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March 3, 2006
When times were clear
The electricity had gone off hours ago and I had continued to watch Hotel Rwanda in the dark until my lap top ran out of batteries, the air was hanging hot and heavy; sweat beading on my top lip and pooling on my back, the crows were hawing outside and the mosquitoes were flying low around my head. I’d been lying awake in darkness for hours considering my fate if the dengue-carrying mosquitoes found their target and vaguely thinking about the Bigger Issues. I rolled over, in an attempt to circulate some air if nothing else, and that’s when all my sweet-sixteen ideals fell apart.
I realized that every thought, every idea, about how to affect change I had ever managed to acquire in my barely-educated, foggy-headed, the-first-line-of-this-blog-refers-to-Hollywood-does-genocide-Hotel-fucking-Rwanda, couldn’t-make-a-convincing-argument-if-I-tried life, everything actually was, well, wrong.
I think if I was in Australia right now to ring in the 10-year anniversary of Howard, this crisis might be centred around the politics of my home land, but I-m not… I’m in an unreal world where, despite the deepest digging of pockets in the history of natural disasters, there are still thousands of people sitting in temporary shelters while age-old tensions, bad roads and forms in triplicate hamper construction efforts. Where shifty government officials stand ready with their hand out. Where white, air-conditioned, flag-flying, 4×4 Land Cruisers clog the narrow roads and swerve to miss the cows and old men carrying fire wood on their bicycles. Where the sheer number of agencies and international staff all jostling to work in the one small area has driven even the price of rice higher (not to mention building materials, daily wages, rent…) Where some days I just really struggle to see a way forward, let alone a part I can play in making it happen.
I liked it better when at least I thought I could help. Now I can’t help thinking I might actually be part of the problem.
Posted by catherine at March 3, 2006 9:21 AM
Comments
You're not the problem, Catherine. Over-bureaucratised NGOs with flashy land rovers may certainly be part of it, but the problem is greater. It's greed and 'structural adjustment' and an attitude of the monied countries that suggests the problems of the 3rd/developing/other/dying world are somebody else's. It's people who presume somebody else is fixing it. And worse, the people that see lives in Asia and Africa as somehow more expendable than their own. It's the capitalists who build industries around disaster and the countries that avert their eyes to genocide. And the ones that bribe the genocidal leaders. You're none of those things. You're not the problem.
Your part in things may be small, but it's a thousand times more significant to many more lives than anything any of your friends are doing...
Posted by: Patrick Pittman ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://journals.concrete.org.au/green/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 3, 2006 1:52 PM
Few people are focussed enough to design, from a young age, a career path that will allow them to help in the primary slice of their day: work hours. But I think there are still options. Have you thought about volunteering at a grassroots level? I have been thinking lately that routine help like escorting a disabled person, acting as a citizen advocate, collecting books for public hospitals or other such initiatives might go some way to calming this oscillating despair we sometimes feel when we comprehend the magnitude of the world's pressing ills. And then, during some of the remaining scarce free time, raise our voices and lobby elected representitives and public officials to attempt to enact some lasting change. What are your thoughts on this?
Posted by: sean at March 3, 2006 2:54 PM