Category: Memoir

Stories from my life.

Så Heldig Jeg Er (How Lucky I Am)

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Best of The Human Rights Warrior, Culture, Memoir, ParentingLeave a comment
Simon and me in our bunads
I’ve often been asked how I ended up as a human rights lawyer. It would be inaccurate to say that any one event made me decide to go into the human rights field.  Many little, meandering creeks had to come together to make this river flow.  Without a doubt, though, one reason for my career choice was my longstanding interest in all things international. That interest was nurtured during my childhood summers in northern Minnesota at Skogfjorden, the Concordia Language Villages’ Norwegian language camp. It would be hard to deny that the Concordia Language Villages, the mission of which “is to prepare young people for responsible citizenship in our global community,” had a big impact on my life.  (For more on the Concordia Language Villages, check out www.concordialanguagevillages.org)

Here is something that I wrote last year when I went back on staff after 22 years of life in the “real world”. I’m reposting on this blog as Sevrin, Simon and I are leaving shortly for two weeks at the Skog, but also because one of the things that I have learned from doing human rights work is that I am so incredibly lucky.  I am lucky to have my health, my family, my home.  I have plenty of food to eat and good healthcare.  I am lucky to be able to say whatever I want and associate with whomever I want without fear of arrest and imprisonment.  Even though I am a woman, I had the opportunity to get a good education and to make my own decisions about my career.  Nothing reminds you of how lucky you are like spending time with people who don’t have these rights and opportunities.  And I feel so privileged and lucky to be able to do the work that I do.

Så Heldig Jeg Er 

When I hung up my stabsjakke (staff jacket) for the last time in 1988, I fully expected to someday drive up Thorsenveien with a minivan full of kids bound for Skofjorden.  I never imagined that I would park that minivan and spend two weeks here WITH my kids.  But here I am, wearing a navnskilt (nametag), living with the girls in Tromsø, and sharing the Skogfjorden experience with my 10 and 8 year old sons.   

There have been some changes in the 22 years since I was last on staff.  The first thing I noticed was how much taller the trees are in front of Utgard.  The circular staircases are gone, as are the woodburning, metal mid-century modern fireplaces in the hytter (cabins).  There are new places – Fagertun, Låven, Mine’s Brønn – as well as some new names for old places.  There are new hand movements for songs I once knew and a whole lot of new songs.  The schedule has changed a bit, so sometimes I feel like a villager myself, “What happens next?  Where am I supposed to be now?”

Sev playing kubb (that’s a navnskilt/nametag)
As a parent, I can say that I feel that Skogfjorden is even better than when I was a villager or on staff.  It’s a safer place, both in terms of physical plant and safety policies, and staff members receive better and more comprehensive training. I see every day how hard the lederer (counselors) here work, with patience and good humor, to give our kids the best possible experience.  More than ever, this is a place that supports and encourages all levels of learning and abilities. Staff are as creative and energetic as they were in my day, but they do a better job of making this a total Norwegian immersion experience.

One thing that has not changed is that Skogfjorden is a place where kids learn and grow and have fun.  LOTS of fun.  It’s a joy to watch my kids singing their hearts out at allsang (singing) and to eat middag (lunch) with them and hear about what they did during kretser (an activity that was new for me, too).

One of the new songs that I learned this week captures my feelings about this session exactly.  The refrain of the song is, “Å så heldig jeg er, som kan være her med deg.”  “Oh, so lucky I am to be here with you.”  Å så heldig we parents are to be able to give our children the Skogfjorden experience.

Beste hilsen,

Jenni



My New Year’s Day Pralines

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Food, Memoir, RecipesLeave a comment

I generally cringe at the term “self-care”.  Yet I also know that in my line of work, burnout is a very real occupational hazard.  Those of us who work regularly with refugees and other survivors of trauma often experience something called “secondary” or “vicarious” traumatization. Even though we may never have had a traumatic experience ourselves, just listening to so many stories of loss and suffering can lead us to experience some of the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  And because secondary traumatization is a slow, cumulative process, it can sometimes be hard to detect until it’s too late and the stress has already burnt you up to a crackley crisp. 


To reduce secondary traumatization, we are advised to follow the ABCs:  Awareness, Balance and Connection.  The thing about it is that these are actually good principles to follow to reduce the stress that we all have in our lives.  Remembering the ABCs has been particularly helpful to me in performing my other job – caregiver of three children.  Parenting is long term, stressful work; I know from experience that I am better able to to that work if I invest the time in taking care of myself as well.  Here’s a brief introduction to the ABCs:


Awareness:  This means paying attention to yourself and how you are feeling.  It means acknowledging that you are not Superwoman (or whatever) and that it is OK not to be perfect.  It means identifying the signs and symptoms of stress in your life.  There is a long list of symptoms of PTSD and secondary traumatization, but I will give only a few examples of the ones I have identified in myself.  

  • Nightmares/sleep disturbance. For me, weird nightmarish dreams are the number one sign that I need to back off at work. I call it the Richard Pryor stress test. The first time I recognized this symptom was when I had a nightmare that Richard Pryor was chasing me around with a hypodermic needle, bugging out his eyes and saying “I’m gonna get you!  I’m gonna get you! I’m gonna get you!” (picture that for a moment -if you dare).  I woke up heart pounding and on the verge of screaming, but also with the crystal clear realization that I needed to take a break from doing so many asylum interview intakes. 
  • Preoccupation with safety of self and loved ones.  I am constantly and compulsively locking the front and back doors at our house when we are at home. I receive much mockery from the other household residents about this, but it just seems too easy for some baddie to walk right in.  
  • Sensitivity to violence.  I absolutely cannot watch violent movies anymore.  Unless, ironically, it is about human rights.  I guess the professional side kicks in or something. 
  • Difficulty managing emotions/strong emotional response.  I cry like a baby at movies now.  I went through half a box of Kleenex during the opening sequence of UP, but even stupid (both sappy stupid and just plain stupid) movies make me cry.  Music also makes me tear up but only when it is live and either classical or church music.  When people say nice things about me or my family, I just lose it.  The weird thing is that I usually don’t even feel sad.  I just can’t stop the waterworks.  So my coping strategy is to always wear waterproof mascara and carry a pursepack of tissues. 

Balance:  This means taking care of yourself by doing activities that provide what YOU need to be at your best mentally, physically and spiritually.  Generally, this means finding a balance of activities in your personal and work life that provide you with the opportunity to rest, play and physically or mentally escape from the stress.  It’s hard sometimes, with kids around, to find that balance but sometimes you just have to do it.  That’s exactly what I did on January 1, 2011.


On New Year’s Day, I had a bunch of overtired, bored and cranky kids hanging on me.  So I decided to make pralines.  Not necessarily logical, but I felt that it was appropriate to start off the new year doing something that I had never done before.  It’s true – I had never made pralines before!  Even though I spent the first 18 years of my life in south Louisiana.  Even though, for more than 20 years, I have owned a cookbook by the American Sugar Cane League that includes an entire section on praline recipes.  I decided that I wanted to make pralines that day, so I opened up that cookbook. There were more than 20 praline recipes made with essentially the same 5 or 6 ingredients.  I understand why now, because I ended up fiddling with the ratio of brown sugar to white sugar to come up with my very own pralines recipe.  The pralines I made (with some “assistance” from my sons) turned out great.  Most importantly, they made me really happy.  Making these New Year’s Day Pralines was something that I did for myself alone, putting some balance in what had originally had all the makings of a crappy day.  


Connection:  It is so important to have supportive relationships with friends, family, and community in your life. It is also important to communicate with others about your experiences, so that’s what I’m doing now.  My New Year’s Day Pralines recipe follows – enjoy a little “self-care”!

NEW YEAR’S DAY PRALINES
 
1 1/4 cup brown sugar (packed)                   1/4 cup butter
3/4 cup white sugar                                      2 cups pecans
1/2 cup evaporated milk                               1 teaspoon vanilla
 
Mix first five ingredients and bring to a boil on medium heat.  Let boil 3 to 5 minutes.  Add vanilla.  Remove from heat.  Beat with wooden spoon one minute (no more).  Spoon onto waxed paper.  If it gets too hard, return to heat and melt again.  Let cool and enjoy!

 

Making Something Out of Nothing

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Best of The Human Rights Warrior, Human Rights, Memoir, Refugee & Immigrant Rights, True Stories2 Comments

If you knew me in my twenties, you probably remember me as a KOW (Knitting Obsessed Woman).  I didn’t learn how to knit until I was 19, but after that I was rarely without a pair of knitting needles in my hands.  My PR is knitting a pair of mittens in 5 hours the night before Valentine’s Day as a gift for my future (and current) husband. Because I learned to knit as an adult, I distinctly remember how difficult it is.  You feel awkward as you struggle to make the needles do what you need them to do. It’s difficult to make sense of the stitches and frustrating to decipher the patterns, which seem to be written in secret code.  If you make a mistake, you have to rip out your work and start over.  But what I absolutely love about knitting is the satisfaction that comes from taking what is basically a couple of sticks and a ball of string and, through sheer effort and determination, turning a bunch of knots into something that is beautiful and useful. You are making something out of nothing.

I haven’t done much knitting in the past decade.  There are several half-finished projects at the back of my closet,  hidden behind my boots so I can’t see them and feel guilty about them.   But last weekend my friend Amy showed me some mittens that she is making for her son.  They are My Neighbor Totoro mittens and they seriously could not be cuter.  I saw them and my fingers started itching – literally – to knit them.   You can find the pattern for Totoro Mittens on Ravelry.com or by clicking on this pdf. (Special thanks to brella for allowing me use both the image and the pattern in this blog!)



For the first seven years of my career, I represented people who were fleeing persecution and seeking asylum in the U.S.  Though I may not have seen them for years, I often think about my former clients.  On the day that Amy showed me the My Neighbor Totoro mittens, I happened to think of James and Julia (not their real names). James and Julia were politically active in their native Kenya, speaking out against an oppressive government.  They had a little boy who I’ll call William.  When the police came to their house to arrest Julia, a police dog had bitten William on the head.  You could still see the wound a year later when, having left everything they owned behind to escape Kenya, they were seeking legal assistance with their asylum claim in the U.S.  

In police custody, Julia had been brutally and repeatedly raped.  Only a few times have I seen an asylum officer (specially trained federal officials who make decisions about asylum cases based on a written application and an in-person interview) actually cry during an an asylum interview.  Julia testified about her experiences in a straightforward manner and in excruciating detail, but with such poise and dignity that both the asylum officer and I were in tears.  I remember well how James sat next to her, utterly still. Anguish is the only word that could possibly describe the look on his face as he listened to her testimony.


Years later, after they got their citizenship, James and Julia had a party to say thank you to all of the people who had helped them.  In addition to their attorneys, there were people from their church and other members of the Kenyan community. They now lived in a big, new house out in the suburbs. Julia was close to graduation from nursing school  William, who I hadn’t seen since he was three, was now in middle school.  He was a straight-A student and talented musician who had just gotten braces.  They had had another child, too – a daughter born here in America.

It had taken a lot of hard work for James and Julia to get to where they were.  I’m sure that they were frustrated at times with life in this strange, new country.  But they persisted and, through sheer effort and determination, made a new life for themselves and their family.  In some ways, they had even followed a pattern – the American Dream.  It wasn’t easy, but James and Julia had done it.  They had made something out of nothing.

Note to Self: What I Learned in Peru

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Best of The Human Rights Warrior, Human Rights, Justice, Memoir, True StoriesLeave a comment
Kids in Pampamarca, Peru.  The majority
of those killed during the conflict were
from indigenous communities like this in the highlands

It was November 2002 and I was sitting in a small conference room in Lima, taking notes as a woman tearfully relayed the story of her 9 years in detention. As she spoke, low and soft, the woman (who I’ll call Lourdes) cradled a newborn baby bundled in a pink blanket.

I had left my own 9 month old baby at home to lead a volunteer team on a one week trip to Peru to monitor the work of that country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación or CVR). I had just recently returned to work after an extended maternity leave and, I have to say, I count those months of being at home with a potty-training toddler and a nocturnal infant as some of the toughest of my life.

Our team was interviewing Lourdes and several other inocentes or “innocents”. Between 1980 and 2000, the conflict between the Peruvian government and the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) and Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) rebel groups resulted in approximately 69,000 people killed and disappeared. As many as 600,000 were internally displaced; I remember seeing the tent cities on the outskirts of Lima where thousands of people who had fled the political violence in the highlands had lived for twenty years.

Lourdes was one of more than 14,000 Peruvians who were detained, tortured, and denied a fair trial under 1992 anti-terrorism decrees. She told us about the day she was arrested in early 1993. She and her husband were students. They had a three-and-a-half year old son who had health problems, so she had left the house before daybreak to get medicine for him. As she was returning to her house, she was stopped and arrested by the National Directorate Against Terrorism. It turns out that the Shining Path had bombed a nearby part of Lima. Lourdes and four other women who also happened to be out early that morning were arrested, blindfolded and interrogated. “One police officer told us that all of us would die,” she said quietly. Two hours after they were arrested, they were exhibited to the media at a press conference. The arrest was presented as a triumph over terrorism.

For the first several months, Lourdes was detained on a military base. The conditions were very bad and she was tortured. She didn’t go into the details and we didn’t ask her to tell us more. I remember her saying that she was allowed to use the bathroom only once a day – with 3-4 soldiers pointing their rifles at her. She was only allowed to bathe once a week. Lourdes was later moved to a prison, which she described as looking “like a paradise” compared to the military base.

Lourdes’ husband, who we also interviewed that day, had been arrested a month later. His father had to go to the police station to recover their little son, who was cared for by relatives for the next 9 years. Six months later, one of Peru’s “faceless” courts (called that because a one-way mirror concealed the identity of the prosecutors and judges) found Lourdes and her husband guilty of treason and sentenced them to life in prison.

Lourdes and her husband were not allowed to see each other during their detention and their letters to each other were read. For one whole year during her detention, after her sentence was reduced to 30 years, she was not allowed to have visits from anyone. Eventually, Lourdes and her husband were able to submit their cases to a Presidential pardons panel. She was pardoned in 2001, just a few weeks before the ninth anniversary of her arrest.

The interviews went on for more than six hours, but either Lourdes or her husband held that baby for the entire time. They didn’t put her in her carrier or pass her to the others who offered to hold her. They just took turns holding her close. I remember Lourdes saying to me afterwards, “We lost so much time with our son. Now he is a teenager and we’re strangers to him.”

Lourdes’ story highlights some of the problems of a government response to terrorism that doesn’t provide adequate protections for due process and other rights in the administration of justice. The Peruvian experience with terrorism seemed strikingly relevant back in 2002, when the US human rights community was very concerned about just how far the War on Terror might go. But I also learned an important personal lesson that day.

My friend Jim once had to share an office with an extremely annoying coworker. My friend kept a yellow post-it note stuck under his desk that said, “IGNORE ANTHONY”. Whenever the guy was bugging him, he would stick his head under the desk and read that post-it note. I don’t have a post-it note, but I do have a strong visual image of interviewing Lourdes that day in Lima. Whenever I feel that parenthood is more than I bargained for (which, frankly, was twice yesterday), I pluck that image from my garden of memories and think to myself: “REMEMBER LOURDES”.

If you’d like to learn more:

  • To see photos of life in Peru, go to the photo gallery on The Advocates for Human Rights website (click here.)
  • Some background on the anti-terrorism laws and why the system produced so many inocentes (click here.)
  • There is a 9-minute video summary of the Peruvian CVR’s findings related to the inocentes and human rights abuses in the 1990s: CVR Final Report: Fujimori and the Destruction of Democracy  It provides a good overview, but be advised that it does contain some graphic images.

So … What Exactly Is It That You Do Again?

On By Jennifer PrestholdtIn Human Rights, Memoir, Parenting2 Comments
Interviewing refugees in Ghana
It all began, as so many things do, with a misunderstanding.  I was putting my son Simon to bed one night when he said, “Mommy … What’s it like to be a human rights warrior?”  “But I’m not a human rights warrior. I’m a human rights lawyer.”  He waited a couple of seconds – this kid has an uncanny sense of comedic timing – before wrinkling up his little nose and saying skeptically, “What’s a LAWYER?”     
I may never know what kind of weapons he thought I was secretly carrying in my briefcase because my description of my actual job put him right to sleep. But this bedtime exchange got me thinking.  For 15 years – more if you count my student experiences – I’ve worked with survivors of human rights abuses, documenting stories of unbearable loss from every corner of the world.  I have observed the absolute worst aspects of human nature, the dark side in each of us that we would rather not acknowledge.
You might think that this would make me pessimistic about the world in general and Homo sapiens in particular, but the impact has been quite the opposite.  It has been my privilege to bear witness to the very best characteristics of humanity – our capacity to overcome adversity, to hope, to forgive.  I’ve heard inspiring acts of courage; seen the precious gift of faith. 
At the UN in Geneva
While I have many stories from my experiences in human rights work, I realize as I write this that most of them have never been shared with anybody.  Stories of human rights abuses don’t exactly lend themselves to cocktail party conversation.  How do you convey the complex political and social conditions that lead to human rights abuses, honor the victims, and avoid grossing people out with the horrible details – all in a two-minute elevator speech? And how do you even stop talking about injustice once you start?
As a parent, however, I am challenged to distill these experiences into something that Simon – along with his brother Sevrin and his sister Eliza – can understand and profit from.  My goal in writing this is to think more intentionally about what I’ve learned from my work in human rights so that I may one day pass these lessons along to my kids.  Perhaps these reflections will be interesting or inspiring to others as well. 
While I am proud to be the Deputy Director of The Advocates for Human Rights, this blog reflects my personal views rather than those of the organization.