DukeEngage | Duke Center for Civic Engagement

Last week, one of the girls left for home early, so it is down to six total at the yuva, including Sarah. I think the week went fairly well with one less person because we are very used to the children, the system at the yuva, and the days’ schedules now. Every few days or so, a batch of kids leave for camp while another few come back. This past week, Melisa and Kerim’s two other siblings came back, so we have a full set of siblings for the first time I think. They all seem fairly close and protective of each other, I wonder what it is like to live with your brothers and sisters at a foster home knowing that your parents can’t take care of all of you. 

This past Sunday, Lisa and I went to the Rumeli Hisari, a fortress in Bebek by the Bosphorus. It was built by Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror in the 15th century. We forgot cameras and thought that our memories would do it justice, but the views of the Bosphorus from every angle forced us to leave early so that we can save some exploring for this weekend when we go back with cameras. Then we went to Ortaköy, where we got kumpirs, these amazing potatoes engorged with anything you want, and gözleme, these amazing stuffed flat dough things. I think we’re going back this weekend for another round and a boat ride at night on the Bosphorus.

Istanbul is absolutely amazing, there is never nothing to do. I cannot believe I’m leaving in a week. I feel like my time here has just begun. I can’t bear leaving so soon. I knew from a few days after being back this summer that I will have to return again, and now I just feel more strongly about that. I feel like I've only started learning the language and people here, just like last year, and the time allotment is just not enough. I will be back.
 

There have been two bombings in Istanbul tonight at 10pm here. They are reporting that 7-13 people have died and 100 were injured (update: now it's up to 15 and 150). One bomb was used to draw attention to the scene so that the second bomb could be more deadly. I really hope this will not jeopardize our trip here, as two suspected terrorist events have occurred within a few weeks of each other. This time, the act of killing was not directed towards Americans, which makes me feel better about DukeEngage in Turkey’s stability, but the political volatility is still worrisome. We will see what happens tomorrow.

On a happier note, I am actually looking forward to going to the yuva tomorrow. It seems like it has been a week since we’ve there because we had Friday off this past week to travel. I am blanking and absolutely cannot remember what I did Friday during the day (I’ll add it later), but Friday night was Callie’s birthday, so we all had Venus’ chocolate cake in her room upstairs and then went out to Taksim. Taksim was actually enjoyable the entire time for once because we did not have creepy men hitting on us constantly thanks to Callie’s boyfriend and male friends. On Saturday, Lucy and I visited the Büyükada (“Big Island”) of the Prince’s Island. There, we climbed up to the famous monastery where any wish you make will come true and made wishes. I’m crossing my fingers. Then today, Lisa, Lucy, and I went to the Black Sea again, where I failed to write more than one sentence for a medical school essay. Lisa and I buried ourselves in the sand with Lucy’s help for the first time ever and took pictures, though we didn’t so much bury ourselves as made a sand dune.

And now, I just came back from the BU café near our school after hanging out with Serkan, Sarah’s brother-in-law who I met last summer, and his friends, Görkhan and Ebo. It’s been so much fun to be able to catch up with Turks I met last summer in Istanbul and learn Turkish with their help. They’re all very patient and eager to let us practice our Turkish with them. I never imagined last year that I would return to Istanbul after only one year, so it has been so nice to be able to begin forming stable and hopefully long-lasting friendships with people across the world from my home. Hopefully after DukeEngage commences, I will be able to come back, again, in the years to come and always have someone with whom to reminisce and catch up.
 

We left early today because the kids were just out of control. After lunch, which ensued after a long lecture about respect by Alibey, the director of the yuva, all of us were completely exasperated and exhausted from the day. Even Lisa was frustrated, which means that our threat of leaving early as punishment was truly justified. Chrissy was still somehow able to feel affection towards the kids after lunch. When she gets frustrated, I think that will be the day that the kids deserved to be tied up and beaten. Anyway, we ultimately left to show the kids that we won’t stay if they did not want to listen to us. I don’t actually think most of them realized since they all disappear into their hidden niches of mischief and kitty torture after lunch. But some of the kids, like Mesut and Melisa, who wanted to play futbol or talk, did see that we were not obliging this time. Hopefully, the kids will be more respectful tomorrow during Animal Day, which will be a lot more fun and less academic than today’s Career Day. My impressions of the kids change daily; the ones I think are so mature and obedient punch a younger child the next day while the naughty ones seem to become more well-behaved and helpful by the day. I really wish I could know what type of children this group we are working are considered as, because I have a sneaky suspicion that we are working with some of the most severe cases of ADHD in all of Eyüp. Some of the kids are introverted, thoughtful, and intelligent (she is leaving this week, I think), but there are just some that cannot listen for more than five minutes without wandering away. I don’t know if this is because discipline and respect for authority at the yuva has be neglected over the years, or because the kids are genuinely overly hyperactive, but I notice during each activity that at least three quarters of them cycle in and out of the activity area in a given half hour, a phenomenon that I’ve never witnessed in American elementary schools. Actually, I realize that I have seen this type of behavior at the Boys and Girls Club in Durham during the few times I’ve visited. There was definitely the same hyperactivity, physical and verbal fights, lack of respect for elders. Perhaps this type of behavior stems from a rougher childhood, which is something I can’t relate to. 

Lisa’s Most Cherished Phrases List:
1) “Note-eh?”
2) Me: “What is ‘smart’?”
Lisa: “Intelligent.”
 

Three kids left this past week, a very surprising event because the departures were very abrupt. And unfortunately, the three children, Akın, Celâl, and Gülben were some of our favorites (mostly). Akın was the boy with the cutest little face I’ve ever seen and who was fairly well-behaved unless around mischievous influence. He left Thursday, I think, to live with his mother in Ankara. This, I won’t lie, worries me greatly. I do not know much about the mindset of his mother or the circumstances of her life that left Akın at the yuva, but my only impression of her is from the day that she tried to visit on an off-day during one of our activities, wearing high heels, sunglasses, and fairly trendy clothes. She was angry when the yuva workers told her to leave, the five lira bill she planned on giving her son waving and forgotten in her hand as she paced irately around. And Akın just followed her every movement with his little hand out. From what I saw, he was looking at her face instead of her hand, as if he wanted to grasp her hand to leave with her instead of taking the fleeting paper promise. Or maybe he just wanted the money, I don’t know. He was really happy to be moving to live with his mother, however, when Chrissy asked him. I just hope his mother is truly responsible this time and keeps him instead of sending him to another yuva in Ankara. Celâl’s departure seemed abrupt to us, but I think he had always known that he would be leaving this 7 to 12-year-old yuva after he turned 13-years-old last week. Nonetheless, we were very sad to see him leave because he was starting to really respond to our efforts in learning Turkish and teaching him English. I was personally melancholy because I think I took the longest to warm up to him and vise-versa, mainly due to our personalities. The moment that finally broke the ice was on Thursday, the day before he left, when he decorated a piece of paper with my name on it for me. Then we took a picture together with the drawing. I wish I opened up a bit sooner or could have had a little more time to get to know him, but I’m glad that I at least started the process before he left. I hope that his friends who have known him for three or five years, like Mesut and Turğea, will continue to cope with his absence as well as they have been. Perhaps the saddest farewell was Gülben’s, who left on Friday, the same day as Celâl. She was only around seven so there was no apparent reason for her to leave. Yet, she was told only a day before her departure that she was being moved to a different yuva, and she cried. I admit, she was very hyperactive and became more and more petulant as I got to know her, not my favorite child. So even though her tears kind of invoked my pity, I wasn’t entirely sad to see her leave. But now that I happen to be listening to Sarah McLaughlin’s “I Will Remember You” while writing this, I realize that I really do miss her. She was very nice and curious at the beginning. Do I have a heart?! 

On Saturday, Chrissy, Lisa, Lucy, and I went to the Dolmabahçe Palace in Beşiktas, which was beautiful. I also don’t think I’ve ever been that hot in my life. We had to wait in the sun, buried in 100 bodies with our feet wrapped in pink shower caps for fifteen minutes to go on an English tour. But it was worth it to see the bed on which Atatürk died, the imported gift furniture from foreign countries, the chandelier with 750 bulbs or something crazy like that, and the ceiling from which the chandelier hung, which is actually flat but is painted so that it looks like a dome from underneath. I’ve never seen such a realistic, flat dome.

Then on Sunday, Lucy, Chrissy, and I went to the Black Sea for the day. We took a Boğaziçi shuttle that was the third to pick people up because there were so many that wanted to go to the beach that day. While we waited, we met a lot of 3-month-old kittens and a thirsty dog that liked to playfully pretend to rip apart my dress and upper thigh. We gave it some water, so it stopped. The beach was wonderful. My study abroad group went to the same beach last year, and we had a blast also. A guy some of the girls met this summer, Gokan, happened to be there with two friends as well, so we ended up playing water Frisbee and volleyball with them, which was fun. Then before we were leaving, we met a member of our opposing volleyball team, a guy from Rome who was working in Taksim this summer and who may actually be too old to legitimately hang out with. Essentially, we got to know a lot of people at the beach, which is always a nice experience on foreign soil.
 

I steeled myself this morning on the bus, convinced that we would have over twenty kids as usual, despite the yuva’s assurances last week that half the kids were leaving for the beach on a boat trip, a seemingly imaginary vessel that toyed with our hopes of just a little sanity from 9-3pm on weekdays. Yet as we entered the gate and walked up the hill to the main quad, we saw two vans bursting with small children and ready to leave. I was elated. Some girls were wearing bright, new, ribboned dresses in green and pink, a reward, perhaps, for their good behavior that ultimately earned this beach trip. We waved them off and turned around to discover only eight kids left at the yuva. Eight. I couldn’t believe it. It was like discovering that all the awkward acquaintances and relatives your mother secretly invited to your birthday party were not coming, and that you could now entertain your best friends instead of the family friends’ large-nosed son with a bad haircut whom you’re mother kept nagging you to date. Of course, the kids who were left at the orphanage were not our best buddies, but only the worst behaved out of the yuva so that they were forbidden from both returning to summer camp and going on the beach trip. Yet ironically, not only were these kids fairly well-behaved, but we all got to know them quite well due to the affordable one-on-one interaction. We realized that Celâl, who we all sort of disliked at first because he made fun of our bad Turkish the most, was just a big “şakacı,” or “jokester” who needed to be humored. Akın, the cutest little boy in the world, was left behind because he removed all the sticker “points” from our “Most well-behaved” poster and put them under his name. I think we all forgave him because it was the most obvious and cutest crime he could have chosen to commit. Damla is clinically insane, so I understand why she stayed. However, I don’t know why her sister, Turgea, and Mesut, the most mature and thoughtful boy, were left at the yuva because they are both so well-behaved. Turgea is very interested about our backgrounds and asks intelligent questions while Mesut always listens to our directions, speaks clearly so that we can understand, and plays kindly with Yamur, the mentally handicapped girl who was found by a dumpster on a rainy day. 

We presented a summary of our lives on posters we drew last night. The kids loved the pictures from home that we all included. My poster also contained maps to show that I was born in a different country than I was raised. This is a very, very foreign concept to the kids, so much so that they ask me where I am from every single day. I don’t know if it’s just to annoy me (I wouldn’t be surprised) but I think it is mostly because they are very unsatisfied with the vague explanation I only know how to give. I think the poster really clarified this, however, because now they’ve stopped asking. I think it’s very interesting that the kids are not familiar with the concept of globalization. American children are mostly comfortable with the concept because they grow up unconsciously witnessing different-looking people all around. These yuva children, however, have never traveled outside of Turkey and even Istanbul. The Asian tourists they see are usually from Japan who are speaking Japanese. A student who is Chinese but from America and speaks English is something that a lot of the kids have never encountered.