Filed under: Canada | Tags: Africa, Aid, Bob Dylan, Poverty, Stephen Harper, Trade
You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins
the Canadian government has just announced that it will be changing the way it distributes foreign aid (link) … aid will now be focused on the americas … as they are our ‘backyard’ … and as we work to increase trade within our landmass, aid money can be used as a powerful tool for diplomacy …
stephen harper proves again at how good he is at being a politician …
but it strikes me that what we are talking about here is not politics … or perhaps more accurately … that maybe foreign aid could be one small shining star where politics don’t need to matter so much … i mean sure, it is likely the ’smart’ decision to use our ‘giving’ to ‘get’ … so to speak … but isn’t the point of giving and generosity and charity … to help without strings attached … to help because help is needed … and because it is the right thing to do ??? …
and yet … the poorest people in the world … in the poorest countries in the world … on the poorest continent in the world … are about to find out that Canada really doesn’t care how much they suffer … Canada really doesn’t care about schools with no water or half-built hospitals with half-trained nurses … Canada doesnt even care about its own integrity or doing what we said we would do …
Canada, it turns out, only cares about what it can do for itself … and so, as hundreds of projects across Africa lose funding in mid-stride, and thousands of Africans lose jobs that support whole communities … our aid money will go to the Carribean, and Peru, and Bolivia … where by most measures, the citizens are better educated, healthier and richer than their brothers and sisters in Africa … it is tragic irony that, once again, the only mistake made by the African child was to be born on the wrong continent …
and … so, as the wheel of time spins … here once again, the message from the developed world to the people of Africa is the same … ‘we would like to help you, but we can’t, because there is nothing to gain by saving your life’ …
i suppose i should stop being so negative and look on the bright side …
it won’t matter so much that the school isn’t completed, as malaria and hiv and diarhea will take care of the additional students it was destined to serve …
it won’t matter so much that there will be no more support for the small group of single mothers who banded together to create an economic co-operative, so as to feed their families and strengthen their community … as the children it would have allowed to live to the age of 5 would have now found themselves without teachers or school books anyway …
it won’t matter that we have stolen hope from so many who saw a beacon of light in our flag and in our name and in our words … as those africans so foolish as to hope for integrity and honesty from the rich … will die young and illiterate and never understand the betrayal of trust which our prime minister has cursed us all with on this day …
shame on you prime minister, you destroyer of dreams … shame on you …
Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul
- Bob Dylan
Filed under: Canada
“… but every junkie’s like a settin’ sun”
they are so easy to despise … the abominable addicted … cocaine, crack, crystal meth, heroin …
walk down the right street and they are impossible to avoid … accumulating like garbage in the gutters of the city … walking skeletons, dead eyes … desperate, degenerate and depraved … one after another after another …
we look at them as we would look at pigs in a pen … strange, separate, different …
avoid eye-contact … noses held high … pretend you don’t notice … careful not to touch …
’such a shame’ … ‘wasted lives’ … ‘weak and pathetic’ …
what a joke …
am i any less addicted ??? … are any of us ??? …
coffee shops are the easy example … blenz, waves, timothy’s, second cup, starbucks … timmy ho’s … how many canadian street corners spew legal speed to the desperate masses … i can’t work until i have had my morning coffee … can you ???
‘i’m not addicted’ you say … oh yeah ??? … if you are not addicted, i challenge you to give up television for a month … no ??? … ‘Why would i?’ … you say … ‘i like tv’ … hmmmmm …
one step further … i challenge you to go as long as you can buying nothing except what is absolutely required to survive … how long could you, could i, last before we indulge a desire … before we walk past something in a store and just HAVE to have it … how long ??? … a week ??? … a month ??? … what a pitiful joke we are … weak and pathetic …
coffee, television, consumption … what about food ??? … sex ??? … celebrity culture ??? … vanity ??? … we are all addicts …
you say ‘oh, that’s different’ …
but is it ??? …
how is it different ??? …
we feel a ‘need’ … by fulfilling it we feel a temporary, pleasurable physical and emotional sensation … that’s all it is, isn’t it, when you have a cheap orgasm with somebody you barely know, when you tune into grey’s anatomy, when you buy those jeans … temporary physical thrills caused by a sudden release of certain chemicals into certain pleasure centers in the brain … cold, hard cash for temporary highs … hmmmmmm …
you say ‘but they are destroying their bodies’ … and that fast food run you make every other day isn’t ??? … you who sit in front of the television for hours every night, passively entertained while your brain … your ambition … your imagination … slowly rots and dies … do you know how overweight our culture is ??? … best not to mention the emotional toll taken on insecure teenagers and adults alike by celebrity culture … and the desire to be beautiful … wasted lives …
‘oh, but what they are doing is just morally wrong, drugs are illegal after all’ … laws set by the powerful in their best interests … have you ever heard of coltan ??? … coltan is a wondrous mineral that makes things like YOUR cellphone possible … most of the world’s coltan comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo … remember the Congo ??? … one of the poorest nations on earth … the bloodiest war since WWII … still raging on behalf of our lust for technology and gold and diamonds … war funded by wealthy foreigners, fought by cocaine addicted 12 year olds with ak47’s … morally wrong ??? … such a shame …
‘but i NEED my cellphone’ … need ??? … need ??? … hmmmmmm
there is one difference i will acknowledge … the man strung out on crack cocaine … the woman desperate to sell her body for her next meth hit … they harbor no illusions as to what they are …
can we say the same ???
we pretend to be clean while indulging our every ache and desire and ‘need’ with sugar, caffeine and prescription narcotics …
we pretend to be good while our greed and desire and apathy permits and supports unimaginable atrocities all over the world …
we pretend to be kind while pretending we don’t notice the stinking, suffering humanity crying out for help on the sidewalk under our feet … talking about meaningless rubbish on our $500 mobile phone …
yes … when it comes to hypocrisy, the ‘addicts’ and us normal people really are not the same … i am not sure, however, that this justifies our misguided moral superiority or self-righteous indignation however …
the reality is … we are all addicts …
we are addicted to ‘want’ … or rather … getting what we want …
we don’t know how lucky we are that our lives have never dropped us so low as to send us looking to relieve this want in the dark places of the world … places where the psychological imperatives we all feel; to have friends, to be accepted, to be loved … are speedily and silently perverted into overwhelming and irresistible physical needs …
because really, that is all that makes ‘them’ different … you are just as helpless in the face of your desires as they are … when they cave into their desire, at least they have the excuse that every cell of their body is screaming in agony for their addiction to be fulfilled …
what’s your excuse ???
what’s mine ???
peace and love …
Filed under: Canada | Tags: Confusion, Culture Shock, Homelessness, Poverty
i haven’t posted in a long time … i should explain that, but i don’t want to … i will say only that i have written a lot of posts that have never seen the light of day … someday, maybe …
i am in calgary right now, staying with my brother and his lovely wife to be … i have been back in Canada since the 22nd …
it has not been easy …
i have found myself, on occasion, sitting alone on the floor in the dark with my head in my hands …
some things just don’t reconcile … 2 contradictory truths … or 3 …
i have written about this … usually i write towards a solution … can’t win ‘em all …
the problem is … the contradictions strike at the very core of who i am … there is no way i can win … no matter how the pieces fall … i lose a piece of myself that i wouldn’t trade for anything in the world …
there are some things you just can’t forget …
in a couple hours i am leaving for vancouver … i have never been to vancouver … i am taking nothing but a couple hundred bucks, a ticket home in 1 month, a toothbrush and a change of clothes …
i have never been so scared of anything in my life …
i don’t know what i will do, how i will eat, where i will sleep or what i will look like when i come back …
i already don’t recognize the face in the mirror …
as always … i am happy and supremely confident in myself (though not sure who ‘i’ is anymore)… and that the Universe/God will guide me …
still terrified though…
i am telling people i am going to ‘find one solution that will help low-income people make a little more money’ …
somehow, though i speak the truth, i hear it as b.s. even as the words leave my mouth … what i really believe is that what vancouver will teach me will be nothing like what i expect …
and i wouldn’t have it any other way …
thanks to all for so much love and support … as of Feb 5th, my journey is officially over … many pictures/stories/etc. will be ‘unleashed’ in some form soon after that time …
happy new year my friends !!!
Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin
Into the future
Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin
Into the future
I want to fly like an eagle
To the sea
Fly like an eagle
Let my spirit carry me
I want to fly like an eagle
Till Im free
Oh, lord, through the revolution
Feed the babies
Who dont have enough to eat
Shoe the children
With no shoes on their feet
House the people
Livin in the street
Oh, oh, theres a solution
I want to fly like an eagle
To the sea
Fly like an eagle
Let my spirit carry me
I want to fly like an eagle
Till Im free
Fly through the revolution
(a bit over the top, i think, but i can’t go around re-writing songs) …
well … here we go …
it has been an amazing week in toronto … leaving the YCI group was a lot harder than i expected … i will spend every waking (and sleeping) hour for the next 2 months with 3 incredible girls … but the other 14? people in pre-departure training are heading to other countries, and i will likely never see most again …
it’s wierd … we spent the last week pouring out a lot of our souls to this room full of strangers … talking frankly about our most deeply held values, our thoughts on God and life, our fears and ambitions and prejudices … and now … off we go … each of us grown and changed fundamentally already … and we are not even off the ground …
the past 2 days were especially cool … we spent our time being trained through CIDA in intercultural learning and sensitivity … basically trying to teach ourselves to keep our minds open, and to be aware of the prejudice and bias we bring to the situation …
a sample question we were forced to tackle:
you are visiting the home of a friend in ethiopia. you mention you like a basket, and despite your best efforts to turn it down, he gives you the basket. the next day, he mentions how much he likes your jacket. it is the only jacket you have and is important to you. what do you do?
hard eh ??? … the answer to this, and dozens of equally hard situations which we will find ourselves in very soon, is to break down how your fundamental core values (i.e. the assumption of ‘possessions’ … the assumption of ‘obligation’ … etc.) are altering your preception of the situation, and to examine the core values of the other (i.e. ’status,’ ‘community,’ ‘friendship,’ etc), in order to come to an outcome that leaves us both better than before …
i would be lying if i said i was confident that i will know what to do … but they say the most important thing to remember is that we are human, life is complicated, and we are going to screw up sometimes …
we also got to talk to this sweet old ethiopian doctor, who did more to assuage fears i didn’t even know i had than i could ever have hoped …
there is no word for “no” in Amharic … when you ask somebody for something, and they say no, they simply don’t say anything at all … can you imagine trying to function in that world without that knowledge … or the idea that eye contact is considered offensive … or that to pass someone without greeting them is a great insult …
and how wonderful is the thought of a language without the word ‘no’ 
…
while not learning, i have been busy running around trying to spend time with as many friends in the toronto area as possible … drinking far too much and sleeping far too little … it’s always nice to catch up … though i am now pretty much immune to ‘goodbyes’ …
spent my last night in canada at an outdoor ‘weakerthans’ concert in front of city hall … really the perfect end … the skyline of toronto surrounding me, in the freezing cold, listening to a purely canadian band, surrounded by canadians … with an incredible girl next to me …
i will miss this land i call home … i can’t wait to come back …
next post from ethiopia …
this has gotta be fast … tonight i fell asleep on th go train to pickering and woke up in ajax …
for those who don’t know (and really why would you) … ajax is past pickering … = … i’m a freakin tool sometimes … bodes well for the next year eh
so i gotta go to bed, as tomo promises to be more exhausting …
TO is great … i love this city more and more every time …
YCI is amazing … i have spent the past 2 days getting to know my future everything-mates (apparently spending 24 hours a day with the same 3 people for 2 months can be a bit challenging ???) … they seem like pretty great people, and i can’t wait to find out what adventures lie in store for us …
also been getting a fly-by orientation of YCI, HIV/AIDS, development work, amharic, challenges overseas, etc… lots of learning and lots of emotions… we spent the morning today getting a crash course on the science of HIV (nice refresher, as it’s been a few year) and then the afternoon hearing from a couple toronto-nians living with the virus … i have never met someone who is positive before … and it was NOT what i was expecting … he had an intensely intimate presentation style, and really grabbed you by the heart and took you on a whirlwind tour of his life over 15 + years … through the ups and downs and frustration and heartbreak .. and … sheer inspiration … and the light at the end of the tunnel …
my mind is already flying at 1000 miles an hour, my heart has already been tossed for a loop … and we are only on day 2
i gotta go to bed … thanks for birthday wishes and support … i am the luckiest person on earth to know the people i know and to be able to call them friends …
