The month of August was a particularly eventful one for me. I flew three flights, withdrew from the Oxbridge race and nearly got shot at – but that’s another story for me and Ian to tell. (; What this post is going to be about is the 5th World Youth Congress that took part in Istanbul, at which I was a delegate.
The concept of the congress was to bring a lot of young people together to share ideas in their areas of their greatest concern and/or expertise. To get this going, there were a lot of workshops, debates, round tables and other activities that enabled us to sit down and talk – whether it was to share problems or to help come up with solutions to those. This isn’t nearly as boring as it sounds – it is actually incredibly fascinating (and to some extent comforting) to find out that there are people on the other side of the world who share the same stories, viewpoints and problems as you do.
There were also action projects for each of the 20-member families, called Ailes. My Aile, named Findik, had their action project in the sleepy town of Cankiri. It’s actually written çankırı, and pronounced Chan-kuh-ruh. (Rhymes with Ankara) But for the sake of making my life easier, I will stick to writing it as Cankiri!
Okay it is at this point that I pathetically confess that the ultimate travel horror happened to me. No I didn’t lose my passport – worse.
I accidentally deleted all my pictures of Istanbul/London during the 4th day of my trip to London.
I was UPSET. I’m not the kind of person who has a camera that is an extension of her eyes and hands; many times I have gone out for an event and returned with the camera still in my bag, never having left it in the first place. I knew that Istanbul/London was too exciting, colourful and vibrant to miss, and was therefore making an extra effort to take as many pictures as I could during the trip. You see, I am such a writing junkie that even before I left, I was already forming this blog post in my head. I wanted to be able to tell the story perfectly. I made sure that I took pictures of everything I wanted to mention and share.
And in the space of 1.5 seconds all 1500+ photos were gone, thanks to a slip of a thumb.
When it happened, I sat down on the corner of the street outside Westminster Abbey and cried! FC was wonderful, he helped me re-take nearly every single shot of London that was deleted. We had to go to most places twice to get the pictures again. So I didn’t really lose the shots of London, which will be up on Facebook when I can next manage it. I only lost the pictures I took at Cambridge University. The pictures of Istanbul/Cankiri, however, were gone for good and could not be replaced.
This is where the 1400 delegates I met at the congress came in. Irem joked, “GOOD! You can come back here and take some more!” which made me laugh and cheered me up no end. But seriously – I needed photos. There was NO WAY I could let this go by without blogging about it. So I sent email messages to the three people I knew would not only have good photos, but would also have photos of me; I asked them for permission to let me use their wonderful photos. Their replies were fantastically prompt and wonderfully relieving.
So I went around saving the pictures I needed. I have tried to credit each photographer to their respective pictures, though I might have mixed up a few. There are a few more pictures from other delegate's cameras that I saved because I was tagged in them. I was able to concoct a blog post after all! Dear readers, if you enjoy the following post, it is entirely due to the fact that there are people like Nhi (Vietnam), Yen Nhi (Vietnam) and Caroline (Hawaii) out there in the world. Also thanks to them, even before this post has begun, you have already experienced a bit of what made the WYC such a memorable event for me and everyone else who was there.
WYC @ Istanbul, 31st July – 13th August 2010
Before I start, here I must credit Mark Chan, the guy who introduced me to the congress and encouraged me to apply for it at the end of 2009. I wrote the required essays, attached proof of my involvement in Youth Projects (I talked about the BRATs) and sent them in. In March, shortly after returning from MDO, I received notification that I’d been one of those accepted, and so had he. We booked our flight to Istanbul and flew there together – it is probably thanks to Mark that I didn’t get lost in KLIA even before the plane to Istanbul left. That would have been a failure beyond epic-ness.
The Cafeteria Block at Yildiz Technological University. For most of us, this was how we were greeted to life at the Congress: with long, tedious queues. It was a foreshadowing of what was about to come in the next 14 days.
This is Irem from Turkey, and me looking incredibly unglam. She was the first Turkish friend I made there. She helped me through a scary experience: on the first day I was allocated a dorm off-campus. Nobody else in that dorm spoke English, not even the security guards. This is scarier than it sounds – for the first time in my life, I was less literate than everyone else around me. To form a simple sentence took precious minutes, and often I was not given the answers to what I had asked for. The people meant well, but I was utterly and hopelessly lost, and getting more and more frustrated. Once I’d made friends with Irem (who was one of the volunteers), she saw to it that any complaints I had were forwarded to the right people. :)
Eventually we were all moved back to the main campus dorms. One funny thing is that I didn’t see my new room mates at all. They were Turkish, and would go out and enjoy themselves in Taksim, often not returning till 2am each night. The jet-lagged me would crash by 9pm. I’d rise by 7.30am for daily Aile meetings, but they would typically skip the meetings and sleep till 10am. –.-
This is me, presenting on Malaysia during the South-East Asian regional meeting. Next to me is Justin, another dude from Malaysia, who has yet to respond to my Facebook wall message, so I have no idea if he came back from his mad 4-day journey around Turkey post-Congress. :S
Spot the pseudo-Vietnamese. (;
Jia Jun, another fellow Malaysia delegate whom I got to know at the Congress.
This is me and Adrian from Romania, on the Bosphorus boat trip. I was sitting alone because I was feeling seriously unwell, but Adrian plonked himself next to me and started a long and deadly serious conversation about politics, governments, and religion that completely took my mind off my upset stomach.
That didn’t stop the food poisoning from happening anyway, and that confined me to my room for the next day or so. I missed a couple of workshops and a concert, but it was good because I finally met my room mates!!!
After I was well enough, Mark and his friends Jill (Vietnam), Jia Jun, Ricardo (Portugal) and Michelle Pham (Canada) were horrified to discover that I hadn’t been out of the campus on my own and took me out that night to the marketplace near the university. They made me try dondurma, which is Turkish ice-cream that has a chewing gum-like consistency, and is therefore open to lots of tricks. The dondurma sellers will serve it to you on a stick, then take it away and leave you holding just a cone. They will twirl your ice cream around, smush it into your face and pretend to drop it before they finally give it to you. They are extremely entertaining (if slightly repetitive) and embody perfectly what the rest of the Turkish people are like: friendly, fun-loving and hilarious.
This is a picture of us with the dondurma men.
Soon after this picture was taken, I was dragged along to a rooftop cafe for a shisha session, during which we engaged in a(nother) very heated discussion about views on politics and religion. It seemed that all the delegates were the kind of people who frequently engage in these kind of debates.
Action Projects @ Cankiri
The Lonely Planet’s guide to Turkey had ZERO information about Cankiri. It was on the map, but that was about it. When I tried googling Cankiri, all the pages emerged in Turkish. I was feeling more than a little apprehensive about going to a place so far away, about which I knew so little.
After an eventful 8-hour bus ride that began at 6am in the morning, this is me sitting in the Cankiri statehouse meeting room. The seat I’m sitting in is traditionally where a queen might sit, and I am wearing a traditional Turkish Royal Hat.
And this is the Aile outside what is purported to be the world’s first mental hospital, which is now a mosque. O.O
This pictures of me was taken by one of the kids, whom Caroline gave her camera to play with. And before you ask, yes, we did actually do something! We painted a school.
I am such a shameless poser.
Turkish children are more photo-friendly than I am. :)
An introduction to Turkish dancing, which can be very tiring but very fun because of the way everyone dances together.
And this is Vu from Vietnam, whom they took to calling Vuvuzela!
Other random pictures from our time at Cankiri:
A football match at the Youth Centre where they actually slaughtered a sheep for the match. O.O
Zahra from the United Kingdom, who speaks with the cutest British accent ever and has an equally cute laugh.
And this is Nhi, the awesome photographer who contributed so many pictures. :)
A chess match between India and Canada.
Another Aile member, Eleonora; I particularly like this picture of her.
Ebru, the Turkish art of marbling.
When I tell Malaysians back home about what Turkish people were like, the first description that comes to mind is party people. I tell them that it’s impossible to busk on the streets because if you play well, everyone will start dancing around you! Turkish people love to party, and they like to do it to Turkish music – both modern and traditional. In Cankiri, the youth made us dance EVERY NIGHT. Here is a picture of Thomas (Quebec) making up his own moves on the last night in Cankiri while Jeeban (Nepal) looks on and laughs.
MY FACE JUST LOOKS WRONG.
The next few pictures chronicle the last day in Cankiri, during which we were taken to the salt caves. We were at 150m below sea level, and temperatures were at 16 degrees Celsius. You could actually lick the walls of the cave!
We drove up to the Mountains of Ilgaz, and halfway up through we stopped the van to take pictures of the scenery. They blasted music from the stereo and we started dancing on the mountain! I told you the Turkish people were party people. They are wonderfully random spontaneous.
It was also at this point that I lost my spectacles, the second worst thing I lost after the pictures.
Playgrounds don’t seem to have age barriers in any part of the world. :)
Nhi sent me up there and wouldn’t let me down. –.-
Finally, a picture of Caroline, the generous soul who contributed the majority of the pictures to this post. Thank you!!! :D
And this is Eray, the Turkish boy who folded the tissue rose for me that I am holding up there. Unfortunately when I put it down and went to the bathroom, the waiter took it for a piece of used tissue paper and threw it away (!!!!).
Check out the scenery!
This is Ntendeni (South Africa) and Thomas (Quebec). Ntendeni was loud and simply lovable. Anyone could hear her coming from a mile off!
Arina from Ukraine, who was posing like a model, and who reminded me of Trishna because she used to go bug-eyed when she was astonished or trying to look stern.
Just before we left for Istanbul after four long days in Cankiri.
I never really liked splitting my posts in two, but I don’t think I have a choice here – I saved close to 100 pictures. Cankiri took up so much because I really really enjoyed my time there! It’s hard to believe that I had been so worried about coming here in the first place.
Next post – Touring Istanbul and the Youth March!
