spreading the truth January 3, 2009

This is a feature I wrote about an inspirational community organizer from Mississippi.

 

Derrick Evans is the proud owner of a government-issued Federal Emergency Management Association trailer. He purchased it for a few thousand dollars on E-Bay last year, and over time, he has added his own personal touches and décor to his new home. On the inside, he has set up his bed with a country cottage-style blue and red quilt that is eerily patriotic against the trailer’s drab wooden walls and quarters, no bigger than a single car garage. On the wall, he has hung a wooden sign that reads, “Of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.” But it is the outside of Evans’ trailer that catches the eye, and shows his mind not lost, but rather, is the one thing he has managed to hold onto.

            Sprawled in blue and green heavy-duty tape across the trailer’s dingy white façade, he states his case. “1095 days since KATRINA.” “Where did $129 BILLION for ‘Hurricane Recovery’ go?” “NOT WHERE YOU THINK.” Without saying a word, Evans’ trailer speaks volumes for the displaced, homeless, jobless and hopeless of the Gulf Coast region of the United States.

            In the past 14 months, Evans and his grassroots organization, The Gulf Coast Peoples’ Movement for Community Renewal, have taken their truths cross-country. The community advocates from Mississippi, New Orleans and Alabama have traveled more than 30,000 miles to remind the American public that the horrors of Katrina are far from over. Evans lectures to the young and old on how hurricanes begin, where hurricane Katrina hit, and why so many people today are still being called “refugees” in their own country. He calls this “the disaster that keeps on giving.”

            Evans’ looks are intimidating, to say the least. He has the build of a pro-football player and a wild Afro he attempts to restrain with a backwards black baseball cap. He wears baggy black sweats, a shiny black vest and a long-sleeved black t-shirt with tan Timberland boots. He looks more like a thug than an intellectual, pacing back and forth through his tiny trailer, looking uncomfortable in such confinement. He begins removing his hat, stroking his puffy hair, and putting his hat back on. Again and again and again.             That is, until he begins to speak.

            “If people only knew in that region, the way in which public safety, public health, environmental quality, housing and employment standards are today— they don’t even resemble the United States of America,” Evans says. “You would think you’re in a third world country. Even in a third world country, you would see better schools, levees, economic fairness, employment and quality of housing.

            “Its our own third world nation within our nation.”

            On Aug. 28, 2005, Katrina rocked the Gulf Coast region. Evans’ community, Turkey Creek, Mississippi, was hit just as hard as Katrina’s main attraction— New Orleans—and faces the same struggles today as it did days after the hurricane. A neighbor found Evans’ mother standing on a chair, neck deep in her flooded home. If it weren’t for the person who heard her cries for help, she would have lost the one thing she had left—her life.

            Today, neither Evans nor his family owns anything they did three years earlier.

            Homes, schools, cars, lives were destroyed. At first, Evans said he had hope for a swift recovery due to media exposure and a government rescue package. Over time, his hope began to dwindle as the situation worsened.

            “We have to bypass National news,” Evans says. “The awareness and attention on the Gulf Coast is disappearing and the celebrities that have come down and taken their pictures in New Orleans—they’re all gone. We travel hoping to spark local news interest, because they’re what tells the story of what we’re doing here.”

            On this particular trip, Evans’ partner is a man named Sam Bass. He is tall and very slender, with a thick mustache peppered with grey. He wears wire-rimmed glasses and a floor length black leather coat. Bass, too, hails from Turkey Creek, where he says Evans has become a well-known figure. The trailer intrigued him, he says, and he wanted to see what the movement was all about. He says he steers clear of crowds and cities, but this was a journey he couldn’t pass up.

            “This is the first trip I’ve ever been on with him,” he says in his slow-moving southern twang. “I’m a Southern boy, I’ve never really been this far up North, and seeing all these people so interested in what he has to say, man—it feels pretty good.”

            The trailer Evans totes all over the country is his symbol of truth. In response to the hurricane, residents of the Gulf Coast were given trailers in place of the homes that they believed would one day be rebuilt. Each FEMA trailer cost the United States government $300,000 to manufacture and transport—a price that could have built several modest homes for the families who had lost everything in the region. The trailers sleep six to seven people, and each has a small kitchen, and an even smaller bathroom. The kitchen table doubles as a bed. At the time, the tiny homes seemed like the beginning of a new future for the victims of Katrina, however, they proved to be just another disappointment.

            People began to become ill. Mainly the elderly and children were struck with respiratory conditions, and then eventually more and more Gulf Coast residents became affected. Although the trailers helped to protect them from rain, wind and cold, they were, in the grand scheme of things, killing them.

            In 2006, private testing was conducted on the Bush Administration’s solution to the housing situation plaguing the region. High levels of formaldehyde were present in the wood and paneling of the trailer, as was asbestos. Short-term effects included respiratory distress, nausea, watering eyes and nosebleeds. The long-term outcome was cancer. The trailers that people had been living in for months, some for more than a year, were never meant to be used for more than a week or two.

            Richard T. Sylves, a university professor specializing in disaster research and recovery, said although the administration was at fault, they are not entirely to blame for the Gulf Coast situation. FEMA did not project the trailers to be a long-term housing solution, but also failed to give their users warning of potential dangers.

            “People believe in this mythology that the government will make them whole again after a disaster,” Sylves says. “But you only get a fraction of what you need from the government. Those trailers were designed for people to live in them for weeks, not months. They do have substances that may cause long-term effects, but it is because they were not made for this. However, it’s important to have people carrying a message, and holding the government accountable when it doesn’t do a good job.

            “And they didn’t do a good job here.”

            Those living in the FEMA trailers today began to be cited by the government beginning in July. Each day they continue to live on their property in the trailer, next to the ruins of their former homes that many still pay monthly mortgages on, owners can be fined $50. Evans says FEMA has also offered residents a second solution—one-way tickets to anywhere in the country for the “home owners” and their family members, as well as three months worth of hotel fees.

            “Where do they think these people are going to go?” he says. “They have nothing, they won’t have jobs anywhere they go. A one-way ticket and $900? Most people would rather just stay and pay the fine. And that’s what they’re doing.”

            Community response and outreach has been a major factor in the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast region. Everyone from college students to Habitat for Humanity to local churches have flocked to the scene, donating time and money to help to repair the aftermath of the storm that wrecked the lives of ordinary Americans three years earlier. Evans says the volunteering effort he has witnessed helped to inspire his community outreach project to begin touring. He says they realized there were many people looking for answers and solutions in the wake of Katrina, and these people deserved to know the truth.

            “The entire nation of local people, regular people, were just emotionally devastated and moved by what they saw happen in the Gulf Coast,” Evans says. “But don’t forget man, this huge segment of the United States of America is no father along today in big terms, than it was a few months after the storm.”

            Bass says the Gulf Coast People’s Movement for Community Renewal has the right idea, and currently, government help is nowhere to be found. The region cannot solely rely on volunteer work to complete what remains of the hurricane recovery initiative, and with national coverage being long gone, few options remain.

            “Derrick though, he really knows his stuff, and the people listen,” Bass says. “He’s got to tell the truth, we’ve got to. What else are we gonna do?”

            Theories began circulating in the region after the hurricane, that the levees were blown up in order to rid the area of its poverty-stricken minority populations. Some swear they heard the dynamite explode just before the flooding began, and Spike Lee addresses this concern in his documentary “The Day the Levees Broke.” Although Evans says he is familiar with these ideas, he remains without opinion on the matter.

            “Conspiracy theories are tricky,” he says. “Lets say they did, lets say they didn’t. My question is, why were they vulnerable to being blown up? The Army Corps of Engineers failed the American people who paid for, and lived beside a levee that wasn’t really a levee at all. If it had been properly built, it couldn’t have been blown up.”

            Schools, homes, and even the levees that unleashed the floodwaters onto the region three years ago still await rebuilding. Evans says government initiative has paled in comparison to local interest and volunteering efforts. Today, the Gulf Coast is the only region in the country that is not in an oversupply of housing. Evans believes rebuilding what he affectionately calls his “KatrinaRitaVille,” would be a major step in digging America out of its economic slump.

            “Do you know how much national recovery could take place if a concerted effort were focused on rebuilding housing there?” he says. “All of these underutilized contractors in the East Coast and Midwest cities—it would be a huge jumpstart for the National economy.”

            He is hopeful that the Obama Administration will take proactive measures to deal with what will be another part of George Bush’s legacy. Evans says the new presidential administration is one thing that its predecessors were not—smart.

            Likewise, Sylves says he believes the Obama Administration will initiate a true recovery for the Gulf Coast region. He says if FEMA were to be separated as an independent agency from the Department of Homeland Security, as it had been when it was first created, aid for Katrina victims would be properly executed.

            “FEMA is really marginalized within Homeland Security,” Sylves says. “Counter-terrorism has really taken over the budget. I think there is a strong likelihood that Obama will move it out, and I think that would have very beneficial effects.”

            With the exception of a few short breaks in the past year, Evans has continued to travel in hopes of sparking the interest of potential volunteers, and reminding people that the Gulf Coast region’s recovery is nowhere near its end. In the wake of the current economic crisis, and the suffering it has caused many Americans, he says the situation in his region has become more relatable for many people.

            “I just want them to understand that whatever has happened elsewhere to someone else is not some faraway fairy tale,” he says, wide-eyed, with a final removal of the hat, and a stroke of his wiry hair. “Its something real. This will happen again, these disasters that just disrupt entirely people’s lives and communities, and when it does, we need to be prepared, because it can go terribly wrong.”

            “There is just so much to learn from Katrina.”

 

Bisexual Profile January 3, 2009

This is a piece I wrote this year on a bisexual college student.

Kelley is agitated. Irritation runs through her from the bright pink and bleach- blond streaks underneath her short ponytail to her delicate plaid blazer, ruffles and all. She has a lot to say, but something is off. On the chalkboard next to her, Chinese characters are written in large print. She takes one look at it and gets up to erase what someone else has written underneath them: “Yo don’t speak your language.”

            “Your language?” she says, wiping off the English words with a quick swipe of her hand. She’s careful to get every bit of white chalk off the board. She has no patience for intolerance. “What does that even mean? Your language, what is that? I’m really sorry, but I just can’t stand…. assholes.”

             Kelley, a 26-year-old university student, has lived in both Newark and Wilmington for all of her life. She works three jobs, takes 18 credits and is a registered bail enforcement agent, or bounty hunter, in the state of Delaware. Her vice? Crushing on people.

            She owns up to having a lot of crushes on men. And a lot of crushes on women. She is an aquality bisexual woman, or a bisexual who dates people based on who they are, regardless of gender. What she wants more than anything is to be taken seriously and to be understood.

            Within the gay community, Kelley says bisexuality has many negative stigmas attached to its name. This is due in part to transitional bisexuals, or people who claim to be attracted to both men and women, because they are afraid to truly come out as gay or lesbian. For this reason, the classification is not always taken seriously among those in the LGBT, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, population.

            “We get that kind of pat on the head, from the gay community like ‘Oh you’ll be gay one day,’ ” Kelley says. “And I want to punch people in the face and say ‘Yea, well maybe you’ll be straight one day.’ ”

            She says she came out at the age of 20, during her first year at the university. However, she believes she was always attracted to both sexes, but wasn’t aware of what it meant to be truly bisexual. After being introduced to a bisexual girl one night at a poetry reading, Kelley says she began to re-evaluate her stance on sexuality.

            “Three hours after meeting her, I was walking home with a friend and I started thinking, wait a minute…I’m so not straight,” she says. “I always had crushes on girls, as long as I can remember having crushes on men, I had crushes on girls. But that’s just my personality — I’m a very crushy person. I just don’t do anything about all of my crushes, because if I did, I’d be like, a hoe.”

            Within a month of her sexual realization, Kelley says she began to date her first girlfriend. She had just gotten out of a four-year relationship with a boy, and was ready to embrace her newfound sexuality. She met her first girlfriend while playing in the marching band at the university.

            “I was the brass drummer and she was the cute flute girl,” Kelley says, remembering her first bisexual relationship with an air of quirky nostalgia. “It was a very intense relationship, and after two and a half months, it kind of fell apart. Women date so much more intensely than men do, because we have strong emotional ties. When two women get together to date, I have personally experienced that it’s more intense because women are more active than men are when dating.

            “From what I understand, we tend to settle down more than men.”

            Kelley says she immediately came out to her mother, knowing that she would be

understanding. During a phone conversation, she revealed to her mom that she was dating a girl, and her mother’s response was “Oh that’s funny.” She says her mother was three hours late to work that morning, as Kelley did her best to explain how she stumbled upon her newfound sexual identity. Her mother was generally accepting and supportive, however, she confessed the fears she had for Kelley’s new lifestyle.

            “She said, ‘It’s not that I don’t want you to date women, its just that I don’t want you to have to deal with what the world has to offer you if you date women,’ ” Kelley says. “She would just rather me date a guy because she wants it to be easier for me.”

            Soon after, Kelley came out to her father, who, to her surprise, was accepting as well. The only person she hasn’t told is her grandmother, and she believes this is for the best.

            “I don’t know her stance on gay and straight,” Kelley says. “But the only curse I’ve ever heard her say, in my whole life, is faggot.”

            She laughs uncomfortably at what seems to really pain her, then jumps right back into her persistent rant, attempting to show she is impenetrable. Oftentimes, Kelley says it is difficult for her family to see her go back and forth between dating men and women.

            “Its always kind of weird for your family, because they have hopes that you will be straight or you’ll end up with a guy,” Kelley says, smiling quickly at what she clearly sees as their ignorance. “But my big thing is that you have to be a good person, and I date splendid people, like amazing people that are wonderful. I just think that if communities were more supportive, we would have a lot less problems.”

            Andrew Clark, president of HAVEN, the university’s RSO for students of all orientations and genders, says he believes bisexuals are misunderstood within the gay community, because many people feel they are being greedy by actively pursuing both sexes, or taking steps to transition into a homosexual lifestyle.

            “Its so hurtful for bisexuals to encounter gay people who aren’t accepting,” Clark says. “Support from within the gay community is crucial, because if the people inside of it are saying bisexuals aren’t real, then why should people on the outside believe it?”

            Jen, a bisexual university student, says she believes the idea of bisexuals being “greedy” is also often coupled with the belief that bisexual people withstand from monogamy. For this reason, she says many people who are attracted to both men and women often hide their sexuality.

            “Many bi people don’t share their sexual identity because people don’t understand what it is to be bisexual,” Jen says. “It is so common for people to not understand that I am open to meeting either gender. Someone can be attracted to either gender at the same time; it’s not a mutual-exclusive thing. But there is also a difference between being bisexual and being non-monogamous. They don’t go hand-in-hand.”

            Kelley says the plight of the bisexual population can only be understood in breaking down different communities of people, regarding their acceptance or misunderstanding of what it is to be attracted to both men and women. She says she feels straight women are almost always understanding of what it is to be bisexual. Aside from certain fears that a bisexual woman will try to sleep with them or hit on them, Kelley says bisexuals are more often than not well received by these women.

            She says straight men accept bisexual women because they think it’s “gorgeous” or they may have hopes of taking advantage of the situation. Kelley says that is often a common misconception for those outside of the bisexual community.

            “I deal with that all the time,” she says. “People think we’re oversexed or we’re sluts or whores. Some people think they have to date both sexes to be ‘truly happy’ or that we are always looking for that next person.  I’m like, ‘ok, you just made me throw up in my mouth. This is my life we’re talking about here.’ ”

            Gay men are often very supportive of bisexual women, she says. She believes this is because bisexual women do not pose a threat to homosexual males. Lesbians, however, are often very intimidated by bisexual women, Kelley says.

            “No matter how you put it, lesbianism is a bit about being separatists and about being away from male power,” Kelley says. “They love women, but there’s some sort of power in removing yourself from patriarchy, and the fact that I am attracted to men, and I sleep with men absolutely frightens them.”

            In the past, she says she has met lesbian women and hit it off with them, but upon revealing her sexual preferences, Kelley says she has been turned down. On one occasion, she says she was talking with a lesbian woman all night and had hopes of dating her.

            “She said ‘Your nails are too long for a lesbian,’ ” Kelley says, “And I said, ‘I’m not a lesbian, I’m actually bisexual.’ And she said, ‘You just broke my heart.’– That was it, she stopped talking to me.”

            Jen says she has run into the same issue in the past in regards to lesbian women.

            “Absolutely, its those who are not as open-minded or willing to challenge the beliefs they currently hold,” she says. “I have friends that are lesbians that will not even entertain the idea of dating someone who is bisexual. It’s very, very upsetting.”

            At the university, Kelley says she feels widely accepted by students and faculty alike. People in the 18 to 22 age demographic are very understanding of alternative sexualities, she says, despite the occasional rude comment here and there. However, Kelley says she has hopes that President Harker will push for full partner benefits for professors in the near future. This goal will only be achieved, she says, through the student body rallying to support alternative lifestyles. But first, these lifestyles need to be understood.

            Clark says he believes mainstream media will help to bring a better understanding of bisexuality to society at large. Shows such as MTV’s “A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila,” featuring a young bisexual girl searching for her true love, have appropriately presented this type of a lifestyle, he says.

            “The more its in people’s faces, they more accepting of it they will be,” he says. “They have to be. I’m not going to say whether or not I believe Tila is bisexual, because I really don’t know. But she was true to bisexuality. When bisexuals are properly represented like Tila Tequila, people can understand the bisexual experience.

            “It’s about the person you fall in love with, regardless of their gender.”

            Although Jen says she disagrees with media portrayal of bisexuality, she says she believes it is important to get the word about alternative sexual preferences out to the general population.

            “When I was younger, and I realized I was bi, it wasn’t talked about,” she says. “Although the way it is portrayed isn’t necessarily amazing, teens now know what it means, so in a way, its good.”

            Frustrations with the invisibility and misconceptions of what it is to be bisexual have inspired Kelley to write a book. Over the past year, she has done in-depth interviews with more than 60 bisexual people of all ages, races and genders across the country. She hopes that her research, when published, will give the public a greater understanding of this alternative sexuality. The last time any major research was done on bisexuality was during the 1980s. For this reason, Kelley says she believes society is in need of a skilled, in-depth examination of the topic, and bisexuals are in serious need of a support system nationally.

            However, she says she feels bisexuals will always struggle with defining themselves. When dating a woman, she says bisexual women are assumed to be lesbians, and when dating men, they are assumed to be straight. For this reason, many bisexuals will just identify with whomever they are dating at the time, which proves troublesome for Kelley.

            “Its always a fight to get the visibility,” she says. “Unless you’re holding the hand of a man and a woman when you’re walking down the street, most people aren’t going to assume that you’re a bisexual. This is even harder to fight when you’re in a committed relationship. I would rather people just assume that I’m a lesbian, because I’m more comfortable with being queer than I am with being straight, simply because there aren’t that many queer people. I feel they need a voice too, so I would rather stand up with them than stand with the straight community.”

            Kelley says it is disappointing to her that bisexuals are not well received in the gay community, a place where they should be at ease and comfortable with people in similar situations. She says she believes suppressing one’s identity can prove to be ultimately damaging to his or her being, and feels that in light of homosexual relations becoming more mainstream, the gay community has chosen to outlaw bisexuals from the group.

            “It’s an othering kind of thing,” she says. “The more you put another person down, the higher up you become. They always have to have someone that’s not okay, and bisexual and transgender people are becoming the target. If you let bisexual people be okay, then what’s next?

            “People are truly afraid of this, and I think that just sucks.”            

A Survivor’s Story January 3, 2009

Zygmund today.

This is a feature I wrote about a survivor of a gulag camp in Siberia during the second world war. 

 

       Zygmund Kawczynski holds his pale, veiny hand about six inches off the table face.

       “If I tell you my whole story, you gonna need a book like this.”

            “I’ll start with this,” he says. “In Russia, before the war, you talk, you open you mouth same like here, in America- as much as you want. Now in Russia you can open your mouth…but only, only when you go to dentist.”

            Kawczynski is now 78 years old. At the age of 10 he was arrested and taken from his home in Mlynow, Poland in the district of Wolyn during World War II, and placed in a slave labor camp in Siberia, becoming a part Stalin’s statistic. Those arrested, relocated and murdered during his reign. A man of small stature, just about five feet tall, he sits calmly facing me, focusing. He is wearing dress loafers and ironically enough, short ankle socks which read U.S.A. in lime green thread.

       “These is girls socks,” he says laughing and pointing to his feet. “Silly. I love America. No one here calls you a bloody foreigner, not like in Russia or England or Poland. Here everyone is foreign. The only real one is Indian, Native American. Not Indian, they own the gas stations.”

       Before the war, he says he lived peacefully with his father, mother and sister on their farm in Poland, where they grew apples and raised horses, cows and pigs. His family had an orchard of about 350 apple trees where city men would travel to buy their fruit.

       “That was before the war,” he says. “I will never forget the night they arrested us. They knock at the door; I was sleeping at 5 in the morning. I was a little boy, they tell me and my family ‘20 minutes to pack up.’ They tell you that, what you gonna bring with you?”

       Kawczynski said his father had heard of the Russian army arresting people nearby that winter in 1939, and he was prepared. He brought clothes, flour, blankets and some food for his family. Then the Russians put the Kawczynski family along with other “criminals” on horse drawn sleds and brought them to a train station in Poland.

       From here, he says they were forced onto a train and taken far away to what was called Kotwuz, but is known by many today as Siberia. The journey lasted more than two weeks, with frequent and long stops, which sometimes lasted for days at a time. Conditions on the train were unsanitary and food was not given to the prisoners, many of whom died from starvation or disease. The Russian Army locked the doors to the train cars and did not allow the Polish prisoners to stand up or go outside to go to the bathroom.

“This was no passenger train,” he says pointing a long wrinkled finger. “This was cattle train, cow train. They stack these people up on planks. You die, they don’t care on this train, they throw you out the window into the snow.”

Once the tracks ran out passengers were allowed off the train he says, stuttering, his speech a confused jumble of Polish and English, which he consciously corrects. Prisoners were taken into a large, abandoned church in Siberia, snow covered from the winter. Here the prisoners were given a piece of bread each and some water. They were again relocated and brought to barracks the army had built for their imprisonment in the Siberian forest. In the forest there were many Polish and Russian prisoners forced to live and work their lives away.

“There is no prison in Russia” he says. “No. Instead of prison they sent you to slave camp, you work your way but you can’t ever escape from there. Where you gonna go? It’s wintertime. There’s wolves and bears out there that will eat you. In summer there’s big mosquitoes like a finger, they bite you and that’s it. Its here or you dead.”

Each day the children prisoners were sent to schools run by the Russian Army. The adults of the camp were sent to work and cut timber in the forest for houses and fire. After school each day, Kawczynski says he and his younger sister Susan cut wood together with a large saw. In school the teachers preached propaganda to the students and instilled in them that all Russians “were the best.”

They were taught the inventor of the locomotive was a Russian, he says.

“The teachers were criminals too,” he says. “They’re not bad though, not even criminals. They just teach what Russians say. The only criminals is Stalin himself and his police, but they have an order to do it. You do it or else you finished.”

 The children and adults had to go to school and work daily, or else they were punished. The barracks were freezing and had tick-like red bugs that would bite the prisoners while they slept. At night, they were given a slice of bread for each person in the family. On occasion the families were given soup made of only fish heads and tails. The rest of the fish were given to the army, he says.

One day Kawczynski remembers that he and his father were so hungry they both skipped school and work to go fishing nearby. Prisoners were permitted to fish, but only after their duties for the day were completed. They caught a big fish and brought it home to the family. That night, he says, the Russian guards came yelling and looking for his father.

“They knew he was not at work and I was not in the school,” he says. “They take my father and put him in a huge cage and lock it. He can’t sleep, eat, nothing- for five days straight. They take him out and make him work right away after that. No food,” he says, banging a palm down on his knee. His eyes are angry, although is face is worn and tired.

Kawczynski says he and his family were contained in the Siberian barracks for nearly two years. Then, in 1941 when Hitler invaded Russia, all prisoners were given amnesty. The prisoners hardly knew what to do with their newfound liberty, he says. His father and another family made a raft from some wood tied together and traveled down a shallow nearby river. They arrived at a big warehouse where the Russians provided them with shelter for a few days and some grains and food. Although they were freed, the Russian army still controlled their movement. It was unsafe for a family to remain in one place for too long.

The food was guarded at all times. The police locked it up with a key, which they mistakenly left in the lock one evening. Kawczynski said his father had him go fetch the key at night when the guards slept, and they made a copy of it with homemade soap. The next night when everyone was sleeping, they snuck back into the warehouse and stole food for their family. They stayed in the warehouse for four days until they were again forced to move.

They traveled further down the river with five other families, who all tied their rafts together and fought to survive. Many Jews were who fleeing the war died from lack of food, their bodies left floating in the river, he says showing little emotion. He says he has seen many die from the war, one body no different than the next.

The families arrived at a train station after weeks of traveling together at Kratnuvortz, where they all boarded a train. He says it was very similar to the train in which they were previously transported to Siberia on, with all the passengers crowded together and starved. However this time, morale was high to join the war effort and fight, to escape their situation. His father planned to meet up and join the Polish army.

With many passengers, the train made frequent stops. The conductor never alerted passengers of his plans to take off again. One day, Kawczynksi says his father got off the train at a stop to get water for his family and possibly some food.

“My father, he was in the store,” he says. “The bloody train left. It just leaves, never tells nobody to get on, nothing. He chased us for about two weeks; we thought we would never see him again. He never got back on.”

Making a map on the table with his hands, he says his mother always made him and his sister travel with her at stops after that. She too missed the train at a stop on their journey. He says the three of them got off at a stop to try to find food once again. It was getting late, and she told the children to get back on board the train, and that she would be right there. Then he says the train took off soon after.

“We go to get food or drink, because there is nothing,” he says. “Then my mother miss the train too, just like my father. She runs to get on and some Russian, he kick her in the head. He doesn’t want her in there, saying ‘there’s no room.’ But she fights back and gets on the last car. We thought she wasn’t going to make it, she was running and running to catch up.”

He says his mother barely showed emotion at the separation of her husband from the family.

“How can she be upset?” he says. “You can’t feel no more you just survive. That’s all you did then. Try to live.”

The train took the three Kawczynskis to Kazakhstan and then Uzbekistan, where a new Polish army was forming. At a train station there, he says his mother stopped off to get water. At this particular stop, the family got one of the biggest surprises of their journey.

“There were two trains. One going this way, one going that way,” he says, crossing his arms and pointing left and right. “My father, he was on this train. He see my mother through the glass, hops off and he found us. We couldn’t believe it.”

They lived together in Uzbekistan for a short while, the minority among the Islamic community. He says the Muslims did not want the Polish prisoners living on their land. Here, they still suffered with little to eat or drink. One day, Kawczynski said he witnessed his Muslim neighbors burying a donkey in the fields. He told his father about it, and that night they dug it up to eat for dinner.

“There was already maggots in there,” he says. “But my father, he clean it up and we eat this donkey. We hadn’t eaten meat in three years already, we didn’t care.”

He said the Muslims found out that his family had dug up and ate the donkey and came looking to fight them, for touching their property.

“This Islam guy, he come looking for me with a big sword,” he says. “He want to cut me up. But I hid, he didn’t find me or my family.”

The family reunion did not last long, he says. His father joined the Polish army and left for Iran to fight. Kawczynski, his mother, and sister traveled on their own next to the Amodaria River. One month later, they too left for Iran on a ship with the other prisoners. The Russians were constantly relocating them, he says.

At the time, it was 1942 and they were living in Teheran for a few months when he learned his father had died in Iran from dysentery. Soon after his mother became ill with the same bacterial disease. He says he believes it was from all of the bad food they were eating during the war. A friend Kawczynski says he found in Teheran, who was working in an army hospital there, nursed her back to health. She stole food and medicine for his mother to save her life.

Kawczynski says he began to work at the hospital in Teheran as well, in order to support his family.

“The sick people, the soldiers. They want vodka and cigarettes,” he says. “I was a little boy, so I run around and get it for them and bring it back, and they pay me. It was my first job.”

He says this was one of the most important times in his life. At the age of twelve, he fell in love for the first time he says, smiling.

“I met my first girlfriend, this I never forget,” he says scratching his baldhead, which reflects the light overhead. “If you kick me in the night, I still can wake up and remember her name- Irena Bodszynska. But we were moving to India and she was going someplace else. Mamma mia, what could I do? I left her there.”

He says he and his family lived in Bombay, India for about two months before being relocated to Africa. From there they then lived in North Rhodesia, where he says he was the happiest he remembers being during the war. He attended school with his sister and was given proper clothes and food for the first time in years.

When he was about fourteen years old, he says he decided he wanted to become a pilot after hearing requests for young people to join the forces. Much to his dismay, Kawczynski says he failed the piloting test due to his bad knees. Instead, he began to attend a college in Livingston, North Rhodesia. He moved away from his family for the first time.

“I don’t know why I failed the test, still to this day, they say it was my knees, but I don’t know,” he says. “I was so sad, but instead I go to college to learn.”

After a few years in Livingston, he decided to join the Navy. They accepted him and shipped the new sailors to Cape Town, South Africa. From here they set sail for the first time as a part of the British Royal Navy.

“We got the uniforms and everything,” Kawczynski says. “Then they say ok we gonna ship you to England, and we go again. I’ve been everywhere I tell you.”

Once in England, he attended an academy for the Merchant Marines. After being shipped out once again to Sierra Leone, he and his fellow seamen got word that the war had ended. He sailed back to England, where he attended another college, this time for mechanics.

“After the war, they change the rules,” he says. “They say this is no good, that’s no good, they closed down my college. So instead of Merchant Marines, I learn to be a mechanic.”

Although Kawczynski found himself learning yet another trade, his mother and sister were stuck in Africa. The war was over, however, there was no way to reunite the family.

After two years of work as a mechanic, he says he had to do something to get his family back together. He heard about men joining the Polish army to have their family brought back over. Since the war had ended, he decided it was safe to join the forces.

“I join up, and I get the papers to bring my family back over here,” he says pointing to the imaginary map he has made on the table. “I work in Liverpool and translate at a college for the Russian and Polish people. My mother and sister, they so happy. They come live with me here, my mother remarry and my sister gets married too.”

His mother and sister were not the only ones to find love in England. At the age of 23, Kawczynski says he fell in love with an Italian woman and married her after only seven days together.

“She speak no English and no Polish and I speak no Italian,” he says. “But after one whole year, she learn to speak two languages from us.”

The two began to start a family of their own, and Kawczynski says he worked many different trades to support his family after the war. The newly expanded Kawczynski family set their sights on moving out of England to look for a better life. With six children, this was no easy task.

He says he first looked to move to New Zealand. His plans were stopped in their tracks, however, because you could only take four children with you if you planned on moving there.

Next, the family planned to move to America together. Although they knew it would be a better life for the family, Kawczynski says he was fearful of relocating.

“Moving to America with six kids and no job?” he asks. “Oh it was looking a bloody bad. Very scary. But I move there on the twenty second of December 1969, and what do you know, I get a job on the twenty third!” he says laughing. “ I knew many different things and many trades. I knew we would be okay. We have to be.”

He says he worked many different jobs in America and learned plenty of new trades. Kawczynski says he worked as a welder, watchmaker, photographer, shoemaker, plumber and electrician, chuckling as he rattles off all his former jobs.

“Everything. I was everything I tell you.”

In his lifetime, Kawczynski has traveled to twenty-three different countries and has resided in ten. He says he feels this has impacted who he is today and changed him greatly as a person.

“You look at the life a different way than how I look at the life,” he says honestly.  “I see the poor countries, I see the rich people. I’ve been the poor people and I tell you this is what happens. If you go hungry in your life, you see things differently, not like in America. Here you are lucky, you are born with corn in the mouth.”