A few frustrations..
Trip Start
May 16, 2007
1
3
25
Trip End
Jul 28, 2007
Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia
Friday, May 18, 2007
I saw my breakfast eggs approaching me from the corner of the room, and I could feel myself sighing. Oy! I'm back. To this. Fried eggs overcooked in the morning, covered in grease. Toast that is so dry it crumbles all over the plate, the placemat, the table - all over everything.
But there is excellent pineapple juice, and excellent coffee.
My eyes at breakfast feel like they would happily sleep for another four hours.
A mild headache starts. Coffee doesn't seem to help. I want to sleep!
Instead - I write emails. I've got to try to stay awake for as long as is possible today. The screen on my mac book reads 1:29 am. And thats what I feel like it is.
One thing I've developed a low tolerance for is Ethiopian TV
Dude painting his mini bus
. I really, truly, cannot stand watching it.
If I have to see one more farmer interviewed, one more crappy shot by one more crappy videographer.
Listen to the unmixed raspy audio recordings that may as well be from the seventies.
Watch one more chilled out reporter hardly move their lips, but report in one big long breath as though it were their very last. They may as well sway at the end of each segment for lack of oxygen and pass out or fall asleep or something.
The guys all drone on and on. The ladies all seem partially drugged.
Except for the one anchor who I'm related to.
She's really pretty, and she can do whatever she wants.
haha
ahh family.
Anyway, I just might start breaking tvs. I think the shows actually induce the comatose viewers into their reclined unengaged state.
I've never found it so frustrating, but its really been bothering me the last couple of trips
How they build..
. I just want to shake people and wake them up, help them engage in the moment.
But it's not my place. And I know there are great and valuable elements of the simple and relaxed culture here.
Like, people always being more important then time.
Genuinely the truth.
I like the way they value life. The hope that is inbred throughout the people.
Today I was listening to General Romeo Dellaire on the BBC - and he was talking about Darfur, talking a bit about the Republic of Congo.
And he related what he was told when he was in charge of the 'peacekeepers' in Rwanda.
He said he was actually - quite bluntly told by members of the UN that there was no way they were interfering with the rising skirmishes - because there was simply nothing (politically) to be gained by any other country. When he reasoned, and pled for action based on the rising civilian death toll, if only out of compassion to preserve basic human rights
Seriously, sooo addis
. He was actually told that " there are too many of them anyway." Unbelievable.
Unbelievable!
Seriously, reason number a thousand and twenty two why to demolish the UN.
What a scam. What a facade.
The very organization that is supposedly designed to protect the innocents, to create order.
Referring to human life as if it were disposable in any form. Let alone the horrific realities of genocide.
I was just watching this kid kicking around a ball of garbage. Passed for a fairly good soccer ball. Just the thought. God forbid. Monsters with machetes where to come and cut him up in front of me.
Nothing in the world has so convinced me that there must be a moral law then the reality that 'bad' or 'evil' (or whatever term one uses) exists
view from new hotel, to the east
. It exists. There are things that are fundamentally, entirely unacceptable in any society. I don't care how many thousands of years a culture has practiced it. It's not ok.
It is not ok to kill someone based on race.
It is not ok to practice female circumcision
It is not ok to rape someone. Let alone little orphaned girls. Or babies.
There are many shades of grey. But god help us is we ever forget there is black and white.
And if one does exist, the other must as well. Right actions, good actions - whatever term. It exists.
If in doubt, there is a cure. Spend some time in a developing country.
Oy! But I'm getting so philosophical...
You know, there are national laws in Canada that require you to act if you know a crime is going to be committed. Or you're held liable.
I'm sure we all think it's a fair law. I doubt there would be much disagreement.
But why can't we lift that view and apply it internationally?
Or even - what if a canadian viciously slaughtered another canadian in the Sudan. And the killing was based on one having come from Montreal, and the other from Toronto. What would we say?
And what if it was a a whole family killed? Young ladies, children. babies - even pets - just because they come from Toronto. And what if the Torontonians didn't even see it coming? Had no time to prepare. Or had nothing to protect themselves with?
We are so lucky, so blessed to live in a society that has such a solid legal and political system. Because, that is the only difference between these countries and mine. Corruption in the political system, an inability to control or contain the populace due to lack of resources. A lack of resources because the political systems are corrupt. The continent is full of exploitation. Its rich in minerals, diamonds, gold, many many precious and semi precious stones. Rich in oil, in good soil, in hard workers.
But the basic necessary structures of society are frayed beyond recognition.
And how is it that we've developed a view of Africans as though they were subhuman? Something less then us. That is quite literally what has had to happen.
I can sometimes feel the tendency in myself - and I just entirely reject it.
My father is african. I know him to be more like me then I would even like to admit.
He was how he is before he came to Canada. These people are just like him. So they are like me.
It's so ridiculous to believe that the value of their lives is any less then ours. Then mine. They are us. They are me.
And then - if that is true. If it isn't less.
How is it we've allowed these things to happen?
We need to assert that certain things are wrong if only so that we can address them similarly when they rise in our home town.
.. .. we thought the holocaust was bad.
We're allowing much worse today.
The thought that there is a hierachy of people and an equality of ideas is rubbish. There is an equality of people. And a hierachy of ideas.
There are really ignorant people with stupid ideas, but that doesn't make them any less of a human being.
Oy! I'm getting philosophical again...
There is so much to rage about.
I want connections in Darfur.
I want to go there. I want to see it, I want to talk about it.
I've gotta make something about it.
I have to go there.
Next time I'm in Africa, it's including the Sudan.
