Senegal Reflections, Half a Year Later

The following writings restate verbatim my responses to a mid-year survey about the study abroad program through which I went to Senegal in late December of 2008 and stayed through early January of 2009 (What a fun way to welcome in the New Year, hours ahead of everyone back home, especially with the refreshing, warm climate! -- though actually I was recuperating from a strange ailment while all the other students were celebrating the holiday, an ailment which our professor paranoidally feared signaled cerebral malaria) to study ecovillages, microcredit, and sustainable international development. I had a partly-awkward experience because of several holes in the structure of the course and activities, but overall, I had a great time and had a very valuable, memorable, enriching experience. I wrote about it while I was there, occasionally spoke of it or reflected on it in the intervening months, and now it seems I should get to writing about it again. So much came to my attention in the three weeks I spent there in West Africa that I can't possibly have done justice to it in my record of events. At last, I have a beginning to more reflection, tempered and distanced to a much better degree than it could have been while I was mired in the immediacy of it all:

9. What do you feel you got out of your experience? How have your thoughts about this evolved in the past six months?

Well, I got to experience a predominantly Muslim country, keeping what's left of three semesters of Arabic training from slipping away.

I got to see how inefficient micro-lending practices can be around the world and got to think up other ways of running things. From something Marian said to me about international sustainable development, I started thinking a lot about the pitfalls of both facilitating sustainable development, presumptively, at a distance, without concern for the villagers' needs, as well as of complete villager-only participation (which falls into the trap of "tyranny of the majority," and which I actually experienced, to my dismay, on my village visits, having been told I would have something to contribute; it taught me a lot about humility and about accepting being irrelevant to a process, the results of which in the future won't exactly affect me anyway).

I also learned a bit of French, a bit about Senegalese history and politics, and experienced first-hand a world in which feminism, as we think of it in the West, has had little influence (though women are always lauded as the hardest workers, this also means that the men give themselves an excuse to do less and lump more work on the women). I was able to examine a lot of the assumptions about mandatory schooling, and I constantly witnessed misconceptions of the United States. Dining was completely different, albeit exciting, as was navigating the various bathroom facilities. I think I could go on for a while, but the point is I gained a great deal of insight and unique experiences from the course abroad.

My thinking about all this evolved from utter disillusionment, homesickness and then joy to be back in the States, and disappointment with the organization of the course, content, and student interactions, to acceptance of what actually happened during the course (as contrasted with what I'd expected to happen, though that itself was fuzzy) and an appreciation overall for the experience I gained in Senegal. It re-invigorated my motivation to completely invalidate the typical world-changing processes (ineffective and belligerent activism, an environment-only focus strangely dismissive of humans in complicated situations, unacknowledged and faulty assumptions) by different means (focusing on tribes--extant, re-emerging, and emerging--, the science and anthropology of what has actually been sustainable behavior through time, political ecology, social justice, un-oppressive education and a change of vision, and a saner way of raising children and a saner way of living in general).

I also went and read Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter because I was curious about literature from Senegal accessible in English and about what her take on the woman's role in Senegalese society would be (I was not at all disappointed by this wonderful book - many recommendations for this to be used in the course, for the Senegalese and the Americans to discuss together, beyond making posters of cultural stereotypes).

10. Looking back now, what do you feel are important things to share with prospective/current students on this program?

"You will get much more out of this particular program if you expect it to be more of an anthropology course about experiencing the day-to-day differences in a culture partially different from our own. Ecovillages in Senegal pretty much mean 'traditional villages' and even 'suburbs that just twenty years ago used to be villages,' with a small handful of people trying to balance the lust for development, in the style of the highly-industrialized countries, with environmental concerns. As for micro-lending, you will only be disappointed by how the process actually only seems to award one project at a time and leave other important projects in the dust, or, at best, incomplete. This disappointment means you will be doubly disappointed by how it feels that all your work in meetings and on loan applications is completely useless and pointless, especially when the Senegalese students insist on doing almost everything without you. You will not have a real say in the meetings, you will not be able to communicate your suggestions about environmental consciousness such that it at all affects the project to which the loan application applies, and you will not be allowed to defend the loan to a committee because you speak English in a French-speaking country, though you will at least learn what the lines on the loan application ask for."

11. What three issues are most important in your life right now?

1. Creating a healthy living situation
2. Living simply
3. Gaining skills/knowledge

I would have chosen such different responses if they didn't limit the choices to a pre-programmed list!

16. Please comment on how you think we could make this survey better.

As I think I said when I completed the survey before the course (did not have a chance to complete it immediately after the course, in the bustle of leaving and upon returning to the states, diving into Spring semester classes right away), the bubble portion asks really stilted questions, to which, knowing the "agree" or "disagree" or "neutral" answer alone can't possibly explain what the person taking the survey is thinking and might be more effective if room for explanation was offered for some of the more conflicted questions. For me, I get really hung up on the questions that feel like they're coming from an unrealistic, utopia-centric mindset, such as "making the world a better place," which is a very poorly defined concept that denies how humans lived without difficulty for millions of years before the Agricultural Revolution catastrophe, and which sounds like it assumes that such a better place involves the complete lack of violence or change, which, as I said, is unrealistic, and rather silly/laughable. Likewise, questions referring to "nature," a "sustainable world," "foreign" and "exotic," etc. really get under my skin, and I tend to forfeit them as "don't agree or disagree" because the words (themselves implicated notions) get in the way of answering what the writer of the question likely intended. What is meant by sustainability? Why doesn't nature included people (I mean, yes, I'm concerned about ecosystem and habitat destruction, but I am also concerned about the destruction of healthy societal organizations and human relationships that accompanies such destruction - looking at nature holistically). Those kinds of things...I apologize if that's much too analytical and negative; those things just make me feel really queasy about the survey, making me want to know how it's used, why, etc..

Keep reading: Senegal Reflections, Half a Year Later...

Freedom Summer 2009, After All?

I just received the greatest forwarded email ever. Maybe. Most of the text is copied from the web hub for the Summer of Solutions, but it also has a very vague blurb about manifestations of this ambitious summer project in my favorite city, Omaha. I'm not too enthused about the root of this wide-reaching grassroots effort in the global warming crusade, by the vague approach, and such, but I'm still very impressed that this has been brought to my attention since we murmured in Prosem not too long ago about how to rally together a Freedom Summer 2009, trying to think up the most important issue(s) to put our weight behind. I came up with lots of new twists on my crazy visionary projects after our discussions, and I certainly imagined cores of activity in all major cities across the nation. Might this Summer of Solutions be such a vehicle, such that we don't have to start from scratch?

I realize there is suddenly lots of activist organizational energy in the air, riding hot on the heels of that ubiquitous Obama-mania, but what the heck? Isn't the point to reach critical mass, to work with the greatest outcome for the least effort, and wouldn't this be one way to do so? Individual projects can always branch off from the global warming-obsession core of Grand Aspirations, the umbrella organization for the Summer of Solutions (I know I'm a lone wolf with this nonchalant perspective, and that's okay; It's not that I don't think things will start changing soon or dramatically -- I just have no problem with a cataclysmic brand-new Ice Age getting us to reconsider and restructure, reshape our priorities, our luxuries, and our lifestyles. La!), just like the wealth of energy poured into Common Ground Relief in New Orleans in '05-'06 and beyond generated many unique initiatives. I sometimes feel guilty I did not return to contribute more to Common Ground's project, but the most important thing my February 2006 winter break in New Orleans taught me was how pervasive the real issues wrapped up in the level of devastation of Hurricane Katrina were all across America (with similar or related problems existing almost everywhere in the world at this point, but you already know my opinion on the history of that tumorous globe-absorption!).

I especially like the first paragraph, with the way it frames its project in the holistic environmental-social justice way I'm always going off about (I have some quibbles with the second paragraph, but if it seems pressing enough, I'll bring it up again later). The vocabulary of "solutionaries" is certainly intriguing as well, though I'm not sure what I think of it. First impression of it is that it sounds kind of cheesy, childish, quixotic, but perhaps that kind of childish, unfettered energy and outlook is one of the attitudes we're most desperate for in our milieu?

Here's the text of the email (with necessary basic proofreading provided by yours truly):

"We need to take steps, however small to begin with, towards creating a local sustainable economy that enables us to work, eat, and take care of our families, bring the neighbor back into the 'hood, and slow down global warming." – Grace Lee Boggs

In the face of a failing economy, an energy crisis, fragmented and inequitable communities, and the growing threat of global warming, people are coming together to create and implement solutions that address all of these challenges together. These people are solutionaries - community leaders who work as innovative organizers across issue lines to build the green economy as an engine for local opportunity, climate and energy solutions, and social justice.

This summer, youth will gather in communities across the nation for a Summer of Solutions - a training ground for its participants and a launching pad for a new solution-based vision of community. With the support of local partnerships, forged from a national network of fellow solutionaries, participants will create self-sustaining projects that will have a direct impact on their communities and that will serve as models for others to build on.

In Omaha, we hope to create connections between diverse groups of people by hosting a completely open conference focused on how citizens can work together to help create self-sustaining communities. This conference will be run in the vein of "open space technology," a way of facilitating dialogue that encourages open and honest discussions on relevant community issues in Omaha by welcoming all attendees, ideas, and outcomes. This conference aims to shape not only the direction of the Omaha Summer of Solutions program but also include the future of climate action and community activism in Omaha. By working in the broader metropolitan community, we hope to promote a strong platform that creates a renewable and affordable energy economy in Omaha neighborhoods. This would include building a Sustainable Community Model in a neighborhood where we would work directly with citizens to demonstrate how local food systems and local economies can be set up and operated while developing a stronger sense of community.

Summer of Solutions: Omaha is a grassroots, volunteer-based, people-powered program, and we rely on people just like you for just about everything – from the project expertise, to the local partnerships, to the financial support for the young people dedicating their summer to build the solutions. We are hosted by a student-led group called Grand Aspirations, which is fiscally sponsored by Global Exchange.

Thoughts?

Keep reading: Freedom Summer 2009, After All?...

Local? Global? How Should We Live and Interact?

Written March 10, 2008, especially for Proseminar, on a topic both of interest to me and of relevance to the program. Not my most stunning writing, but decent enough in its clarity and simplicity...Nevertheless, this essay ends on a note that is very much central to a large component of my upcoming thesis work, gauge-ing various degrees of sustainability across the gamut of human societies (as much as possible, of course). Also, we discussed regionalism today in politics (hoorah!)...

“Now, it’s feeling like a small town with six billion people downtown at a little sidewalk fair in Earth Town Square. There are Germans selling Audis filled with gasoline from Saudis to Australians sipping Kenyan coffee in their Chinese shoes; Argentines are meeting Mongols over french fries at McDonald’s, and the place looks strangely tiny when you see it from the moon…” – “Earth Town Square” by Peter Mayer (singer/songwriter)

Community! As social creatures, we humans cannot extricate ourselves completely from our social surroundings. We come to know the world through them, and there is strong evidence to support the claim that we leave this world by severing our ties to our society. We cannot live alone with any degree of safety comparable to that enjoyed by, say, a band of foragers. We may define our community in different ways, yet the integral role of other people to our prospects for survival defines our relationships as essential to our lives. Could this also possibly be a sufficient way for us to define home?

Let us define community as a group of people living in close proximity and interacting with each other and their surroundings. This definition stresses interconnectedness, a concept borrowed from ecology, which, after all, applies to us humans as much as to other creatures. Our focus now shifts to the question of the community’s surroundings. Where does the community end and the external world begin? How large is the purview of the community? How large can a community grow before it ceases to be a community?

In other words, the question is how should we define local? By miles? By regions? National or physical geographic borders? Population? At this point, I become unsure. Much writing has recently been released on the benefits of local-scale economies and the scourge of their global-scale counterparts. Still another set of writers continues to vouch for the advantages of globalization, a world in which “Australians [sip] Kenyan coffee in their Chinese shoes; Argentines [meet] Mongols for french fries at McDonald’s.” This is the part where an exploration of the various texts, for and against globalization, would be quite useful. I would like to research the various arguments and see which ones make the most sense and which ones fail to address critical considerations. There are many related questions I would like to address— How global is globalization? If two countries are trading with each other and nobody else, does that really count as global? Should different regions maintain strong communication and contact, or should localization involve greater degrees of isolation? Should communities or regions struggling to maintain a local focus create a network amongst themselves? How much does interconnection affect the outcome for each individual community or region? To what degree should we trade outside of the local system? Does local entail being completely self-sufficient? What does remaining incompletely self-sufficient mean for everyone involved? Who is the self remaining sufficient? Local government? The family? The individual? And how will we define or measure sufficiency anyway?

William McDonough once stated his design standards in a TED Talk, “Our goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world, with clean air, water, soil and power – economically, equitably, ecologically, and elegantly enjoyed.” I would like to examine how local and global focuses could contribute to the development of William McDonough’s standards. Would a local focus be in danger of becoming overrun by the tyranny of the majority? Would a global focus inherently counter the ideals?

Discerning the advantages of local or global systems is an intriguing question and very relevant to our time. How should we live? What will provide the best results for people? How should we interact? How does communication modify the course a local or global system takes? The questions proliferate. Because community has a crucial role in our lives, it makes sense for us to ask in what form or forms the community is most effective to us. The next question then becomes, “What are the primary functions of community?” How else would we define effectiveness if we did not understand what was supposed to be effective? In any case, questions about the way to define community, local, home, or global, and the way (or the extent to which) those systems should interact, are increasingly important in our contemporary world, where our sustainable behavior or lack thereof will reflect themselves in our own future. A final question, then, makes us wonder, “How does the concept of ‘our children’s future’ correlate to change? Can it be an effective inciting force, or is it an abdication of responsibility?” It seems we might find some direction in exploring the nuances of all these questions.

Keep reading: Local? Global? How Should We Live and Interact?...

Turning Twenty, Turning Pages

Two weeks ago I turned twenty. I wrote about it a some days before the event, and my writing then is still indicative of the feeling of urgency I have about it:

I’m turning old, as in twenty, soon. For the last four and a half years of my life, somewhere between one fifth and one quarter of my life, my days have been, in a way, side-swept/cheapened by a peculiar phenomenon called, I suppose, not getting over myself, not accepting incontrovertible forks in the road. It has got to stop. I cannot live any more of my life in that way. If nothing else, apparently I must make some kind of way for myself in the world, must have an outlook that builds me up as I go rather than undermining me at critical moments or multi-dimensionally.

After all, I have spent my adolescence fearing that I would be lonely forever. As it turns out, this is an unlikely prospect. I have dated three rather interesting and mostly pleasant guys (when dating them, at least) in the last five years, nevermind that two were related. I have no idea where I go from there, where the threads of various relationships will take me, but at least I've learned a lesson in the extremism of self-pity.

I want the next, mirroring twenty years of my life to look entirely distinct from the last, tragic set. It has taken a rather protracted amount of time to make that observation, but it really has been tragic, and it is not surprising I have suffered much melancholy as a result in that time (Ahem. Editor's note: This pronouncement is obviously pre-birthday biased in favor of emphasizing the negative). Many unhappy circumstances have shaped my life up 'til now; I have made a great many mistakes/social blunders, stepped on people’s toes, insulted many, lived my life in somewhat socially unacceptable ways…and I cannot forgive myself.

I have bitten my nails to the brink of extinction; I haven't done as well in academic situations as I might have wished; and as I said, I have made many choices differently than many people expected me to make them, the social unacceptability of which, of many of these behaviors/actions, constantly calls into question my justification for doing so.

I have challenged my worldview many times, feared and tried to avoid solidifying my views by the time I maneuvered out of my teens, but instead I do have some solid views, including some solid views on perpetually questioning those views, a quirk that might at least, for some time yet, help to carry a younger person's lack of stubbornness with me for several more years, at advantage to me against my less open-minded peers. I’ve had some strange, half-fortuitous, spectacular, entertaining, though mostly unusual, moments in my life, but the cumulative effect is utterly unfulfilling. And that overall tenor to my life is precisely what I wish to break with for the next twenty years.

So what exactly do I want to happen in those two decades? I want to return to Brasil, to work and live there. I want to have children and raise them unfailingly continuum. I want to travel again. I want to publish different kinds of works (as in different genres, for different audiences). I want to provide for other people the kind of hope, support, care, attention, love, assurance that I felt resentment for not having in mine, and why not? How great is it if I can create that which doesn’t exist, if I can take what dissatisfies me and do something with it to enhance the lives of others, making mine better in the process, especially in the satisfaction of knowing that some of my behavior helped to steer others away from the paths I’ve been down in the urban landscape of melancholy?!

I want to complete a triathlon. I want to be happy for the most part, counter to the emptiness (though not really sadness) of the last twenty. I want to defend my views/statements well, solidly. I want to love. I want to finally be able to cook delicious meals. I want to write something that I can be proud of. I want to stay on top of things. I want to be successful, productive, but not because I am in search of success. I want to design nurturing, restorative, life-changing landscapes. I want to be a role model, mentor, important person in people’s lives. I want to create communities and ecovillages. I want to bring people together. I want to heal places like Omaha. I want to forgive my family for their failings and then avoid them and their deleterious powers in my life. I want to feel at peace in my own skin, in my own world, with my own decisions, with how things turn out. I want to live fully, simply, joyously.

I have edited and changed some of that writing, but the bulk of it still defines how I feel and what I am striving for or towards. I still feel the same. The last twenty years were mostly not up to me but rather up to my family, which experiences for a large chunk of that time I resented for that very reason. But now it is clear, the next twenty are certainly up to me.

I don't have to go to school if I don't find it valuable or worthwhile. I don't have to move across continents constantly if it seems to me a peculiarly wasteful habit. I don't have to adopt my parents' misanthropic view of their neighbors, their acquaintances, their peers. I don't have to visit random places sporadically, erratically. I can build genuine, lasting connections with people and places. I can break a cycle of familial gloom and dysfunction because I can harness a knowledge unavailable to my mother and her mother, or my father's mother and father, because I can use an inner sensitivity my parents and their progenitors seem to lack. I can create something affirming, beautiful, vibrant, something they are not capable of, something that no mellifluous tinkerings and breathy pipings could--except, of course, if used in ways for good, for something beyond individualistic projects, avenues that they would never think to use. I sound so pessimistic and flippant, and of course there have been pleasant moments with my family, but the recurring attitudes and indications of their beliefs and priorities have seared into my memory. I think of all my mother's scowls, my father's jarring tones, my grandmothers' insensitive words, my aunt's superficial goals, and I see that this need to break off and protect myself from their vapid negativity was decided long ago. It's kind of like getting stuck with the wrong family for your entire life so far. And though I've been jealous of other people's family bonds in recent years, especially their ability to deal with the people who life brought together into socially-recognized families, I have found my surrogates and, more importantly even than having my own semblance of such a socially-recognized family, will create my own tribal family over time. I simply can't give up, which I'm liable to do off and on in the somewhat lonely interim.

The "I'm not getting any younger" mentality is really getting to me. I'm filled with a kind of power surge to get everything done now. Why not? To read voraciously, an art I've never mastered--my readings always slow, pained, and meticulous, and therefore intermittent, infrequently sustained; to write intensely, constantly, spilling my ideas out of my cluttered head; to create what I want to see in the world not forty years from now but at this very moment...I didn't expect turning twenty to be much more than a lamentable aging milestone. Yet here I am, uncovering an energetic potential for manifesting goodness and hospitality that wasn't accessible to me before. I just don't know how long it will last until I crumble into a paralysis of indecision all over again. I mean, I expect that from myself, to move cyclically through my tumultuous emotions. My only hope, then, is that the energetic periods sustain themselves longer and occur more frequently than the fretting, immobile ones.

So...how did I actually spend my birthday, you ask? Well, the day before my birthday, a Sunday, my boyfriend took me to a restaurant serving Portuguese/Brasilian cuisine. The decor of the place was exquisite! There were brilliant (as in brilla - Spanish; brilhante - Portuguese) murals on the walls, depicting social dances, fishermen at sea, couples at dinner. They were painted in very earthy hues, but the dancers had bright clothing in reds and whites. Just a lovely surrounding to situate myself for a birthday dinner. I had sardines (which I tried to share with Peter, but he's a picky eater!), caldo verde, beans and rice, and mariscada (Peter took a hilarious snapshot of me on his iPhone, with me wearing a silly and childish plastic bib with a goofy lobster printed on it). I've tried being a vegetarian before, but I struggle with finding a way to balance my anthropological interest in meat and fish and an ethical position about animal rights and shrunken ecological footprints (because apparently the greatest environmental actions we can take in our society are renouncing cars and meat, a view I'm starting to find more than a little problematic!). What I can say for myself is that Peter and I looked up on the iPhone Safari the list of good, bad, and so-so fish to eat/not to eat. Check it out here. Apparently, the Monterey Bay Aquarium keeps more detailed guides by region. Also, if you're ever in the disgustingly well-to-do Westchester County, definitely make sure to dine at Aquario.

I spent much of the week of my birthday working on a brand-new Bookstore Blog for my favoritest bookstore ever, aside from fixing up the bookstore's website pages (not updating time-specific information, however, since I'm so far away and no longer involved in the daily life of the store; though perhaps I should have made some long-overdue information changes...but I barely had enough time that week, as it was!). My favorite part, of course, being the visually rich Holy Hardware page. Buying local (even if local is a long-distance loyalty) definitely adds up. Buying from Amazon, not so much. I'm really excited to have some more time to add other fabulous features to the website, such as a mini-catalogue of our incredible selection of meaningful children's books, a record of our resources for those interested in simple living, as well as adding even more photos and product information to the site. The thing is, I'd have to go home for that (to take photos, to come up-to-date with changes at the store and with new titles and items, to hang out in one of my favorite spaces in the world, with some of my favorite people and dog, etc.), and oh, how much I would like to do so! I just don't know when that will be possible. And I crumble in jealousy for those well-off folks who don't even have to think twice about arranging flights home, for vacation, etc.. Maybe I'm beyond hope, maybe I actually can't change for the better?

I'll try to keep up my spirits, my momentum and live within the exhilaration of having a hand in the crafting of the next twenty years of my life. If I'm lucky, I won't even recognize my current self, my current sour attitudes and sulking moods, my habitual languor and mediocracy, when I get there. I hope this new-found energy overtakes that prevalent sluggishness and that unnecessary pity-partying. And so a toast: To luck and momentum!

Keep reading: Turning Twenty, Turning Pages...