Ready to Update the Missing Weeks, But First Some Thoughts (written last month)
No photos, no maps.....just one long ramble.....read at your own risk
I have been trying to get myself to update – and finally – complete the description of my two months in South Sudan and my progress in setting up a school in Malek. It has not been easy. I am referring to notes taken while I was traveling. With no electricity to charge the computer, I resorted to the age-old traditions of pen and paper – and for some reason, I am having trouble getting onto the computer to post on the blog. At this point, probably no one is reading, but I need to do this for my own sanity – which seems to be slipping from my grasp with each sleep-deprived day.
I have traveled extensively over the past thirty years (maybe to make up for a childhood spent almost exclusively in Brooklyn – with an occasional trip to the Empire State Building or Haydn Planetarium), but no trip, no experience has affected me as this first foray into the African continent. Trips to other continents may have blown my mind, but I eventually returned to my life and the re-entry was more-or-less seamless. I was wowed when I motorcycled through Vietnam in 1995. Vietnam opened my eyes to another culture and helped broaden my perspective on the war and on the world in general.
But this is different.
Sub-Saharan Africa is powerful. It is raw. It is fertile. It is extreme. My experiences are based mostly on South Sudan, but I have the sense that there is a feeling that permeates every country in this region with only differences in degree. I was only in Uganda and South Sudan and my sense of Africa is based on that small sample, mixed with many conversations with Africans who have traveled the continent, as well the readings that I have been devouring since I’ve returned.
For me, this was the farthest I’ve been from Western culture and sensibilities. Though, now that I’m back, it makes be reevaluate any ideas I have about my own culture. I find that with each sleepless night – lying in bed absorbed in the images, smells, and memories of South Sudan – I feel more and more helpless. Seeing the aftermath of war and listening to the tales of death, rape, destruction, and slavery, I am shaken to the core to the degree in which people can hate and the power of the oral history of the conflict that is seemingly genetically passed down from one generation to the next – an oral history, with all its complexities and nuances understood and internalized by many as a blind passionate hatred for all things Arab or Muslim.
And I remember.
Was the Middle East any different from this – where children are brought up to hate the “Other?” Don’t we otherize in America each and everyday?
On the show “Lost” there are the Others on the other (where else would they be?) side of the island. They are mysterious and feared – and definitely not to be trusted. Is our entire history a tale of otherization? Must we always find someone to fear? To hate? To feel superior to?
Are there any aspects of our lives where we do not otherize? On a personal level – at school, work, or on the streets? On a broader level, do we not otherize religions, cultures, races, and civilizations? What is this all about? Are we hard-wired to feel this way, because if we are, then are future is much darker than I had thought.
It may be the antibiotics, the post malarial funk, the insomnia, or the culture shock. It may be the onset on insanity………but I have never felt so helpless about being able to add something to this world – or even know where to start.
When a person is dying they say that his life flashes in front of him. Maybe when a person is dying to understand a culture, all of history flashes before his eyes. Not sure what I mean by that, but I liked the juxtaposition between the two “dyings.”
On so many occasions in Sudan, the roots of so many isms flashed before my eyes – and I understood, if not agreed with, why they had to happen. I could see why they developed – the need that they filled, the solution that they offered. Colonialism, Communism, Capitalism, Despotism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Judaism, (why isn’t Islam an ism?). Add to this democracy, authoritarianism, dictatorship, and theocracy. Some of are social systems, some political, and of course some are from a force whose power seems to transcends all – a force which has bred Otherization and given moral justification for almost any imaginable and unimaginable action. A force whose goal is to bring peace and love, yet has been turned against itself to produce horrors so antithetical to its original mission. A force used to control, unite, and turn one against others who disagree. That force, of course, is religion. I ramble on about this a bit more below.
The exploitation of the poor is something that can’t grasp in my brain – Not only from the pharmaceutical companies and huge corporations – this subject has been covered in some excellent documentaries (“The Corporation” for one), but from local merchants and leaders. I will never forget the sight of local war lords selling United Nations grain to some of the poorest people on this planet – the bags which are donated by the UN and have stamped in large letters on the sacks: “NOT FOR SALE – FOR DISTRIBUTION ONLY.” …..and the sight of portly politicians sitting in restaurants spending the equivalent of one month’s salary for the average Sudanese on imported chicken and beer. More on this later in the blog……………
And in the end, I wonder if we are basically good as a species. Is man good? (It’s interesting, I am using the term “man” to mean “people” but with some thought I wonder if our societies had had more power in the hands of women, if things would have turned out the same. Would a child-bearing gender make the same global decisions as men? I have no answers. I wonder what you think.
I really wonder whether we would kill ourselves without some sort of government. I understand so clearly why religion was necessary, as well as the belief in a figure greater and more powerful than man/woman. But I don’t understand how we’ve taken every religion, which always preach peace and solutions to better oneself, and turned them into vehicles of power, war, and destruction. How by accepting one faith, we must otherize all other religions. Why must we be superior and have THE answer. “There is only one right answer and I have it and in order to save you, I will make you see the light even if I have to kill you in the process. If everyone followed my religion, there would be peace and I won’t stop killing anyone who gets in my way to spread this cure. And by the time everyone is either dead or on my side, there will be factions within my religion and the others will now be among us – no longer “us” but now others to be converted, tortured and killed. “Others” who are innately inferior. Being an “other” by definition – or by my definition – makes you inferior.” Ramble finished….too much coffee – writing this in a café and I have to keep ordering or else I feel guilty for taking up this whole table.
Tangent:
When I first went to live in Europe in ’78, I was awed and inspired. I fell in love with the culture and wanted to return – a feeling that has never left me. When I returned to the States after some years I saw America with a very critical eye. I saw America in relation to the world. Those were times of intense dislike of America – and in some way – Americans. I came back feeling that something was missing from my culture - I missed the cafes and the time that people took to eat, drink, and make love. I became far more critical of our foreign policy, though while still in Europe, I felt that I needed to defend the country of which I carried a passport and allowed me to leave and return as I pleased. I noticed things that I had taken for granted until then and explored parts of our society which were going on while I sleepwalked blindly through and around them. They were just the way things were – nothing more and nothing else. It took going to another culture to be able to begin to look critically at my own culture. It’s sort of like when I learned French in high school. I only leaned to verbalize and really understand English grammar after I started learning French. There were so many elements of the English language that just were – they sounded right. I had no idea that I was following any rules, nor did I really care…………
I have been trying to get myself to update – and finally – complete the description of my two months in South Sudan and my progress in setting up a school in Malek. It has not been easy. I am referring to notes taken while I was traveling. With no electricity to charge the computer, I resorted to the age-old traditions of pen and paper – and for some reason, I am having trouble getting onto the computer to post on the blog. At this point, probably no one is reading, but I need to do this for my own sanity – which seems to be slipping from my grasp with each sleep-deprived day.
I have traveled extensively over the past thirty years (maybe to make up for a childhood spent almost exclusively in Brooklyn – with an occasional trip to the Empire State Building or Haydn Planetarium), but no trip, no experience has affected me as this first foray into the African continent. Trips to other continents may have blown my mind, but I eventually returned to my life and the re-entry was more-or-less seamless. I was wowed when I motorcycled through Vietnam in 1995. Vietnam opened my eyes to another culture and helped broaden my perspective on the war and on the world in general.
But this is different.
Sub-Saharan Africa is powerful. It is raw. It is fertile. It is extreme. My experiences are based mostly on South Sudan, but I have the sense that there is a feeling that permeates every country in this region with only differences in degree. I was only in Uganda and South Sudan and my sense of Africa is based on that small sample, mixed with many conversations with Africans who have traveled the continent, as well the readings that I have been devouring since I’ve returned.
For me, this was the farthest I’ve been from Western culture and sensibilities. Though, now that I’m back, it makes be reevaluate any ideas I have about my own culture. I find that with each sleepless night – lying in bed absorbed in the images, smells, and memories of South Sudan – I feel more and more helpless. Seeing the aftermath of war and listening to the tales of death, rape, destruction, and slavery, I am shaken to the core to the degree in which people can hate and the power of the oral history of the conflict that is seemingly genetically passed down from one generation to the next – an oral history, with all its complexities and nuances understood and internalized by many as a blind passionate hatred for all things Arab or Muslim.
And I remember.
Was the Middle East any different from this – where children are brought up to hate the “Other?” Don’t we otherize in America each and everyday?
On the show “Lost” there are the Others on the other (where else would they be?) side of the island. They are mysterious and feared – and definitely not to be trusted. Is our entire history a tale of otherization? Must we always find someone to fear? To hate? To feel superior to?
Are there any aspects of our lives where we do not otherize? On a personal level – at school, work, or on the streets? On a broader level, do we not otherize religions, cultures, races, and civilizations? What is this all about? Are we hard-wired to feel this way, because if we are, then are future is much darker than I had thought.
It may be the antibiotics, the post malarial funk, the insomnia, or the culture shock. It may be the onset on insanity………but I have never felt so helpless about being able to add something to this world – or even know where to start.
When a person is dying they say that his life flashes in front of him. Maybe when a person is dying to understand a culture, all of history flashes before his eyes. Not sure what I mean by that, but I liked the juxtaposition between the two “dyings.”
On so many occasions in Sudan, the roots of so many isms flashed before my eyes – and I understood, if not agreed with, why they had to happen. I could see why they developed – the need that they filled, the solution that they offered. Colonialism, Communism, Capitalism, Despotism, Catholicism, Hinduism, Judaism, (why isn’t Islam an ism?). Add to this democracy, authoritarianism, dictatorship, and theocracy. Some of are social systems, some political, and of course some are from a force whose power seems to transcends all – a force which has bred Otherization and given moral justification for almost any imaginable and unimaginable action. A force whose goal is to bring peace and love, yet has been turned against itself to produce horrors so antithetical to its original mission. A force used to control, unite, and turn one against others who disagree. That force, of course, is religion. I ramble on about this a bit more below.
The exploitation of the poor is something that can’t grasp in my brain – Not only from the pharmaceutical companies and huge corporations – this subject has been covered in some excellent documentaries (“The Corporation” for one), but from local merchants and leaders. I will never forget the sight of local war lords selling United Nations grain to some of the poorest people on this planet – the bags which are donated by the UN and have stamped in large letters on the sacks: “NOT FOR SALE – FOR DISTRIBUTION ONLY.” …..and the sight of portly politicians sitting in restaurants spending the equivalent of one month’s salary for the average Sudanese on imported chicken and beer. More on this later in the blog……………
And in the end, I wonder if we are basically good as a species. Is man good? (It’s interesting, I am using the term “man” to mean “people” but with some thought I wonder if our societies had had more power in the hands of women, if things would have turned out the same. Would a child-bearing gender make the same global decisions as men? I have no answers. I wonder what you think.
I really wonder whether we would kill ourselves without some sort of government. I understand so clearly why religion was necessary, as well as the belief in a figure greater and more powerful than man/woman. But I don’t understand how we’ve taken every religion, which always preach peace and solutions to better oneself, and turned them into vehicles of power, war, and destruction. How by accepting one faith, we must otherize all other religions. Why must we be superior and have THE answer. “There is only one right answer and I have it and in order to save you, I will make you see the light even if I have to kill you in the process. If everyone followed my religion, there would be peace and I won’t stop killing anyone who gets in my way to spread this cure. And by the time everyone is either dead or on my side, there will be factions within my religion and the others will now be among us – no longer “us” but now others to be converted, tortured and killed. “Others” who are innately inferior. Being an “other” by definition – or by my definition – makes you inferior.” Ramble finished….too much coffee – writing this in a café and I have to keep ordering or else I feel guilty for taking up this whole table.
Tangent:
When I first went to live in Europe in ’78, I was awed and inspired. I fell in love with the culture and wanted to return – a feeling that has never left me. When I returned to the States after some years I saw America with a very critical eye. I saw America in relation to the world. Those were times of intense dislike of America – and in some way – Americans. I came back feeling that something was missing from my culture - I missed the cafes and the time that people took to eat, drink, and make love. I became far more critical of our foreign policy, though while still in Europe, I felt that I needed to defend the country of which I carried a passport and allowed me to leave and return as I pleased. I noticed things that I had taken for granted until then and explored parts of our society which were going on while I sleepwalked blindly through and around them. They were just the way things were – nothing more and nothing else. It took going to another culture to be able to begin to look critically at my own culture. It’s sort of like when I learned French in high school. I only leaned to verbalize and really understand English grammar after I started learning French. There were so many elements of the English language that just were – they sounded right. I had no idea that I was following any rules, nor did I really care…………
posted by Charly at 3:03 PM
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