (The United
States did not ratify the treaty due to political division between Democrats and
Republicans.)

The treaty’s aftermath

Though there was a real desire for peace in the wake of the disastrous war, the
treaty did not achieve its intended effects. Furious at what they saw as a harsh
“diktat” (a dictated peace), right-wing German politicians used the treaty as a
nationalist rallying point. The staggering reparations payments reduced the
country’s industrial output, and other forces thrust Germany into hyperinflation
in the 1920s, which played into the economic instability of the Great Depression .

European leaders were dissatisfied with the redrawn map of Europe and the
concessions they each had made in the name of an uneasy peace, with some
disappointed that Germany hadn’t been treated even more harshly.

In 2010, ninety years after the Treaty of Versailles went into force, Germany
finally paid off the last installment of its war debt. By then, another world war
was behind it. Today, the Treaty of Versailles lingers as a study in how, when
it comes to war, unintended consequences can negate even the best intentions.

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