The last two weeks I’ve been touristing around Tanzania; marvelling at the resplendent turquoise, white sands and ever present history of Zanzibar; snorkelling and sleeping on the beach south of Tanga; hiking through hills and rainforests around Lushoto; and being awestruck by the grandeur of Killimanjaro while chatting with family friends from our Nepal days.
These have all been fantastic experiences, but I think the lasting impact will be the history we re-lived. My mother was born in Tanzania, and my grandparents spent more than a decade transitioning the Lutheran church from Western to Tanzanian leadership. The bonds with the country run deep in my family, and we spent hours talking with friends about mutual acquaintances and historical events like my grandparents' excitement at attending independence and meeting Julius Nyerere. My grandmother wrote us an e-mail about her years here that we read and re-read during the trip.
She recently told us she would be happy to die here and be buried in Tanzanian soil, and I’m trying to process how all of this has contributed to who I am today.
Perhaps a memory will suffice for now.
My mum remembers going out big game hunting with her family in the 1960s. They usually went to the area that is now Killimanjaro airport. For some reason, on this trip her dad and brothers took the car to meet some guests and bring them out from town, leaving my mum and grandma at the campsite. My mum and grandma both came down with malaria, and the main recollection to come from this experience was having to move their food away from the tent to decrease the risk from the lions that they could hear roaring at night.
Meanwhile, my uncles and grandfather had a car breakdown, so they borrowed another that happened to have an opening in the roof. This ended up potentially saving their lives as they were caught in a flash flood on the way to town and they escaped through that opening.
Memory
Shanti ghar?
I’m sitting at my desk watching a hawk soar over the hillside that’s dotted with homes large and small and unsuccessfully attempting to navigate the tension between loving and mourning where I am right now. To reach my house you pass a go down (slum), some beautiful apartments, and turn onto a dirt road with pot holes and virtual stream beds to dance across. My home is behind walls, and a black gate is opened by a security guard as you turn left and face a steep uphill that has defeated many cars our moving truck. Inside, the compound is unbelievably green, with so much vibrant plant and bird life it seems its own world. Vines follow walls and leap up our porch, flowers, bushes, trees sprout from anywhere and everywhere. I can’t adequately describe how peaceful it is, or how much I love to sit with a cup of coffee and soak in the lushness, occasionally gazing across Kampala or off towards Lake Victoria. Our bomb proof roof stretches out over an oversized porch where we usually take dinner, with a second level that my room opens out to. The absurd size of my home allows my parents to host over 10 guests at a time, some short term visitors but many long term workers seeking much needed rest. It stands as a pocket of heaven, albeit a heaven that must be guarded with walls, guards and razor wire.
You, of course, are most welcome next time you’re in Kampala.
The other day my sister and I were playing badminton, my parents looking on and all of eating from a plate of freshly cooked chips, when I looked over my shoulder to see three children looking over our wall from the unfinished house next door. With the house abandoned by whoever didn’t have funds to finish the construction, many squatters have moved in.
Why am I not the one looking over the wall at my house? Why aren’t you?
I love this house. I love that my father can directly bolster food security in an era of climate change that hits the tropics the hardest. My heart filled with joy and sorrow when a diminutive14-year old girl eight months pregnant rushed to bury my mum in an embrace for the ages, a smile on her face despite the fact that she was kicked out of her household for showing physically the devaluing structure of gender which so readily removed her agency. We should all be ashamed that she has to feel grateful for the pre-natal care that my mum provides and the safe birth my mum has fundraised to ensure for her and so many others, but I’m proud beyond words that it is my mum who has stood up for her.
But does that justify the (literal) wall that demarcates class and race, my white privilege safely sheltered behind? There is only one answer to this question, but if I answer what am I saying about myself and my family?
My privileged context, my knowledge from age three that I would graduate from college, should necessitate a (non-patronising, if that’s possible) commitment to work with and for those who enable my privilege through their lack thereof. But I’m hiding behind my computer typing out angst instead of living out my convictions.
I’m embarrassed to post this at this point, but I know that I will never polish these thoughts enough for my satisfaction, so here they are.
Perverse
This blog is not about politics. I intend to avoid politics as much as possible, primarily because I don’t see the political process as it stands as vehicle for progress.
But I believe in truth. And while I don’t see humans as consistent arbiters of it, I believe that truth can be absolute. And I believe Jesus when he says that the "truth shall set you free."
Now, it’s obvious that politicians don’t conform to the same standards of truth that we always want them to. I don’t expect either presidential candidate to do so; they must be fundamentally disassociated from our religious paradigms, even though we can and should cast some political issues in religious terms.
But some untruths are worse than others. In a recent political advertisement, John McCain accused Barack Obama of supporting sex education for kindergartners. McCain clearly sought to use Obama's support of the bill to diminish Obama and make him appear to be a radical legislator.
What he didn’t mention was that it was intended to protect children from sexual abuse.
As a human, as someone who has worked with young children, as a friend of amazing people who were sexually abused as children, and as a Christian, this untruth crosses the threshold from politics to perversion. In a nation where there are 80,000 reported cases of child sexual abuse every year, we cannot tolerate those who would use opponents' work to stop sexual abuse against them. These attacks are an unacceptable travesty.
I know some of you are Republicans. This is not an attempt to change your positions. Please let the McCain campaign know how you feel about this ad.
You know that I would do the same.
Unfinished post from JFK
Sitting in a gate decorated in standard American airport grey and metallic listening to melancholy Hindi music through broken headphones bought with Lok uncle in
I think, understandably, sentimentality is the key word for this wait for my
I’m older now, I think. I don’t think that I’m a different person, but I feel like I have a deeper, more personal understanding of the world’s sorrows and exuberance, and how these so often are intertwined.
At this point my flight was called, and I don't feel like I can pick up my stream of thought where I left it.
Amrit Vani
Amrit Vani, my favourite worship band Aradhna’s latest project, is an album that sees the world for its complexity rather than its simplicity, expressing duality through powerfully simple, meditative lyrics emotively juxtaposed with harmonically diverse, exhuberantly peaceful clamour of a diverse body of western and eastern instruments and voices and languages.
Man Mera requests God, repeatedly, to ‘pour out your light and your truth, let them guide me.’ These lyrics represent, in the truest Christian ideal of simultaneous repentance and rejuvenation, a proclamation the beginning of an individual’s pursuit of God-based truth, uninhibited by the flawed arbiter of truth that the church so often becomes. Absolute truth is embraced, but not in the limited and limiting structure Christians too often construct for fear of greatness. Rather, truth is embraced for the triumph over sin, the liberation of the oppressed, the day of jubilee.
the sacrifice of your life
Destroying the poison of evil within
Desired one, beloved, delight of the heart, soothing ointment for straining eyes
Victorious crusher of fierce death!
Jay Deva Narahari!
Competing Commodification
The semiotics of this video, the emotive undertones of Radiohead, and the intensity of the subject matter coalesce into poignancy. Our pity flows naturally to the child labourers who enable our comfort, the direct connection to mutual existence offering a fluid channel towards action.
This critique is founded not necessarily in the manner in which hearts and pocket books are reached, but in the asymmetry of that system. I don’t question whether the use of media can further justice, but the limitations of media for information seem existential, at least for some. The issue featured in the clip, where direct causality is established between child labourers and the TV watcher is easy to grasp and relatively easy to act on.
But what about injustice that is not so palatable to the West? Who will stand up for/with those whose voice cannot be translated into MTV as readily?
I spent some weeks with child labourers in
Why should their receive less attention, less star power, just because their poverty offers itself less effectively to mass media?
My heart broke when I was speaking with a leader in an organisation I respect immensely. His NGO is transforming
As I see it, that is the system. I will not make any audaciously ahistorical claim that we need to return to better days; injustice has always dwelled with us. But we could do our best to heed Jesus’ words as he began his life’s work, and perhaps dwell on what impact his incarnational ministry might have on our present system. .
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; he has anointed me to tell the good news to the poor. He has sent me to announce release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set oppressed people free, and to announce the year of the Lord's favor.
Luke 4: 18-19
Wordlessness is a word
But what are words but a code, a mechanism of communicating our wordless inner selves? When we are struck by a statement’s profundity, that reaction stems not from the words themselves, but from what they convey and how that integrates, or disagrees with, what we know, what we’ve experienced. They are a vehicle of sharing ourselves, as well as a method of structuring who we are. The limitation of words has increasingly struck me this year as I’ve experienced the incomprehensible. Wordlessness dwells wherever one’s experiences emerge and transcend ones previous frames of reference, and has become something that I treasure.
To that end, I often listen to music and watch images of my life over the last year or two illuminate my laptop screen at random. This aural and visual spectacle induces myriad thoughts and memories, melancholy and exuberant, and conquers my mind’s tendency to categorise all into words.
I’m not sure how to put this, but this hobby has a bizarre twist. As travels, mine and others’, introduce and bid farewell to faces and friends, my collection of photos steadily increases. People who once watched these images during classes or over coffee flicker past two-dimensionally, transitioning unknowingly from partakers in this remembering to objects of it.
My photos are making a mockery of my remembrance.
Shall we go on an adventure?
I’m back above the city, but the sun has gone, leaving behind a blueberry sky fading quickly into sherbet orange before crashing into the dark horizon. A carpet of lights stretches beneath me, a roof of stars above me, but my narcissism is my only muse.
Today, I became an adventurer, and I hopelessly pray that I never become one again. Tears flow to my eyes repeatedly as I write and remember; my soul weeps for shame, and I wonder how often privileged adventurism has broken lives, bodies, spirits.
Under no narrative illusions, I spent Tuesday night on the ground with
They were beautiful.
They were your children, my brothers, but with lives that defy understanding, pain emanates from them even as they display their absolute humanity, exuding normality and otherness in profound simultaneity. We seventy slept side by side by side by side on card board, shivering with only each other for warmth (until our wonderful hosts brought sheets for my compatriots and I), constantly shifting from one bump to another.
I am forever bewitched by those eyes, the sweet smell of glue on their breath.
Adventure.
Returning to today’s adventure, we of privilege decided to take the gentlemen who hosted us, who watched over us and allowed us to temporarily inhabit their discomfort without sharing their constant existential risks, out to lunch.
Before we left for lunch downtown, we heard of riots; police and protesters were crashing together with tear gas and bullets as a poignant backdrop.
I speak for myself, and I hope not to over or understate my agency in our decisions, but I was allured by the potential for adventure, though I’ve been trying to conceal that from myself ever since.
‘Not a big deal,’ I said.
We videotaped our drive to town, confident we were adventurers, but also confident my nonchalant assessment was correct.
Adventure.
And to us Americans, there was no need for fear. Though we spent the rest of the day interacting with heavily armed police, though we saw people beaten, though we saw one soul traumatised into seizure, and ultimately, though we saw our Ugandan brother’s blood flowing, we remain physically unscathed. But three of our friends, our incredible hosts from Tuesday, are now bloodied, shirtless and in jail as I wrestle with fucking emotions. (I’m sorry for the uncouth language, but that is what is in my mind.)
Owori Mark.
Nssereko Martin.
Musazi Robert.
As they waited for us to meet them outside of Barclay’s Bank, they were surrounded by automatic weapons, stripped of their shirts, bruised, tied and taken to prison, known in Uganda as ‘hell on earth’.
Adventure.
This continent has seen centuries of adventure-seekers. I am convinced that outsiders’ quests for self-satisfaction do no good for
Today, I have no suggestions for what works, no visions of a solution to this continent’s woes, nor any credibility to offer any. But to recognise that
I am ashamed.
I lift my eyes up...
I’m sitting on top of Naguru Hill, my hill, looking down over the old, sprawling house we’ll move into in July. Jasper is panting next to me. A wind is whipping in, cooling us, and Lake Victoria looms majestically in the distance. Kampala is beautiful from above, the red clay tile roofs contrasting with verdant greenery, but it is also altitudinally dichotomised.
On our many hills, enviable houses sit gleaming amongst servant-manicured plots, gloating over the shantytowns of the valleys.
Any argument that this is justice is insanity, any merit-based interpretation false. Genealogy, connections, pigmentation and luck augment and/or define 'merit' to determine the altitude of one’s existence; the closer one is to societys' optimums the higher one is elevated.
But we who benefit are the only ones with the power to enact (peaceful) systemic change.
We don’t.
The intense beauty of what I see as God’s creation, visible so clearly from these hills, is inaccessible to most. Another way the wealthy, the powerful, the influential Christians, obscure, or rather, obliterate, God’s love.
Thunder’s rolling in, and I’m walking home with a heavy heart.
Somehow, my melancholy emotionalism seems like an inadequate reaction.
के गारने, न, आशीष दाई?
Another job interview?
In lieu of employment, I have been wandering
We ventured to the source of the
I joined an intrepid expedition in attempting to further a school project in Gulu, and though we rather failed in securing any land, I managed to meet some fascinating, lovely people and marvelled at Gulu’s almost instantaneous transformation from a war zone to an (international) NGO city while trying to suppress criticisms of this bizarre system we call aid.
We ‘Lion King’ed on over to
And on we went, plunging briefly into the village life of our cook, Immaculate, and absorbing the pacific beauty of rural western
I dream of making the same commitment to this adopted home.
On the way home, the road was bloodied from a matatu (mini-bus) that slammed into something, killing at least eight according to the papers.
I have two job interviews this week.
God's Politics?
One of the latent, potentially powerful stories of this election cycle has been the speculation that Evangelicals may not always remain on the right-wing; that Christians in America are awakening to issues outside of abortion and gay marriage and standing up for a host of justice related issues (environmental, social) that some have traditionally classified as liberal. As these Evangelicals have re-examined their faith from this perspective, many have determined a vote for Clinton or Obama is not necessarily evil, and discovered that a vote for Bush doesn’t guarantee a ticket to heaven.
This movement is real.
I am a part of it.
So are many who I have met over the past year.
It seems that with this influx of religion to the left, the burden of producing bad biblical analogies and misidentifying Jesus for political aims now rests more evenly on the shoulders of partisan hacks from both sides.
I remember Palm Sunday, 2003, fresh after the bombs began falling in
America’s Armed Forces were Jesus that day, and I didn’t know whether to ask the pastor to expand upon the analogy (for the uninitiated, Jesus was crucified a short five days after his entry to Jerusalem) or leave the church for comparing its poor, homeless, pacifistic, Middle Eastern revolutionary founder to the armed forces of the most powerful empire ever.
Cue James Carville.
While discussing Bill Richardon’s decision to support Senator Obama over Senator Clinton, Carville opined that it "came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic."
Jesus, once
Somehow, this doesn’t seem like what I’d imagined when I dreamed of religious political discussions moving beyond abortion, homosexuality and nationalism.
Doha style
I’m in
Showered with hot water repeatedly;
Rode an SUV over desert dunes to the Inland Sea near Saudi with some scientists who were there to study poisonous fungi, discovering first hand flamingos live in the
Watched Sania Mirza lose with several thousand Indians, and then saw Venus Williams kickin butt on my way
Rode on the right side of the road (not a double entendre, for the record) and continuously thought we were about to crash;
Attended a brilliant lecture at the posh Diplomatic Club on a massive poll by Gallup of 50,000 Muslims across the world by John Esposito, finding out from accounts of polls taken by the raising of hands that support for Obama dwarfs all other candidates combined in this region;
Viewed the resplendent ‘Kite Runner’ at
Walked along the amazing Corniche, or the central
Strolled through the souq, or market, and sipped incredible spiced coffee and tea;
Took a dip in the refreshingly aqua waves of the Persian Gulf, and stared across the waters to the Gulf’s namesake, that ultimate ‘other’,
Played tennis and raquet ball with middle aged women;
Contemplated buying camels or goats at the animal souq;
Visited little
Ate a burger from an American fast food chain;
Imagined green grass and rolling fields as we drove along the gorgeous, interstate-like roads of
Ultimately, the perspectives on development that I observed here differed incredibly from
I'm leavin, on a jet plane
After a whirlwind of
As my last posting may imply, leaving
The image seared in my mind is from when we crossed the bridge over the (in)famous
I can only pray that their hope doesn’t disappoint them.
And I will pray.
Missing
I’m sitting in a coffee shop, watching my hours left in this beautiful nation slip by as I wait to meet a man who I have been best of friends with since I was two. Leaving nations, especially for indefinitely long amounts of time, is an incredibly complicated affair. To leave smells and streets, faces and mountains that I’ve know since childhood is a visceral experience, emotive and intangible. I can’t identify the specific things that make me sad, just an overwhelming sense of loss as I depart.
Of course, there are many things that I know I will miss, but I don’t know to what extent each relationship, each taste, each location causes this jumble of emotions that I am know experiencing.
I will miss the taste of momos, Nepali dumplings (?), on demand.
I will miss long walks and longer conversations with Uncle Lok, wandering through narrow streets and over hundred year old bridges discussing our favourite topics, American politics and the Nepali church, music and literature.
I will miss my beautiful bainis (little sisters) at Kiran Kinder House, an orphanage that I have visited (not volunteered) and loved for the last six years. Watching these girls grow up so exuberantly and brilliantly is such an incredible blessing, and seeing the joy on their faces despite their painful experiences makes me long to stay on, encouraging them and being their big brother.
I will miss the unparalleled beauty of the sun setting on the
I will miss having rice and daal (lentils) for every meal.
I will miss peoples’ eyes, the gazes that I see as I wander the city. I don’t really know why, its something that I’ve just recently noticed, but I know that life without this will be different.
I will miss the jumble of roads with no planning, with mustard fields abutting multi-storied houses with only dirt paths providing access to both.
I will miss the longing in my heart to comprehend everything said in Nepali, the feeling that all that is said is understood by the part of my brain that still hangs on to my fluency.
I will miss the experience of hands lifted up in worship at Nepali churches, of a wave of prayers, as unorganised as Nepali roads, offered up in exuberance despite poverty; the intermingling of worshippers despite caste and class that America, despite its civil rights work, still hasn’t achieved.
I will miss the centrality of chiya (milk tea) to people’s existence here.
I will miss late night conversations and TV watching with my good friends and hosts at Kids Learning Centre school. The sound of children’s angelic voices singing despite, or because of, the eight hours of power blackouts a day. The joy of hearing them read despite not knowing any alphabet, English (what do we call our alphabet?) or Nepali (devangari) six months ago.
I will miss hearing about the legacy of my grandfather in conversations with people of diverse backgrounds, missionaries, aid workers, elderly Nepalis and others.
I will continue to miss my beautiful friend Richa Bajimaya, who passed away a year ago. I will miss being able to see her mother, eating the delicious food that she makes and constantly acknowledging the wordless pain that we both share, her in a much different, deeper way, in missing the presence of a girl who stayed upbeat and smiling through all of her pain.
But, in spite of all of this narcissistic litany of ‘I will miss’, life goes on. I will soon be on a plane to
Hotel Rwanda?
The Summit Hotel seems like a nice place; too nice, in fact, to let me connect to their wireless.
Guests only.
It also is so full of important people that I am sitting outside, where it’s not so cold for some reason. Ashish, who I’m here to hear perform, compared it to Hotel Rwanda in that its clientele are primarily UN employees and NGO workers.
Not exactly a flattering comparison for
All indicating excellent business for the Summit Hotel, as the need for UN and NGOs grows with the chances of conflict.
A place for aid workers where the alcohol flows, and these glorified immigrants can pretend they’re not in the third world. A chance to drink away the images of abject poverty tattooed in their minds, a melancholy celebration of the fact that for us, conflict and poverty are hobbies, not personal realities. A reminder that if more bombs go off, or if the machetes come out, we’ll have stories to tell rather than lives destroyed; book contracts instead of murdered families.
The emotive, jazzy notes of Ashish’s guitar drift over the packed establishment. The old man in the corner still looks lonely, the middle aged gentleman in the middle slowly drifts closer to the red-wine drinker who is my age while the three guys next to me move into hour two of discussing European football.
When drug dealers encourage
‘You want hash?’
Yes!
Or rather, no thanks, not at all, really, but thank you for asking.
Navigating in
I started asking, Sarangkot kahan cha? Some store keepers pointed one way, so I went about half a kilometre that way, then a guard pointed out the peak to me, which was very nice to know. Except that it was in the opposite direction, and so imposingly monstrous on the skyline that it was quite unbelievable that the other gentlemen had pointed me in the wrong direction. So I turned around, and walked away from where everyone else had been pointing directly towards the hill, which sort of towered
So directly up Sarangkot I went, or tried to. I sort of followed what seemed to be a dry river bed until people told me that I was going the wrong way. So I turned around, and fortunately ran into a path that took me up. And up. And up. No tourists on this route, and considering it was fading into the afternoon and evenings have been bitterly cold, some sign of a hotel would certainly have been appreciated. Paragliders floated over my head in huge numbers, there shadows often flitting Nazgul-like over me. I walked past two old Nepali guys who asked for a light. So many steps, they just kept going up and up. I took frequent breaks to look down at the beauty beneath me; the densely forested hills faded into the reflective lake which contrasted starkly with the city, which slowly faded into populated hills spiderwebbed with paths and cut deeply with terraces. I came almost to the peak, and could see paragliders above, beneath and parallel to me. But no hotels. I wandered fairly aimlessly through terraces and woods, but didn’t know I was close to hotels until the above encounter.
After the drug solicitation, it was only five minutes until I was drinking chiya (chai, tea) and turning down offers of drugs, postcards and yak wool blankets.
I shivered through the night in a room that cost me 100 Nepali rupees (about $1.50), and woke to more clouds at 6:30 am with the majestic
And now I’m back in
ps. I just figured out how to do links, so if you have a blog that I haven't linked, please let me know!
This is what I've been doing
But an update on where I’ve been. My family came to
Delhi- Apparently called Helly by some, we didn’t find it too stressful. With our hotel’s location right by
Agra- The Taj is superlative. I can’t describe it. Viewing it from the splendour of Agra Fort, stunning. Somehow, we managed to avoid the typical mob-induced stress at the Taj Mahal, and just sat and looked at it. For a long time.
Train update- We sat in cheap seats on the train for most of the trip, and while it normally worked out with more stress than desired, but passable, the ride to Jaipur was an exception in the extreme. In a section where we were sitting, there were six seats, of which we took up five. Across the aisle from us in the corresponding section for six, probably ten guys my age piled in for a free ride. The tickets aren’t checked into well into the ride, so some people hop on to ride between stops. 10 men=20 eyes. All staring, seemingly without blinking, at my sister. With comments. Guys my age in a group, in any culture, seem to be the scourge of the earth. We suck. This further cemented my opinion. My sis hung up a shawl to block their view, which helped, I think. When the got off, one of my peers decided to peek in his head through the shawl to yell something.
I was so embarrassed.
Jaipur- The city can be beautiful, even as a tourist. Saw the sites, argued with the hawkers, tried to relax a bit as we enjoyed the beautiful views from our temporary home, Nahargarh Fort. On our way to the hotel, our rickshaw broke down, so we piled ourselves and two unprepared Germans into one auto rickshaw. It was
Mumbai- We saw only a select Mumbai, but what we saw was incredibly pleasant. The strip of coast, with a beautiful walkway and a ‘modern’ skyline felt like we were in a different country. This city seems to embody ‘new
Goa- Heaven on earth, or so it seemed. A huge, peaceful beach, with dolphins splashing in the distance and simple huts and palm trees blending with sand; why did I leave? We spent our days in the waves and in the sand, with a quick boat ride to try to get closer to the dolphins. For some reason, I went body-surfing with my spectacles on.
They are now in the
Kerala- Green and gorgeous, we basically did nothing other than walk around and enjoy the requisite boat ride through the backwaters. My family left me.
I then flew to Jaipur and spent a couple days there in an attempt to secure an internship. I walked over 30 kilometres to one potential employer in an attempt to save cash and soak in Jaipur-ness. I’m glad I did it, even though I didn’t get the position. I planned on taking a train to
In
Flew to
Mera home es tapaiko ghar
Oddly enough, I’m in
After a week with an ‘uncle’ who happens to be like a second father and close friend, I’m now living at the school where I used to volunteer. So much has changed here. The couple that used to ruin it divorced, and the school suffered so much disgrace that the student body was halved. Now the (former) principal is in counselling in
I’m blessed to be here. For all of its flaws, the church in
I'm Sorry
I have been intending to get on and update you since my last post; my experience in Bandha Basti transformed my life and perspectives, but not in a way that I have been able to articulate at all. So now I owe you all an apology, because the inspiration for this post comes more from the events of this morning. My sister and parents and I have been touring India, and they left me in Kochi, Kerala last night to go back home to Kampala (via Dubai). Five hours after falling asleep, I woke up with no need for caffeine at 6 AM, likely the first time in my life that this has occurred.
Why?
Because Iowans were beginning the process of selecting a new president. Results began coming in as I flipped on CNN in the hotel lobby, and in a couple hours I was watching this with misty eyes and a hopeful heart, celebrating as an Obama victory with record turnout was announced.
You see, Obama has been my candidate since I first heard him speak in 2004, for reasons that I can only attempt to articulate. So I won't try here, I don't think that I can translate my emotions onto this page.
So, while I really want to tell you about my time in Bandha Basti, and my travels around India, it will have to wait for another day.
Napkins...
I went to get some delicious coffee the other day, or rather, to get coffee to accompany my wireless internet use as I needed to make bookings for a family trip to Goa.
HIghlight of the trip...realising that I could stock up on napkins to use as toilet paper as my neighbourhood has no locations selling TP.
I am in Jaipur, and am rather content here।Some of you may not know how I came here, so I think that I am going to give a little bit of background। After finishing my second year at the Macalester College of Minnesota, I rushed to see my family in Kampala, Uganda। I spent the summer working on promoting political pluralism, and had the brilliant opportunity to visit Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Kenya as well। In early September, I flew from Kampala to Nairobi to Mumbai to Delhi to begin my study abroad in the nation of India, which is what this e-mail is about।
In Delhi I met the 25 other students with who I am sharing this experience। I am enrolled in the Minnesota Studies of International Development- India Programme। After arriving in Delhi, we had a bit of a grand tour of the important sites (the Red FOrt, Parliament, India Gate, etc।) and a little bit of training, and then they shipped us off to a gorgeous resort situated near Jaipur। We mainly hung out by the pool, did a little training, and visited some historical forts before rushing on to Jaipur, Rajasthan, where we were to study। We didn't really end up studying very much there, and had a six week period of insular American community building while writing a few essays with prompts that basically encouraged us to write about how we're different from everyone around us, and had some rather bland lectures। I discovered an absolutely brilliant coffee shop situated in a beautiful school of art, tried my best to stay optimistic about Obama's chances in the upcoming primaries and went into the Thar desert on a camel। I visited a temple surrounded by swarms of monkeys (including one that attacked me and stole my bag of chips) that overlooks the entire city of Jaipur (pop। 3 million +), and tried to fit into Jaipur as much as possible। I have been deluged by crazy cricket fans in Jaupur's streets after winning the Twenty-20 world cup final in a packed pub, and have consistently been confused about what to do when children come up to me to beg। I have lived with two host families, the second of which was quite an amazing batch of good people, buoyed by a 3 year old boy and a 4 year old girl।
Today, I am moving on to the second phase of my study away in India, relocating to the other side of Jaipur to live in the Bandha Basti slum while I intern for Pratham। Pratham runs 2 schools for child labourers in the slum, and I'll be teaching english at both of them while learning Hindi from the children। The school is only 4 hours a day, and attendance is not mandatory, so it works into the schedules। I am naturally rather torn about the whole set up as I mainly want to just liberate these 9-14 year olds from having to work, but in so doing I would probably end up in preventing them from eating because their parents incomes are so low। Hopefully, the teaching that we do will help them to break the cycle of poverty। For those of you who are praying people, I would appreciate prayer for these children। This six week internship, which might get extended to May, looms large as a time to either be incredibly depressed and depressing, or to figure out how to deepen my faith from one grounded in being self-centered to one that better reflects the passions of Jesus' for justice and the removal of poverty।
My last year in photos, partially.
