Hopefully you all saw McCain and Obama speak tonight from Columbia University? I stood with thousands of students right outside the building with the auditorium in which they spoke to watch it on a big jumbotron. As are all mass gatherings of a political sort (I'm thinking of times I spent marching to protest the US invasion of Iraq in Boston) the aura throughout the crowd was quite electric. It's no secret as to who I'm voting for (see earlier blog posts!) or who the bloc of students on this campus will overwhelming seek to elect......
I love Obama. Still, I feel he needs to drop a word and an idea from what he says to be the candidate I really want to elect. #1 "evil" What does this word mean really? We go through this again and again, who are we to determine as Americans what "evil" is in this world? There are many innocent Iraqis and Afghani citizens who have lost loved ones that consider the United States "evil" and W. even more "evil." Why do we own and get to propogate this label? Because we are powerful? We don't live in a fictional film or novel, with good and evil and these simplistic monolithic notions, do we? People are as they are because they have acquired certain learned behaviors and carry out certain acts based on them. The acts themselves can certainly be deemed good or evil because where they objectively harm other human beings. Yet labeling any person "evil" suggests a permanence that fails to recognize that human beings lead malleable existences at all times in their life (certainly Hitler or your favourite serial killer might be all but impossible to shape or deter from behaviors they undertake). Yet to me, the world is gray and a label like "evil" only serves to polarize, alienate and cause more people to hate each other (especially Americans these days!) than to love each other (see W., Reagan, or McCarthy.... will somebody please LEARN FROM HISTORY!).
#2 "exceptional" I hate to burst your bubble but every country in the world has something that is exceptional or unique about it. It is precisely this hubris (excessive pride) in ourselves as Americans that led us into the great follies of the Bush adminstration's foreign policy. We are simply 1 of 192 (193 now with Kosovo?) socially imagined and constructed nation-states that at this current juncture in history happens to have more military, political, economic, social, cultural power than anyone else or better, hegemony. Every time, we announce our arrogance and display our ego with the word "exceptional," we undo the great and humble values and ideas that this country is founded on. Every empire that preceded this American one declined riding the waves of "exceptionalism." Rather, we should recognize the inevitable and increasing interdepedence of globalization, accept it and recede into it (see G. John Ikenberry). When we remember the loss of approximately 3,000 of our citizens on that sad day seven years ago, is there something that makes America exceptional in that? Isn't it exceptional that 800,000 Rwandans lost their lives in three months or that nearly 1.7 million Cambodians lost their lives in four years or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have lost theirs or over 300,000 people from a variety of coastal areas in the tsunami of December 2004? What does "exceptional" (just like "evil") mean and what utility does it have to say it given the perceptions in generates among others outside this "Land of Lincoln"?
I hope Obama is only being so Amerocentric to get elected. I hope "yes we can" becomes a call to global change and neighborliness in the global village, not merely another nationalist drum to sound. I hope.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Sunday, September 7, 2008
obama and mccain to speak at columbia + back to nyc
So yes, it was Ahmadinejad last semester. This year, Columbia has gone and pulled in Obama and McCain. If I don't win the random lottery for an entry ticket, you can sure bet I'll be outside on the adjacent campus lawn here watching it on a big wearing the ten dollar Obama t-shirt I got made down on Spring Street. Hope and progress. Yes we can! (please refer to earlier posts as to why you should vote for Obama in my opinion).
Okay, so I've completely failed at doing the promised long and thorough recounting of my experiences in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Complete failure. I accept it. Still, if you can track me down for a meal (sorry if this requires many of you to get airfare as well!), I promise to give you a recounting of anything you're interested in and share what I've learned. One non-failure.... you can expect this thing to be spiced up with some pictures on new and old posts starting next weekend!
So how does it feel to be back in NYC? The obvious answer is stressful. I accept it. It's more than the pace of life though and trying to do good work for and make the most of the great opportunities in everything related to conflict resolution and/or the UN here at Columbia. Certainly, one encounters stresses in West Africa and they include everything from learning to relax on transportation that feels less comfortable and safe, avoid aggressive salespeople on the street that probably perceive you as the sale to make their day or week even, and accept the limitations on your personal freedom of movement when you are in places that many people (and here I'm not talking from a Western-centric p.o.v. but where the locals perceive it too!) consider too dangerous or unsafe to be out in past sundown (ie the streets of Monrovia). The reality is that DESPITE all those stresses that one takes on coming from (growing up and being accustomed to is better!) a so-called "developed" country and living and working in a "developing" country, it's hard to get around the fact that I feel that people in West Africa are just happier. No, I didn't get sucked into working for their tourist bureau (go to Ghana now!) and I haven't looked up happiness indexes or anything like that but it is an observable fact to me as an individual that people are on the whole there smile more at each other, engage each other more often in peaceful interaction or amicable conversation and just seem to feel happier more over there than they do here in the good ole US of A. I can say the same about Vietnam and Cambodia. Is this a statement about the effects of unrestrained capitalism without enough corrective social welfare redistribution mechanisms and its effects on diminishing praiseworthy communal ethics and/or values? It might be. Is this a statement that the "developed" countries and the people that live within them and the "developing" countries and the people that live within them have a lot they can learn from each other and that communication and sharing (not imposition!) should go both ways? Certainly. This is a call to all you Westerners (you know who you are and I won't be Amerocentric in assigning blame on this one!), let's work hard not to impose or displace our feelings onto the people around us and the communities we live in or even travel to. This is a call for personal responsibility and obligation to your fellow human beings. At the very least, you can make me feel a bit less stressed. :)
Anyway, just had to let the above out. Not even sure why. All I do know, is that I am overly excited about all the amazing things that I'll be involved in here over the next school year. Stay tuned here for some impressive events I'm helping to organize. If you're in New York (or can make it here), then as they once again say in Ghana, "you're invited".....
Okay, so I've completely failed at doing the promised long and thorough recounting of my experiences in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Complete failure. I accept it. Still, if you can track me down for a meal (sorry if this requires many of you to get airfare as well!), I promise to give you a recounting of anything you're interested in and share what I've learned. One non-failure.... you can expect this thing to be spiced up with some pictures on new and old posts starting next weekend!
So how does it feel to be back in NYC? The obvious answer is stressful. I accept it. It's more than the pace of life though and trying to do good work for and make the most of the great opportunities in everything related to conflict resolution and/or the UN here at Columbia. Certainly, one encounters stresses in West Africa and they include everything from learning to relax on transportation that feels less comfortable and safe, avoid aggressive salespeople on the street that probably perceive you as the sale to make their day or week even, and accept the limitations on your personal freedom of movement when you are in places that many people (and here I'm not talking from a Western-centric p.o.v. but where the locals perceive it too!) consider too dangerous or unsafe to be out in past sundown (ie the streets of Monrovia). The reality is that DESPITE all those stresses that one takes on coming from (growing up and being accustomed to is better!) a so-called "developed" country and living and working in a "developing" country, it's hard to get around the fact that I feel that people in West Africa are just happier. No, I didn't get sucked into working for their tourist bureau (go to Ghana now!) and I haven't looked up happiness indexes or anything like that but it is an observable fact to me as an individual that people are on the whole there smile more at each other, engage each other more often in peaceful interaction or amicable conversation and just seem to feel happier more over there than they do here in the good ole US of A. I can say the same about Vietnam and Cambodia. Is this a statement about the effects of unrestrained capitalism without enough corrective social welfare redistribution mechanisms and its effects on diminishing praiseworthy communal ethics and/or values? It might be. Is this a statement that the "developed" countries and the people that live within them and the "developing" countries and the people that live within them have a lot they can learn from each other and that communication and sharing (not imposition!) should go both ways? Certainly. This is a call to all you Westerners (you know who you are and I won't be Amerocentric in assigning blame on this one!), let's work hard not to impose or displace our feelings onto the people around us and the communities we live in or even travel to. This is a call for personal responsibility and obligation to your fellow human beings. At the very least, you can make me feel a bit less stressed. :)
Anyway, just had to let the above out. Not even sure why. All I do know, is that I am overly excited about all the amazing things that I'll be involved in here over the next school year. Stay tuned here for some impressive events I'm helping to organize. If you're in New York (or can make it here), then as they once again say in Ghana, "you're invited".....
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
winneba morgue for now..... liberia and sierra leone coming soon!
Fact. This is definitely the first post I've made on here that will be anywhere this short. So what happened to my characteristic long-windedness (this applies both on the blog and in person of course!)? Don't worry, I've still got it! However, as my time in Ghana and West Africa is coming to a close (for now as I hope to be back in Liberia to work with the UN (fingers crossed!) by next fall after graduating) with a flight out of here to London tonight, I wanted to reach out to my faithful readership (hopefully someone besides my Mom.... all right, all right, let's be honest, she's not even reading this anymore, someone besides me) and give them (myself) a bit of a teaser for things to come next week!
So yes, I just returned from a trip to Liberia (mainly Monrovia for work-related things) and Sierra Leone (the eastern parts up to Kenema and the Tongo diamond mines for pleasure-related things). I had an amazing experience and learned a ton, not least because this marked my first experiences visiting an ever-so-recently war torn country and a United Nations Mission as well as sitting in on a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (all in Liberia) or because I made it unscathed through a(n) (idiotic really, with no water and complete reliance on a flip-flopped guide to machete our way along) tropical island rainforest trek amongst pythons and venom-spitting vipers and over twenty-four hours of bush taxi and motorbike rides along what Lonely Planet considers "the worst road in Africa" (in Sierra Leone). (I should say here that I have strong evidence to corroborate the fact that no one from Lonely Planet has been to most of these places despite writing about them as though they have!). Three-foot deep and flooded potholes, road that is essentially a mudslide, and vehicles that are overturned or immobile (frozen in their tracks for four years in some cases!) is just the beginning. Anyway.... stay tuned for more on that.
Here, I will first just give a shout out to Darius and Jakob for some excellent thinking and sharing on "peacemaking indicators." I hope to chime in soon, guys. Comments and/or a dialogue on any and all things is in a word, awesome.
Finally, in reference to my previous post about my friend Charles, the Liberian mortician I met at the refugee camp in Ghana, I'll just say that he indeed did "make me strong." About two weeks back, I headed over to meet him and he took me to the Winneba morgue to show me around the facility. As this wa
s my first morgue visit ever, I can't speak to the conditions of those in the United States or those in Western countries but let's just say that this place did not look like what I have seen in your typical television crime drama. The facility and especially its sparse refridgeration units comprised a small fraction of the space I would imagine would be desired for the number of bodies housed there. I'll say only that it was extremely interesting to hear Charles and his co-workers animatedly and passionately discuss their work and the specimens on which they do that work, making in a sense the far from commonplace (for someone like me), commonplace. Since I can't judge whether a thorough discussion on this subject would lead to increased readership (someone besides me) or decreased readership (I stop reading what I write), I'll defer for now but if this experience is something you're interested in hearing more about, don't hesitate to ask me about it as I have many observations about it on a variety of themes!
Okay, this was still long-winded. Sorry. :)
So yes, I just returned from a trip to Liberia (mainly Monrovia for work-related things) and Sierra Leone (the eastern parts up to Kenema and the Tongo diamond mines for pleasure-related things). I had an amazing experience and learned a ton, not least because this marked my first experiences visiting an ever-so-recently war torn country and a United Nations Mission as well as sitting in on a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (all in Liberia) or because I made it unscathed through a(n) (idiotic really, with no water and complete reliance on a flip-flopped guide to machete our way along) tropical island rainforest trek amongst pythons and venom-spitting vipers and over twenty-four hours of bush taxi and motorbike rides along what Lonely Planet considers "the worst road in Africa" (in Sierra Leone). (I should say here that I have strong evidence to corroborate the fact that no one from Lonely Planet has been to most of these places despite writing about them as though they have!). Three-foot deep and flooded potholes, road that is essentially a mudslide, and vehicles that are overturned or immobile (frozen in their tracks for four years in some cases!) is just the beginning. Anyway.... stay tuned for more on that.
Here, I will first just give a shout out to Darius and Jakob for some excellent thinking and sharing on "peacemaking indicators." I hope to chime in soon, guys. Comments and/or a dialogue on any and all things is in a word, awesome.
Finally, in reference to my previous post about my friend Charles, the Liberian mortician I met at the refugee camp in Ghana, I'll just say that he indeed did "make me strong." About two weeks back, I headed over to meet him and he took me to the Winneba morgue to show me around the facility. As this wa
s my first morgue visit ever, I can't speak to the conditions of those in the United States or those in Western countries but let's just say that this place did not look like what I have seen in your typical television crime drama. The facility and especially its sparse refridgeration units comprised a small fraction of the space I would imagine would be desired for the number of bodies housed there. I'll say only that it was extremely interesting to hear Charles and his co-workers animatedly and passionately discuss their work and the specimens on which they do that work, making in a sense the far from commonplace (for someone like me), commonplace. Since I can't judge whether a thorough discussion on this subject would lead to increased readership (someone besides me) or decreased readership (I stop reading what I write), I'll defer for now but if this experience is something you're interested in hearing more about, don't hesitate to ask me about it as I have many observations about it on a variety of themes!Okay, this was still long-winded. Sorry. :)
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