To the Field!

      Yesterday I accompanied three of my colleagues to Weilso, a community aprx 100km West-ish of Addis…we were checking out the progress of a rural women’s empowerment project.  The journey was quite surreal for me; I found myself in a vehicle with three other Oxfam staff, driving through the Ethiopian countryside discussing family, life etc, but the conversations that I really enjoyed were the ones around development. I felt so privileged to be in the company of people who were passionately committed to achieving realities for their country I had more or less only read about in articles or discussed in classes. The discussion touched on how the majority of the early development in African nations had been put in place to export their raw materials to the West; my colleagues naturally expressed their frustrations with a lack of connectivity within Africa. While this discussion was not new information to me it was exciting to hear that although initial developments were made solely with the intention of exporting raw materials, there are efforts underway to create routes for internal trade (highways for example). Another interesting conversation was around the impact of the Arab spring on the AU*.

There were multiple layers to the sense of privilege I felt yesterday. One was how fortune I felt to experience the realities I had studied and to be able to see the character of the rural area through which we traveled; the way the houses are constructed, the toys the children play with, the colorful fabrics used as saddles for horses and the Acacia Trees (YES they made me think of Rafiki and the Lion King..) that sprawled the vast farmland, with the mountains filling in the distant landscape.

 Then there was another side of the privilege I felt; the one which is somewhat more daunting and harder to process. WHO THE EF AM I TO BE HERE?  And why was I so lucky to be born into an incredibly supportive family? I am soooo thankful for the family, the friends, the upbringing and opportunities I’ve had. But why do I get to have this privilege while others did not? I've found that the privilege and security I've felt in my young life has left me incapable of completely comprehending poverty…

The same thing happened with me in Ghana and it I hadn’t realized until recently that it was happening here as well... But thankfully I have since recognized some of my own hypocrisy; I have been continually questioning what fellow “Forengi’s”(foreigners) stories were, but I wasn’t asking myself what the back-story was behind the boys who try to shine my shoes, sell me a phone card or simply ask me for money. I was too busy trying to avoid eye contact and not have my wallet picked out of my pocket.   While I cannot comprehend the reality of these children, I would like to say that I understand that they have more than a ‘single story’ (see one of my favorite Ted Talk Videos: http://blog.ted.com/2009/10/07/the_danger_of_a/ ). One of my major pet peeves is when someone’s reality is painted with one broad brushstroke of “poor”. These boys may be poor by I am sure they are more than just that, they have personalities, friends, probably a favorite sport either to watch or play, they are people too and they are multifaceted just like anyone else, they just live a completely different reality than me… one which I am increasingly intrigued by.

I also raise the point of children, because of the contrast of my encounter with the children in Weilso. My skin attracted as much if not more attention than walking down the street in Addis, but the atmosphere was much different. I attracted a following of 20-25 children who gawked at me, eyes wide with curiosity, as we walked through the town. I would turn around to check my posse’s status and notice that most of children we passed had also joined the crew. None of these children asked anything of me; expect for one girl, who practiced her English and asked my name. Instead they giggled at my pathetic attempts to greet them in Amharic and at my trying attempt to play with this toy they all had—where you had to balance a rubber wheel with a stick as it rolled. I left the community feeling a refreshed sense of faith in the spirit of children, but also realizing (that from my perspective) the children in the city seemed to be robbed of this period of their life, that for many is characterized by carefree giggles.

     On another note, I find that when people have something echoing in their mind, everything else in their life seems to be reflected through that particular lens? If you become hooked on a TV series or burry yourself deep into the plot of a book or perhaps a video game, everything around you seems to remind you of that “thing” that is already consuming your thoughts. While my thoughts remain to be consumed by the questions I posed in my last blog around “why are we all here in Addis?” Last night while I was waiting for my dinner to finish cooking, I had my ITunes on shuffle (as I typically do when I cook) and ‘Patience’ by – Nas And Damian Marley  came on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAo9vMyUXwQ 

Now I credit my brother, Ian, for the fact that this was on my computer to begin with, as he supplies the majority of the music in my life and for that I am eternally grateful! But I had never really listened to the words of this song before, it was the section that follows which really pulled me back to the thoughts I have while walking by all those embassies in the morning.

The section is as follows:

Some of the smartest dummies

Can't read the language of Egyptian mummies

An' a fly go a moon

And can't find food for the starving tummies

Pay no mind to the youths

Cause it's not like the future depends on it

But save the animals in the zoo

Cause the chimpanzee dem a make big money

This is how the media pillages

On the TV the picture is

Savages in villages

And the scientist still can't explain the pyramids, huh

Evangelists making a living on the videos of ribs of the little kids

Stereotyping the image of the images

And this is what the image is

I would like to acknowledge that this is ONE perspective of an artist and I posted it not necessarily because I agree with it, but because it provoked me to continue to think about the diplomatic dynamic in Addis. 

Thanks again to those who e-mail! It was more than appreciated!

Again my address is steph.milo.mackinnon@gmail.com

ALSO I think I fixed a security setting so that COMMENTS ARE NOW POSSIBLE! So giver a shot if you like!

Cheers,

Stephanie :)

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* For those interest in the impact of the Arab Spring on the AU my colleague sent me this article http://nai.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:622198 on the topic.  It is from this that the following quote is taken;

“As the host country for the AU headquarters and the seat of various multilaterally and bilaterally accredited missions, delegations and institutions, Addis Ababa is the diplomatic hub of Africa… The close to 500 embassies, diplomatic missions and international organizations from all over the world accredited to the AU and Ethiopia make Addis Ababa one of the five biggest diplomatic concentrations in the world…”

I included this to show that I seem to have seriously underestimated the players present in this mystifying African metropolis in which I am now living…