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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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."
Posts
All Comments
