Peripatetic

My (old) new blog address

2008-11-02T05:25:00.000-05:00

Forever since I posted to this blog - sorry! I've been blogging instead at http://aidworker.blogspot.com (because I decided I wanted to tell my parents about my blog, and it's also kid-friendly for elementary school classes, not that this one really wasn't).

Anyway, someday I will likely come back to this blog. In the meantime, please read my (old) new blog!

How to make attaya

2007-03-09T10:55:00.000-05:00

This was posted on the Friends of Senegal and The Gambia yahoo group, and I thought it was funny.

How to make attaya (traditional tea):

1. Send small boy over to Momodou to get the kettle and glasses.

2. Welcome Momodou for 5 minutes when he returns behind small boy.

3. Argue with Momodou, and Fatou who wandered over, about who is going to get the sugar.

4. Go knock on Toubabadu's door to ask for sugar but Toubabadu has gone to Kombo, again.

5. Return to house to find Momodou, Fatou and two of their friends.

6. Tell new arrivals that they need to go buy sugar, but they only speak Mandinka (or so they claim.)

7. Give the small boy the dalasi you finally wormed out of Fatou to buy the sugar.

8. Small boy returns with sugar from the bitiko and some Nice biscuits.

9. Send small boy off again to get coals from your mother, who is busy growing, harvesting, pounding and cooking your lunch.

10. Spend 45 minutes making attaya while everyone (Momodou, Fatou, 2 mandinkas, 3 small boys and 4 goats) tells you how you are doing it wrong.

11. Drink tiny glass of attaya with the 6 friends you didn't have before you bought the attaya.

12. Briefly have heated argument about whether Jammeh (president of The Gambia) is insane and then crash from sugar high to nap away afternoon.

Visiting the grandparents/the value of a life

2007-03-04T21:06:00.000-05:00

I just got back from the required pre-Senegal visit to my grandparents and other assorted relatives in south Georgia. Of course everyone wanted to talk to me about Senegal. Except no one could ever remember the country's name, even if I had just told them. Nigeria seemed to be the only actual African country anyone could name.

Anyway, the relatives had two basic reactions to me going to Senegal: the ones who I generally find to be nicer told me that Peace Corps is like a secular version of missionary work (this was supposed to be a compliment), and they wish me the best and they're going to pray for me. The other relatives said something along the lines of "why would you want to go live somewhere so poor, among a bunch of heathens, after how hard we've worked to give you a nice life?" (accompanied by some nasty racist remarks by my grandfather, which really pissed me off).

While I was down there visiting, two "big" sad events happened: a bus carrying a sports team (baseball maybe?) from Ohio accidentally drove off the side of a bridge in Atlanta, killing six. And tornadoes swept through the Southeast, killing twenty people in three states, including eight students who were sheltering in their high school gym when the school was hit by a tornado and the gym collapsed.

My grandparents and other relatives were glued to CNN, following the coverage of these events for days afterward, even though, after the basic facts had been established, there was really nothing new to report.

I can't help but contrast their compassion for the deaths in Georgia and Alabama with their utter lack of understanding or concern for other suffering people around the world. Why care so much about a few strangers in another city or state who are killed in random accidents, but have so little concern for millions of people in other countries who are dying preventable deaths from war, famine, and disease? For me, the death of someone in Africa feels just as real as the death of someone in Georgia or Alabama. Do other people not feel this? Or do they think that the life of an African just doesn't matter as much as that of an American?

Is it just ignorance? If CNN would cover Darfur, northern Uganda, the DRC, or Burma half as much as they covered that bus accident, would Americans start to care?

Back to blogging

2007-03-04T20:59:00.000-05:00

Okay, I have been remiss about keeping up with this blog. Work was incredibly hectic in January and February - my boss was on grand jury duty and not around much, I had a huge workshop to organize, etc., etc. On top of which, of course, I had to get ready for Peace Corps.

Anyway, I'm back. At least until I get to Senegal and discover that I have zero internet access. We'll see how that goes. But I'll do my best.

Blood Oil

2007-01-10T11:09:00.001-05:00

An interesting article about the nexus between oil and conflict.

Christmas Present

2006-12-31T09:08:00.000-05:00

Christmas present this year from my mom:

a reminder that I am becoming a spinster.

The caption in the bottom left corner says "Save yourself the time and trouble - grow this "potential Prince Charming." Give him a kiss, drop him in water, wait 72 hours & see what happens....It just might be a fairy tale come true (or maybe you'll just kiss a really cute frog).

Cute picture

2006-12-23T14:06:00.000-05:00

This was just too cute to pass by... from Soldier of Africa's blog, the picture was taken at an AMIS base in Darfur.

I am an aid dork

2006-12-18T18:52:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I responded to a house fire with Red Cross, who I volunteer with. The call was very typical: single mom and her kids living with the grandmother, all of them surviving off of social security and other government benefits.

The leader on our response team works for the IMF, so we were joking in the car on the ride over about how NGOs (who I work for) are very anti-IMF. Today when one of the Red Cross staff found out that team leader works for the IMF, he asked: "Did you attach any conditions to our aid package designed to improve our client's budgetary discipline?"

I love it! (Yes, I am a dork.)

Comedy of Disasters

2006-12-18T18:51:00.000-05:00

Latest installment in the Comedy of Disasters known as My Life:

Today while I was setting up for a meeting, I dropped one of the sodas I was carrying. Normally they just roll on the ground and maybe get dented a little. But today, because the universe likes to laugh at me, the can exploded. All over my shirt and pants and our brand new carpet in the conference room. So I had to dash home and change, with only 45 minutes to go before a meeting I had to be at. And of course everyone just happened to be in the hallway as I was walking out, so they could all stare at me and ask me what happened and make me feel even more ridiculous.

I feel like this is the sort of thing that only happens to a certain type of person. And apparently I am one of those people.

Darfur: The Arabs are Victims Too

2006-11-21T12:46:00.000-05:00

I've been waiting for an article like this one to come out, finally noticing that not all nomadic Arabs in Darfur are bad or members of the janjaweed militias.

Now we need to live up to our humanitarian principles and provide needed assistance to the civilian nomads.

My first microloan

2006-11-21T11:46:00.000-05:00

I have just made my first microloan through Kiva, an organization I read about a few weeks ago.

I chose to lend to two women, one who has a food stall business in Nigeria, and another who is setting up a hair salon in Kenya. I wanted to lend to women because studies show that assistance to women has a much greater effect on reducing poverty than assistance to men, and I wanted to lend in Africa because I will be going there soon and this way I feel a little more of a connection there (I wanted to lend to someone in Senegal, but Kiva doesn't seem to have anyone in Senegal who qualifies for a loan right now).

I'm pretty excited about this - it will be interesting to follow the growth of their businesses and repayment of their loans over the next year or so!

Rumsfeld is stepping down!

2006-11-08T13:26:00.000-05:00

This has made me happier than anything else about the elections today.

I was expecting the Democrats to do well, so I didn't get excited this morning when I heard the results.

I wasn't expecting Harold Ford to win my home state, so the results didn't particularly depress me on that point. (Although I am once again left thinking, how is it possible that I come from that land?)

But now, finally, the news that is giving me a happy excited buzz: Donald Rumsfeld will no longer be the Secretary of Defense. That one I was not expecting, at least not this soon.

Now I've got to find out about this Robert Gates guy.

I have a great boss

2006-11-03T19:10:00.000-05:00

It's been a really rough week at work. Last week my immediate supervisor and I got screamed at for 20 minutes by people we work with, because they thought we hadn't shared information with them that we should have. So that made me feel really crappy. But my great boss said that regardless of whether we messed up or not, it's not in our job descriptions to be punching bags for anyone, and we should stick up for ourselves. So that was nice.

And then today I screwed up with him: I sent out an email that I wasn't supposed to send out. He emailed me to ask me what happened, why I sent it out when he said not to. So I explained and said I was sorry. And his response: Don't worry about it - have a good weekend.

How amazing is it to have a boss who doesn't yell at you even when he would be justified in doing it? After my last boss, who was bitchy and yelled at me even when I hadn't done anything wrong, I feel like I'm in heaven.

I seem to be on a roll lately with people in my life being especially wonderful to me. Who's next? Any takers? I really wouldn't mind getting used to this.

Above my pay grade

2006-10-26T20:07:00.000-05:00

Usually I chafe at my low status at work. I wish they would give me a little more respect, let me do more interesting work.

But sometimes, it feels so nice to be able to say "that's above my pay grade" and walk away.

Today was one of those days. Someone was mad, and I was getting yelled at over email. (For something that I had no control over, because I'm too low-level). Normally I try to handle whatever comes up as much as possible myself, because I like being in control and it's a good way to get myself promoted (it's worked once, anyway).

But it had been a very long day of one meeting after another, and it was already after 5 pm, and I wanted to go home. I did not care about this fight.

So I called up my boss, dumped the problem onto her, and went home.

Sometimes it's nice to be unimportant.

Doppelganger

2006-10-21T17:07:00.000-05:00

Have you ever met the doppelganger of someone you know?

I did once. I was in New Orleans for spring break, and my waiter at dinner one night had the exact personality of my older brother. It was like crashing into a parallel universe, where the person is the same but the life he is born into is completely different.

And today, I met another: the sixtyish doppelganger of one of my high school friends. She was teaching my Red Cross class, and was telling us about her collection of fifty pairs of cartoon character slippers. So I feel as if now I know exactly what my friend is going to be like when she is sixty years old.

I wonder if I have any doppelgangers out there, and what their lives are like.

Happy Diwali!

2006-10-20T12:18:00.000-05:00

The finance office at my work is entirely made up of South Asians (Indians and Afghanis), so whenever it is a Muslim or Hindu holiday, one of them will bring sweets to the office to celebrate - which is usually how I find out that it is a holiday.

So today is apparently Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, which I now know because there are sweets in the kitchen with a sign that says Happy Diwali.

The sweets look like little triangles of dough, with something silver that looks like aluminum foil painted on them. They remind me of the homemade playdough my mom used to make for my brothers and me when we were little.

And just like that playdough, I keep eating these cookies - not because I like them, but because I can't figure out if I like them or not. Have to take another bite to see if I can finally make up my mind...

Prairie dog

2006-10-18T19:44:00.000-05:00

This little guy was at the zoo. He was watching the tourists and making faces at them, sticking his little tongue out. So cute! I wish I could have one as a pet.

Librarian Action Figure

2006-10-18T19:42:00.000-05:00

Found this at the Library of Congress and thought it was hilarious.

I have the best dad

2006-10-18T18:40:00.000-05:00

I was talking to my dad tonight about my plans to go to Africa, and the subject of my grandpa came up. Dad wanted to know if it bothers me that my grandpa thinks my peace corps plans are a waste of time. I told him that grandpa also disapproved of me going to grad school, so I'm used to it and I don't care. And my wonderful dad said that he doesn't care what other people think, as long as I'm thinking through my decisions, he supports whatever I decide to do.

I have the best dad.

ICC prosecutions

2006-10-12T11:44:00.000-05:00

An editorial in the New York Times reports that the International Criminal Court is beginning its first prosecution - the defendant, a Congolese militia leader, is charged with using child soldiers. Great news...

...but not without its downside. Fear of prosecution by the ICC is one of the big reasons why the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda is resisting putting down weapons, and why the Sudanese government is so reluctant to let UN peacekeepers into Darfur (they're afraid the peacekeepers will arrest those indicted by the ICC).

So somehow we have to move from bad guys being afraid to put down their weapons because of fear of being prosecuted by the ICC, to potential bad guys deciding not to pick up weapons in the first place because they know they'll be held accountable. The question is, can we reach that point if we make some sort of concessions on ICC prosecutions in the cases of Sudan and northern Uganda in order to attain peace and save lives? Or must we potentially sacrifice lives now, by refusing to make any concessions and thus drawing out the conflicts, in order to save lives in future conflicts? How many people do you have to prosecute, and how unyielding on holding people accountable do you have to be, in order to create a deterrent?

Gun ownership recommended

2006-10-12T08:37:00.000-05:00

From today's New York Times: a small town in Idaho is considering changing its city code to recommend that every household own a gun. Apparently after watching all the looting that happened during Hurricane Katrina, they decided that we'd all be a lot safer if everyone had a gun, instead of just some fraction of the population. Funny, I drew the opposite conclusion - I think we'd all be a lot better off if nobody had a gun (except maybe the cops).

And once again, I am left wondering: how is it that in spite of having grown up in rural America that this is a completely alien world to me?

Making rules

2006-10-11T14:42:00.000-05:00

One of my more recent projects at my job is to work with NGOs on improving their capacity to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse by staff members. You start off thinking it's a cut-and-dried subject: sexual exploitation and abuse = bad; it must be stopped.

But it gets so much more complicated when you start applying it to real life. (And I think that's where it gets interesting). The Secretary General's bulletin on special measures for protection from sexual exploitation and sexual abuse, which applies to all UN staff and which most NGOs apply to their own staff (or at least have a similar code of conduct), prohibits sexual activity with persons under age 18 regardless of the local age of consent. But what about local staff who marry under-age girls? The rule is a lot fuzzier on this. Exchange of any sort of money, goods, or services for sex is prohibited - but what about the payment of marriage dowries?

The latest question which has come up is about domestic violence perpetrated by staff. At first I thought it's a no-brainer: it may not be covered by the Secretary General's bulletin if it's not sexual violence, but it seems pretty clear that domestic violence should be a violation of any organization's code of conduct, even if under local laws beating your wife is considered okay.

So I was thinking maybe we need to look at adding something into our Codes of Conduct about domestic violence, or violence in general, to make sure it's covered when local laws don't prohibit it. But then where does it end? If we prohibit staff from beating their wives, then (I would hope) physical violence against children, including spanking, should also be prohibited.

But there's bound to be a lot of resistance, even in the West, to telling people they can't discipline their kids however they want (I should know - I was spanked regularly when I was a kid - my mom says grounding takes too much time, the kid mopes forever, and she'd rather just spank the kid and be done with it). But how can we claim any moral high ground if we say violence against some people is okay but violence against others is not?

Where, in the end, do we draw the line between respecting local cultures and imposing our values on them (especially when it's clear that our own values could use some improvement)?

I think this project is about to get more controversial. I love it.

Fire

2006-10-09T07:57:00.000-05:00

Last night I was on call for Red Cross, who I volunteer with, and we got a call to respond to a fire that had destroyed a whole row of townhouses. I've gone out lots of times before, but this was the biggest incident I've responded to.

Found out when we got there and were interviewing people that a family had gotten trapped on the upper floor of one of the townhouses. They heard screaming, and saw their neighbor hanging from the third-floor window with his back on fire. Eventually he fell. They heard children screaming too, but never saw them come out of the house.

And my job is to comfort these people, to help get them back on their feet. Give them some food, a place to sleep. But listening to a story like that, responding with "that's awful" and "I'm so sorry" seems so inadequate. I wish there was more I could do, that I could find the magic perfect words that would help.

Bad dreams last night.

Jihadists in Africa

2006-09-29T14:49:00.000-05:00

A "senior Administration official" I was in a meeting with a few days ago says the Sudanese government is threatening other African governments that it will bring jihadists to their countries if they don't let off the pressure over Darfur. So the African governments are backing down. Same for the US and others - we're not advocating for the imposition of a no fly zone anymore because of concerns that Khartoum would lash out against civilians and aid workers in retaliation.

Normally I am not a big fan of ganging up against the little guy, or the US throwing its weight around as the superpower, but in this case, why oh why are we letting some piddling undeveloped country push us around?

White women to the rescue

2006-09-26T16:00:00.000-05:00

I was just in a meeting with several officials from the Ugandan government, and one of them, a female Member of Parliament, spent most of her speech time talking about how courageous we white women are, going off to all the remote, dangerous corners of the earth trying to save the world. And she was serious.

Why does that make me so uncomfortable?

Promotion!

2006-09-23T18:26:00.000-05:00

Found out yesterday that I'm getting a promotion at work - long overdue, and a minimal pay raise, but it's nice to finally have some official recognition that I've been doing a good job and doing much more difficult work than my title qualifies me for. Many thanks to V. for being a great, supportive boss.

Mr. Coffee County

2006-09-23T18:20:00.000-05:00

My aunt called me today to congratulate me on Peace Corps. Then of course she proceeded to give me all the family news, including that Frank the Marine (who, if you remember, my grandmother is planning for me to marry) is living with my grandparents, which I hadn't realized.

So I told my aunt that Grandma is planning on me marrying him - I thought she might think it was funny. Her response: "Oh no! You need to marry a Mr. Rockefeller type, and he's more of a Mr. Coffee County!" (Coffee County is the very poor, rural farming community where my grandparents live).

Nice to know that somebody has high hopes for me. Don't think I really care about marrying a Rockefeller, though.

From a girl's point of view

2006-09-15T18:28:00.000-05:00

I discovered a website called DailyLit, which will email you a chapter of a book a day (I think they're all books whose copyrights have expired). So I signed up to try it out, and picked a book out randomly just based on the title: From a Girl's Point of View by Lillian Bell, published 1897.

So far, I think it is hilarious, so I just had to share. This is the first installment:

Dedicated
WITH MANY APPREHENSIONS TO
THE DULL READER
WHO WILL INSIST UPON TAKING THIS BOOK LITERALLY

THE UNTRAINED MAN UNDER THIRTY-FIVE

"Since we deserved the name of friends,
And thine effect so lives in me,
A part of mine may live in thee,
And move thee on to noble ends."

Every woman has had, at some time in her life, an experience with man in the raw. In reality, one cannot set down with any degree of accuracy the age when his rawness attacks him, or the time when he has got the last remnant of it out of his system. But a close study of the complaint, and the necessity for pigeon-holing everything and everybody, lead one to declare that somewhere in the vicinity of the age of thirty-five man emerges from his rawness and becomes a part of trained humanity--a humanity composed of men and women trained in the art of living together.

I am impressed with Professor Horton's remarks on this subject: "It has sometimes struck me as very singular," he says, "that while nothing is so common and nothing is so difficult as living with other people, we are seldom instructed in our youth how to do it well. Our knowledge of the subject is acquired by experience, chiefly by failures. And by the time that we have tolerably mastered the delicate art, we are on the point of being called to the isolation of the grave--or shall I say to the vast company of the Majority?"

But an art of so much practical moment deserves a little more consideration. It should not be taught by chance, or in fragments, but duly deployed, expounded, and enforced. It is of far more pressing importance, for example, than the art of playing the piano or the violin, and is quite as difficult to learn.

"It is written, 'It is not good that man should be alone'; but, on the other hand, it is often far from good to be with him. A docile cat is preferable, a mongoose, or even a canary. Indeed, for want of proper instruction, a large number of the human race, as they are known in this damp and foggy island, are 'gey ill to live wi',' and no one would attempt it but for charity and the love of God."

Now who but women are responsible for the training of men? If the mother has neglected her obvious duty in training her son to be a livable portion of humanity, who but the girls must take up her lost opportunities? It is with the class of men whose mothers _have_ neglected to train them in the art of living that we have to deal; the man with whom feminine influence--refining, broadening, softening, graciously smoothing out soul-wrinkles, and generously polishing off sharp mental corners--has had no part. It need not necessarily mean men who have not encountered feminine influence, but it does mean those who never have yielded to it. The natural and to-be-looked-for conceit of youth may have been the barrier which prevented their yielding. There is a time when the youth of twenty knows more than any one on earth could teach him, and more than he ever will know again; a time when, no matter how kind his heart, he is incased in a mental haughtiness before which plain Wisdom is dumb. But a time will come when the keenness of some girl's stiletto of wit will prick the empty bubble of his flamboyant egoism, and he will, for the first time, learn that he is but an untrained man under thirty-five.

This elastic classification does not obtain with either geniuses or fools. It deals with the average man as the average girl knows him, and may refer to every man in her acquaintance or only to one. It certainly _must_ refer to one! Misery loves company to such an extent that I could not bear to think that there was any girl living who did not occasionally have to grapple with the problem of at least one man in the raw, if only for her own discipline.

You cannot argue with the untrained man under thirty-five. In fact, I never argue with anybody, either man or woman, because women are not reasonable beings and men are too reasonable. I never am willing to follow a chain of reasoning to its logical conclusion, because, if I do, men can make me admit so many things that are not true. I abhor a syllogism. Alas, how often have I picked my cautious way through three-quarters of one, only to sit down at the critical moment, declaring I would not go another step, and then to hear some argumentative man cry, "But you admitted all previous steps. Don't you know that this naturally _must_ follow?" Well, perhaps it _does_ follow, only I don't believe it is true. It may be very clever of the men to reason, and perhaps I am very stupid not to be able to admit the truth of their conclusions, but I feel like declaring with Josh Billings, "I'd rather not know so much than to know so much that ain't so."

Gaza is dying

2006-09-14T08:33:00.000-05:00

A good piece from Haaretz on the situation in Gaza.

Joe and Precious

2006-09-12T16:23:00.000-05:00

One night several months ago I was feeling really depressed and homesick for my mountains and forests. Lacking a better safe alternative, I decided to go and sit in Dupont Circle for a while (it's not exactly isolation in a forest, but at least it wasn't my apartment and it wasn't too likely that I would get mugged or murdered).

It wasn't long before a dog came over wanting to be petted, and then her owner, a homeless man, came over and started a conversation with me. He was really nice, and didn't seem crazy at all until he told me that he knew all the governors and a good chunk of the world's leaders.

We had a really great conversation for about an hour, and Precious (the dog) lay down and let me scratch her stomach, which Joe told me she hardly ever let people do.

That evening has been one of my favorite memories of DC.

Now, today, I saw this article in the Washington Post - some trigger-happy cop shot Precious on the pretext that she was supposedly about to attack him. She is not an attacking kind of dog.

I started crying when I read it, feeling so bad for Joe. Luckily my officemate wasn't at her desk, so nobody at work caught me. I'm sure they would all think I'm crazy if they knew I was crying over a homeless man losing his dog.

Course now all of you know that I am a crazy girl who cries over homeless people losing their pets, but I figure either you don't know me, so why should I care, or you know me well enough that this sort of behavior from me does not come as a surprise.

I feel like I should do something for Joe. What is the appropriate thing to do for someone who loses their pet? Keeping in mind that I can't count on seeing him at a specific time, so getting flowers or something wouldn't work because I couldn't be sure of getting them to him at the right time. Ideas?

R.I.P., Precious.

Photos of Senegal

2006-09-12T14:01:00.000-05:00

These are some photos of Senegal that I found online.

I think I will be living in a hut like this!

I am going to dress like this woman:

This is the food I am going to eat (I am a little scared, but I will do it):

I am going to ride around in a donkey cart! (Okay, Peace Corps is going to give me a bike, but I will make sure to ride in the donkey cart at least sometimes).

I am definitely going for a camel ride!

I love baobab trees.

Time to get married?

2006-09-11T08:52:00.000-05:00

When I was growing up, my mom always told me to get an education and have a career. Getting married and having kids could wait. But now, apparently, my time is up. When I went home to visit my family in June, my mom and grandma told me that I should focus less on my career and more on finding a husband. Time is running out - if I don't find a man soon, I will become too old and nobody will want me.

Furthermore, my grandma says that I should marry "within my category" - which is code for white, Christian (preferably Southern Baptist, but Methodist would probably do), and Southern.

I called my grandma this weekend to tell her about Peace Corps, and she told me she has found me a husband! His name is Frank, and he's a Marine. And "within my category" I'm sure. And it appears Frank is in cahoots with her on this plan - I heard him in the background asking about me.

Thanks but no thanks, Grandma. An arranged marriage is not my idea of fun.

Peace Corps!

2006-09-09T20:04:00.000-05:00

After over six months of waiting, and going to the doctor eighteen billion times for one test after another, I finally yesterday received my Peace Corps assignment - I'm going to Senegal in March!

I knew basically nothing about Senegal before yesterday, but here's what I've learned in the last 24 hours: I will likely be living in a mud hut within a host family's compound. No electricity or running water. I'll be given a bike for getting around, but Senegalese use donkey-carts a lot (I want to ride in one too!). Food is mostly rice or millet, with vegetables and meat (sounds good). Only potentially scary ingredient I've read so far is the fish - I'm scared it will still have the head attached. Apparently tea and coffee is pretty common, which makes me really happy. French is the colonial language, and then I will get to learn a local language too - Wolof for starters, which is spoken in Thies, where I'll be for the first two months while I do training.

I'm going to get lots of books and learn more. So stay tuned!

A pretty cemetery

2006-09-03T18:22:00.000-05:00

A really pretty cemetery I passed while biking in Rock Creek Park.

One of these things is not like the other one...

2006-09-01T13:45:00.000-05:00

Remember that song from Sesame Street, "one of these things is not like the other one..." It pops into my head whenever I think about this situation:

As soon as the ceasefire took hold in Lebanon, Hezbollah was out clearing streets, assessing damage to buildings, and handing out wads of cash to those in need, to help get them back on their feet. (Good for them, I say.) The Western press was full of articles saying that we had better rebuild Lebanon faster than Hezbollah could, so that the Lebanese people will like us better than their friendly neighborhood terrorist organization. The Lebanese government recently announced that families who lost their homes will be given about $33,000 in compensation - I don't know for sure, since I haven't been following it closely, but I'm betting that that's better than the US government is doing for Katrina victims. At the Donors' Conference for Lebanon held in Stockholm on Thursday, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora asked the international community for about $500 million to start rebuilding Lebanon. Instead, he got promises totaling $940 million - almost double what he asked for. Then there are the peacekeepers - after some initial delays, 12,995 troops have been committed to Lebanon out of a requested 15,000. They're already starting to arrive in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, not so very far away...the World Food Program has announced that it will have to cut food rations for displaced persons from Darfur because the rest of the world won't pony up the money to keep them from starving to death. The inadequately small African Union force is short of funding as well, so it's had to cut back on patrols (cause they can't afford the gas), resulting in such a decrease in security in Darfur that the International Rescue Committee has reported that over the last 5 weeks over 200 women were raped in Kalma camp alone, with another 200 reporting being attacked and assaulted in other ways. The African Union's mandate expires in a month, meaning they're supposed to pack up and go home. Theoretically they're to be replaced by UN peacekeepers, but the recent resolution passed by the Security Council says that the peacekeepers can only be deployed if the government of Sudan accepts them, which so far it is refusing to do. But lots of countries have already said that they won't be able to contribute any troops to the peacekeeping force anyway, so even if Sudan accepted them there would likely not be anywhere near the number needed to actually provide security in Darfur.

So, in one case, we have a very recent emergency which no one predicted (including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who recently said that if he had known how strongly Israel would react, he wouldn't have had the soldiers kidnapped), but in which the international community has really done an amazing job of responding, generously contributing money and people to resolve the crisis as quickly as possible. And in the other case, a situation which has been going on for years - was anyone caught off guard by people in Darfur needing food aid? Or the need for boots on the ground to protect civilians? And yet we can't find the money or troops to keep people from starving and being raped.

Anyone else feeling a little cognitive dissonance here?

Great news!

2006-08-30T15:22:00.000-05:00

Some really good news today: Ethnic Karen refugees from Burma who are living in camps in Thailand (in miserable conditions) will be allowed to resettle in the US! Previously they were barred because many of them had provided "material support" to the Karen National Union, a rebel group which fights against the (evil) Burmese government, which put them in violation of the USA Patriot Act.

So there is now a little recognition within the US government that all terrorists are not the same. There are those who rape and murder innocent civilians (aka the bad guys, like Minni Minawi, who I wrote about earlier - why oh why was our government sucking up to him?), and then there are those who fight against oppressive human-rights-abusing governments and leave the civilians alone (aka the good guys).

Maybe there is a little hope for us after all.

Lebanon: the scorecard

2006-08-17T18:58:00.000-05:00

Now that the conflict in Lebanon is pretty much over (and hopefully it will stay that way), I am trying to figure out who won. Or at least who came out on top. Here's what I've come up with so far:

Hezbollah's goal: get some prisoners freed in exchange for the kidnapped Israeli soldiers; damage and embarass Israel.

Israel's goal: get the soldiers back. Drive Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, if not getting them disarmed completely.

What we ended up with:
- large portions of Lebanon in ruins;
- kidnapped soldiers still kidnapped;
- no prisoners released by Israelis;
- increased status across the Muslim and Arab world for Hezbollah and Nasrallah; but whether they remain popular may depend on how fast rebuilding goes;
- no significant physical damage to Israel
- Israeli population united in support of the war and against Hezbollah and its allies;
- Hezbollah not disarmed or pushed out of southern Lebanon
- increased UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon
- world attention focused on Lebanon

So who won? For now it seems to be Hezbollah, but whether it remains that way will probably depend on whether the international community thinks the current stalemate is good enough to call peace, or decides to really, actually disarm Hezbollah. But if there is a serious effort to disarm Hezbollah, what will Syria and Iran do? Guess we'll just have to wait and find out.

Kim Jong Il: Screenwriter

2006-08-12T10:15:00.000-05:00

I just thought this was hilarious: according to Slate, North Korea's Dear Leader hasn't been seen in public much lately because he's busy writing a screenplay called Diary of a Girl Student.

Resurrection of Afghan Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice?

2006-08-12T09:50:00.000-05:00

An article today in oneworld.net says that the Afghan Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is being resurrected. Scary. I haven't seen anything about this in mainstream news - anybody know anything?

Tidbits from Darfur

2006-08-09T10:24:00.000-05:00

A few funny tidbits I learned recently, from a region that seems to be singularly lacking in anything to laugh about these days:

A break-away faction of the rebel SLA which disagrees with Minni Minawi's faction, which was previously known as the Wahid Faction after its leader, deposed Wahid and is now calling itself "SLA Classic". Are they modeling their marketing strategy after Coca-Cola? (Probably not a bad idea - according to a friend of mine, "Coca-Cola" is the second most recognized word in the world, after "okay").

The bane of aid workers in Darfur is...janjaweed? bandits? no - wait for it.... attack crickets! That's right, folks, apparently Darfur is infested with little crickets that like to jump on people, and when you try to brush them off, they just cling even tighter. I have this image in my head of a person just covered head to toe in attack crickets. Of course if it was me I'd be screaming my head off and running in circles like a chicken with its head cut off. And why do I want to go there?

Minni Minawi bungles DC

2006-08-07T07:53:00.000-05:00

I saw a friend over the weekend who works for a non-profit organization that is active in Sudan. According to him, Minawi completely bungled his visit to DC - among other things, he blew off a meeting/press conference at the Holocaust Museum that was supposed to bring attention to the genocide in Darfur (illustrating, once again, that protecting his people is not what Minawi is all about).

And there had been plans on this side of the ocean to funnel money to Minawi's SLM to "promote democracy" or something like that, because Minawi and the SLA had been chosen to play the role of good guys in this fight - because as we all know from watching old Westerns, we much prefer to think of conflicts as good vs. evil, instead of bad guys vs. bad guys. But Minawi bungled it, so no money for him.

Can't say I'm sorry.

A new civil war in Lebanon?

2006-08-07T07:34:00.000-05:00

An interesting article in yesterday's online New York Times Magazine: apparently the Lebanese population is much more divided about Hezbollah and the Israeli attacks than the news headlines would leave us to believe - the general impression the news gives is that Lebanese support Hezbollah against Israel, and aren't blaming Hezbollah for starting the conflict. But according to the Magazine article, which was written by a Lebanese-American journalist, the Lebanese are very divided on this - the mostly poor Shiites tend to support Hezbollah, while the more affluent Sunnis, Christians, and other groups don't support Hezbollah, and in fact are blaming it for starting the conflict with Israel and getting their country blown to bits.

The author of the article worries that the tension this is creating between communities (added on top of the destruction of the country and subsequent weakening of the current government by Israel) could lead to a new civil war in Lebanon - the non-Shiite communities are going to want Hezbollah disarmed, the Shiites will resist, and then the other communities will want to resurrect their old militias, which will, of course, immediately start fighting each other.

This is bad. And again, what is Israel thinking??? Does pushing the country on its northern border into another civil war really seem like a great idea?

How's this for an idea, Israel: how about playing nice for once? Instead of trying to kill all the Hezbollah fighters, which is never going to work, how about supporting the creation of a moderate, democratic government in Lebanon (like that one that was just starting to gain traction, until Israel started bombing the country)? How about helping that moderate government provide basic services to all its people, so that poor Shiites won't have to rely on Hezbollah for food or healthcare? Is this really such a novel, extraordinary idea?

Middle East crisis

2006-07-30T20:46:00.000-05:00

Interesting article in New York Times magazine about the situation in the Middle East.

Meeting a war criminal

2006-07-28T14:57:00.000-05:00

Today was the meeting at work with Minni Minawi, commander of the Sudan Liberation Army, one of the main Darfur rebel groups (except suddenly everyone got very politically correct and started referring to him as "chairman of the SLM" - the political wing of the SLA - instead).

He and his entourage were late arriving, so all the humanitarian and policy thinktank people there to meet with him got to have a mini-meeting on the current situation in Darfur. Lots of discussion of the fact that since the Darfur Peace Agreement was signed, there's been lots of fighting between Minawi's faction, which signed the agreement, and non-signers. Civilians are reporting being attacked by Minawi's forces and women are alleged to have been raped by them.

Our brave humanitarians say they will confront Minawi about these accusations and see what he has to say for himself. They say they will withhold their support for him until he honors the ceasefire.

Minawi and his group finally arrive, and everyone is immediately kissing a**. "Oh, Mr. Minawi, we're so glad to have you with us today". Everyone wants to shake his hand.

Down to business. Everyone asks political questions, about the situation in Sudan, how to implement the Darfur Peace Agreement, blah blah blah. But nobody is asking about the civilians who are being attacked, and raped, and murdered. Minawi says he is very glad to have the humanitarian agencies working in Darfur, that they are needed to help and protect the people. But nobody says, "What about you, Mr. Minawi, what are you doing to protect the people? How about not raping and murdering them?" Nobody urges him to comply with international humanitarian law. Nobody says that our community won't support him until he honors the ceasefire.

Finally a woman from a human rights organization asks him about a report that several of his soldiers raped some women near Tawila. Minawi says that he investigated, and that the reports were untrue and were made up by his enemies to make the SLA look bad. Of course. My colleagues scribble in their notebooks; no one challenges him.

Minawi says the Sudanese government should compensate the people of Darfur for violations of human rights which they have suffered at the government's hands. Nobody brings up the violations he has committed.

Finally the meeting is over. Everyone wants to shake his hand again, give him their business cards.

Call me naive, but sucking up to war criminals was not what I had in mind when I decided to work in this field.

The rebel commander

2006-07-26T07:57:00.000-05:00

Here is what I have learned so far about Minni Minawi, the rebel commander I will be meeting on Friday:

He is a commander of one of the main factions of the Sudan Liberation Army, one of the two main rebel groups in Darfur. He is the only rebel leader to have signed the Darfur Peace Agreement so far (which explains why he is coming to the US - the US government wants to support the Agreement and pressure other leaders into signing).

But since the agreement was signed, lots of factions who are against the agreement have split off, and now there is lots of fighting in Darfur between the different rebel groups, those who are for the agreement vs. those who are against it.

Minawi's forces are accused of attacking civilians and murdering those who are opposed to the agreement.

So, on Friday I will be meeting my first war criminal (haven't met Bush and his pals yet).

US and Middle East conflict

2006-07-22T12:34:00.000-05:00

Today's headline in the NYTimes: "US Speeds Up Bomb Delivery for the Israelis". So now we can be clearly implicated in a whole new set of war crimes and give the Arab world yet another reason to hate us. Good job, Bush administration.

Messed up relationships

2006-07-22T12:28:00.000-05:00

I was at the airport yesterday to pick up a friend who's visiting me for the weekend, and as I was walking through the terminal a woman stopped me and asked if I would do her a favor. Sure, I say, always willing to be of help. She says, "I'm going to call my boyfriend on my cell phone, and would you mind telling him that we're at Tysons Mall? He doesn't know I'm traveling." Um, okay.

First I thought how terrible it is that this woman's boyfriend trusts her so little that he's more likely to believe a stranger telling him where she is than he is to believe her. Then I realized he's right not to trust her, because she is in fact lying to him.

So glad my life is not that messed up.

Meeting a rebel commander and dreaming about being one

2006-07-21T09:31:00.000-05:00

A commander of the Sudan Liberation Army (one of the Darfur rebel groups) is coming to a meeting at work next week. I thought the meeting was today and got all excited about it - I've met presidents and other important people before, but never a rebel commander - I'm really curious to see what he'll be like - will he seem like a nice guy?

After getting all excited about it last night, when I was still thinking the meeting was today, I had this great dream where I was part of a Darfur Resistance movement (like the French Resistance during World War II - I don't think a Darfur Resistance movement `a la my dream actually exists). I was wearing a turban and djellaba, and had to help captured Darfuris escape from janjaweed slave raiders. So I distracted the bad guys while the Darfuris ran away, and then the bad guys chased me around Rock Creek Park until I woke up. It was really fun!

Am I just waaay too into politics?

Holding a baby in hospice

2006-07-21T09:11:00.000-05:00

I spent several hours yesterday holding a dying baby at the hospice where I volunteer. Sounds incredibly depressing, but really it wasn't. I love babies, and holding her wasn't really different from holding any other baby, except that I had to pay close attention to her breathing.

It did provide me some good time to think about what's important in life, which is something I really like about volunteering at the hospice. It's a great perspective check when I start getting stressed about little things at work and in the rest of my life.

The war in Lebanon

2006-07-20T08:38:00.000-05:00

Just need to vent... Israel is destroying Lebanon, and what do they think they're going to gain from it? They may be able to push Hezbollah away from the blue line, but Hezbollah will always come back. Especially if Israel goes back to that whole "strategic depth" idea and re-occupies Lebanon.

And where, in all of this, is the Lebanese government? All the news talks about is Israel vs. Hezbollah, with a little discussion of Syria and Iran's roles thrown in. Has everyone forgotten that Lebanon is (at least supposed to be) a sovereign state? And that while Hezbollah may be represented in Parliament, it doesn't lead the government? Why don't we hear anything about the Lebanese government, except for the occasional sound bite bemoaning casualties and damage to infrastructure? What are they doing? Why don't they step up and act like leaders?