The Land of El Dorado: February 2011

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

the boy who lived

this has nothing to do with colombia, but i saw an article about this famous photograph in the (colombian) paper yesterday and i wanted to say some things about it. it's on a poster hanging in my school, something about counting your blessings. the pictures on it are problematic, but i like the sentiment.

ah, this photo. this controversial, pultizer-prize-winning, world changing photo. this is the stereotypical, iconic image of a starving african baby. (in fact, if you google "starving african baby," this is the first hit.) we studied this picture in several development studies classes. it is a highly problematic photo, because a lot of people think, well, TIA--this is africa, the land of starving babies. and that's a highly inaccurate generalization. but that doesn't diminish the fact that this was, in fact, a very real situation and experience for one african baby. it's a grittily, disturbingly true image.

and now, the story behind it: the photo was taken during the 1993 famine during the sudanese civil war by kevin carter, a white south african photojournalist. it was published on the front page of the new york times, and won the pulitzer prize. however, it also generated a lot of controversy and criticism. there was a bit of a global uproar about the photo, and carter's winning the pulitzer for it--cries from all around of "why didn't you save her?" "how dare you capitalize on her suffering?" "you're the real vulture here!" and such from the media, the public, etc. a few weeks after winning the pulitzer, amid the controversy, he killed himself, largely because he couldn't save her. "I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain ... of starving or wounded children," he wrote in his suicide note.

but the new news is that the baby boy (yes, it was actually a boy, named kong nyong) didn't die--he actually survived the famine and lived another 14 years, reported a spanish paper monday. however, three years ago he died of fever--more than a decade after the photographer's suicide.

now some of the backstory behind the photo: kevin carter, far from being some sort of war profiteer or disaster pornographer, was in fact a dedicated advocate of human rights. he became a photojournalist with the goal of exposing the evils of apartheid in his native south africa, and even literally took a beating for standing up for his oppressed countrymen. he took some groundbreaking photographs at a brutal public execution, about which he said, "I was appalled at what they were doing. I was appalled at what I was doing. But then people started talking about those pictures... then I felt that maybe my actions hadn't been at all bad. Being a witness to something this horrible wasn't necessarily such a bad thing to do." which kind of applies to his other photographs, too. he flew on his own dime to sudan because he felt that the civil war and famine were being ignored by the world and he wanted to expose them.

kong nyong's dad

the criticisms that he was profiting from the boy's suffering are a little ungrounded too. one of the reasons he killed himself, as explained in his suicide note, was because he was broke and heavily in debt, and couldn't afford to take care of his own children--so not exactly rolling in dough at the african child's expense. the criticisms actually surprisingly reminiscent of some i have heard thrown at myself. following the passage of the LRA disarmament and northern uganda recovery act, we got a lot of heat. let me see if i can remember the wording of this one correctly... "the people at resolve are goons feasting on the riches of exploited african children." i'm not sure what riches or feasts they were referring to, as the hardly-paid interns ate peanut butter off a spoon for supper... another interesting fact: the photo was taken in south sudan, and the boy's name, kong nyong, sounds very acholi. thus, it could be that we were both accused of exploiting the same african children. but anyway...

more on the actual photo--if you zoom in really far, you can see that he's wearing a wristband, which indicates that he had already been seen by the UN and was about to be treated for acute malnutrition. i don't know if carter knew that at the time, but there it is. there are a number of reasons why the photographer didn't sweep up the baby and carry him off to safety like a white knight in shining armor. (not saying they're all legitimate, but there were reasons) he'd been instructed not to touch the famine victims because of the danger of spreading disease. he was only in the area for a few minutes before the UN plane he'd been traveling on, which had come to deliver food, would fly off. this was the first time he'd ever seen a famine, and was in shock. he did actually chase the vulture away. etc.

this blog (the borgen project, an interesting organization focused on ending global poverty) has some interesting things to say about the issue. they take a rather sunnier view on it than i do though. they basically say it's a story of hope because despite the hopelessness conveyed in the picture, the boy survived... i think this story reminds us that we shouldn't ignore the mundane causes of death and suffering in the world, like the fever that eventually killed the boy who survived the famine. aids and famines are sexy things to get riled up about; they make for good celebrity photo shoots. but diarrhea and pneumonia are by far the biggest killers of children under 5 around the world. not sexy at all, but true.

but i think the main question is: why was everyone asking "why didn't he help the baby?" why weren't they saying "why didn't someone help the baby?" or "why didn't the government/UN/church/international community help the baby?" or, perhaps, "why didn't you or i do something to help the baby?" or, more broadly speaking: "why didn't someone step in to prevent this situation from happening in the first place?" we read this book, famine crimes, in the DS class where we studied the photo. it goes into some interesting discussions about the root causes of famine. there is enough food in the world; famine is always, always due to a failure of political systems.

when someone sees this photograph, when someone hears about a famine, they feel horror and revulsion, and instantly look for someone to blame. you need a bad guy, otherwise you'll have to admit you live in a world full of passive neglect and unjust systems that allow this sort of atrocity to occur. but don't shoot the messenger. and that's pretty much exactly what happened in this case.

in the end, what impact did that photo have? it's really hard to measure, but it definitely brought a lot more public attention to the war and famine, may have even helped in getting the international community to push for a peace deal. front page of the new york times and the pulitzer aren't small potatoes, pardon the tasteless metaphor. i'm sure we've all seen this photo at some point--it's sort of etched into our collective memory.

it was definitely, at least vaguely, in the back of my mind as a child whenever someone scolded me "eat your vegetables! there are starving children in africa!" or when i brought my pennies to the children's charity donation box at the korean dry cleaners. i'm sure it's in the back of a lot of people's minds, again at least vaguely, when they write out their checks to whatever charity they choose, build up their karma by giving at the office. even if the boy had died, which he didn't, could the picture have saved more people than it hurt? it's quite likely. again, he could say: "I was appalled at what I was doing. But then people started talking about those pictures... then I felt that maybe my actions hadn't been at all bad."

so i guess my moral of the story would be: dear the media and the public: lay off people who are doing their best to help. who are devoting their lives to this, who are doing whatever they do best to try to change the situation, to make a difference, to stop this suffering and make life better for people. i read this interesting twist on a biblical passage somewhere: "let he who gives all his money to help the needy cast the first stone." touché.

Monday, February 21, 2011

In Santa Lucia, a town on the Atlantic coast devastated by last winter's floods, 130 children are receiving classes outside under trees

SANTA LUCIA, 19 FEB--Freddy Villa, an unemployed professor who was impacted by the floods in the south, feels that in the midst of the solitude and poverty left in the wake of the flood waters of the Magdalena river, life has given him an opportunity about which he's always dreamed: to be a teacher in his native Santa Lucía.

The natural sciences professor from the University of Pamplona is leading a program in which 130 children of families hurt by the floods receive classes under trees which withstood the winter onslaught.

"It gives me great pleasure to be able to help my people out here," says the teacher, who along with two preschool assistants and a recent graduate, all victims of the winter floods, have now been teaching classes for three weeks, Monday through Friday, from 7:30 to 11:00 am.

The initiative has the backing of a group of businesses in downtown Barranquilla which send school supplies, blackboards, and a salary of 50 thousand pesos a week [$25; fun fact: that's about how much i make a week] to Freddy and his three companions.

"We're not doing it for the money, but for the sake of these children, so that they can enjoy some distraction from their situation, and won't have fallen too far behind when it comes time for them to return to school," says Salcedo Olga Tapia, one of the teachers.

Severe floods in St. Lucía drove the entire town to flee.

In St. Lucía, which flooded on November 30th last year after the Canal del Dique broke, only four neighborhoods in the area remain underwater, and a hundred families have already returned.

The Government sent a commission to review the structural conditions of the three local schools and, apparently, two will need to be demolished.

"So for now, we try to accommodate everyone under the trees. And the children spend their mornings here, waiting for things to improve," says Professor Freddy, his voice full of hope. (LEONARDO HERRERA DELGHAMS, El Tiempo)

speaking of schools under trees, they are discussed in a book i just bought for my class, dora's international school day adventure, which was actually written by shakira (yet another reason why she is awesome), to raise money for her ngo focused on education for vulnerable and war-affected children, fundación pies descalzos. in the story, dora travels to schools around the world, including ethiopia, where school is held under a big tree. when i first saw it, i thought... oh no, this could be highly problematic. the narrative of "pobrecitos, poor little african children, they haven't even got buildings to study in, let's all go save african babies.

but thankfully, it wasn't. not at all. go shakira and dora for not being ethnocentric! dora's little ethiopian buddy explains that they're having class under trees while a new school building is being constructed. and boots, dora's little anthropomorphic pet monkey, says "cool! schools in trees!" and that is that. it was like that in uganda. yeah, some of the schools were under trees. and obviously that's not ideal, as when it rains they have to cancel school. and it's trickier to write without desks of some sort. but... you do what you gotta do. it's much better than not going to school--that's the major problem in uganda. and honestly a lot of the classrooms are so run-down, hot, and overcrowded it'd actually be a lot more comfortable to have class outside. i remember in one school where i did interviews, the teacher explained that the community was coming together to build a series of huts to form the primary school. everyone was pitching in, with materials or labor or what have you. but in the meantime, they were having class under trees. and he was kinda like, c'est la vie, that's just how it is and we deal. and really the whole project--with its community involvement and ownership, grassroots development, sustainability, adaptation to local conditions, etc. was pretty awesome. pretty ideal. i thesised about how awesome it would be if there were more such projects.

but back to the colombian floods.  the community response to the recent floods and displacements in colombia has been surprisingly great.  i was at éxito (colombian equivalent of target), and they had a big sign in front calling for donations of school supplies for displaced children.  for 20 thousand pesos ($10) you could buy a school kit and donate it to one of the kids.  the fact that éxito even has this program, when a lot of their customers live off of their $10 weekly staple food boxes that rather resemble food aid crates, is pretty inspiring.  

i think it's interesting that there's been such an outpouring of community aid for flood victims, when other displaced people, those displaced by the war, are met with resentment and contempt in many places.  i guess it's easy to feel bad for victims of a natural disaster.  it's random, it's black and white, it's easy aid.  aid to war victims is trickier, there might be sentiments of jealousy and unworthiness.  especially when it's a long-term issue and migrants from the war are trying to integrate into urban society.  but on the bright side, i  must say, this project in santa lucía represents education in emergencies at its finest.   grassroots, community supported, and motivated by  selfless people with a passion for children's rights and welfare.  it  makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

a little bit o' politics

after a month almost entirely cut off from all news sources, i'm racing to catch up. there were no papers, internet, phones, TVs, or radios at the convent, so the extent of my news knowledge comes from a handful of headlines my mom texted me:

"Violence in Abyei, Sudan--30 killed."

"Tunisia's government fell yesterday"

"Mass protests in Egypt"

my initial insightful analysis was: WTF, north africa?

it feels so strange to be here, on the other side of the world. almost literally. if my school could afford a world map, and if i folded it in half, the regions might just touch. but here i feel so very out of touch.

this is a troubling trend, that places i go tend to wind up breaking into massive political unrest not long after i leave--kampala, cairo, and even the border towns in mexico where i used to volunteer are now seeing their fair share of violence and instability. i guess that's partly because the places i choose to go tend to be somewhat politically unstable to begin with. but i sure hope this trend doesn't continue, and i don't leave disaster in my wake when i head home from colombia.

it was so strange to sit in my dorm last year, in the throes of thesis writing, glued to the bbc site, watching the riots unfold in kampala. "hey, i remember that shoe store!" i thought as i watched. "we used to pass it on the way to that great coffee shop and... oh god someone just set fire to a car in front of it. and military police are chasing him away... and hey, my buddy used to live in that suburb they're talking about and... and are those bullet holes in the front doors there?..."

it's the same with cairo. as i watch the al-jazeera coverage, the choppy internet hangs up frequently, giving me plenty of opportunity to pause for reflection. "i remember walking across that bridge, with my buddies from the hostel on our way to a bar, and now you can't even see across it for all the smoke and tear gas. and i saw an awesome dance performance in that building over there... and oh god now there's blood splattered on the pavement outside and people collapsed by the side of the road."

there's been a good deal of protesting in bogotá recently, too. nothing near as severe as north africa, but some people say it was inspired by the recent global wave of protests. i think that might be a bit of a joke, though. colombians protest, strike, and demonstrate a lot in general. unions are incredibly strong here, which is one of the problems with the education system--the teacher's union is so strong that it's pretty much impossible to fire a teacher, no matter how terrible (s)he is. there was a political cartoon in the paper the other day--i wish i could find it online. anyway, the gist of it was that two people were talking about current events:
A: Venezuela should take a leaf out of Egypt's book.
B: What do you mean?
A: After Chávez has been in power 30 years, they should protest his dictatorial rule, too.

there was a riot about a week ago here in bogotá, in which angry protesters attacked a transmilenio (bogotá "subway"/bus network) station, about 2 km. north of where i live. no one was killed, but several people were injured and they pretty much destroyed the station. i'm not entirely sure what the asks were, but they were protesting some policies of the national customs and tax agency. the rioters were apparently youth, involved in "buying and selling;" my host mami says there's some speculation that exactly what they were involved in buying and selling wasn't strictly legal.

now there are mass protests in the streets again, this time from the cargo industry. the truckers have been on strike for months, and in the past two weeks have taken to the streets across the country. again, i'm no expert on their asks, but they're protesting government taxes on transit and shipping, and are supposedly trying to hit hard at the coffee export sector, which will strike the biggest blow to the economy. they've set up roadblocks throughout the city.

most of the protest activity has been centered around the avenida de las americas, a good 5km. north of me. once again, i'm saved by the fact that i live in an even sketchier part of the city than where all this crazy is going down! i keep getting emails from the state department warning me to steer clear of those areas, as things could get violent. i kind of doubt they will, though. i think the government is gonna have to cave; they can't remove the protesters by force, it just won't work. if they try things could get ugly, and i don't think santos wants that on his newly-reign-holding hands.

nevertheless, we decided to postpone our weekly gringo hang-out until the protests are over--it's safer and honestly transport is rough enough in the city without giant truck roadblocks. my friend lynn lives right by one of the main intersections where they're protesting and said that it's kind of drawn the area to a halt. there are huge crowds of people in the intersection day and night--protesters and onlookers and people trying to find a way through. some people have been mugged in the melee, but that's not so much an indication of political violence as opportunistic crime; muggings are all too common here. there was a confrontation between a group of protesters and the police recently--when the truckers refused to clear the street, the police fired tear gas at the crowd, and the protesters responded by throwing rocks back at them.

the schools in the area have kind of drawn to a halt, too. lynn is able to walk to school to teach her classes, but most of her students aren't--in each class of 40 odd students, 6 or so will show up, the rest simply can't get there.

now i'm all for people expressing their political beliefs, exercising their right to assemble and make their voices herd. i've been in, and organized, a number of protests myself. but i'm not such a fan of the way these folks are going about it. it seems... a little obnoxious to me. peaceful protests, great. violent protests, not so great. demonstrations that clearly express your position, great. even strikes, to show the importance of your work and the need to respect your demands, great. but barricading public roads, preventing kids from going to school, and in general taking your anger at the government out against the common people, not so great at all.

random linguistic notes

i have been trying to colombian-ify my spanish. i guess my first priority should be to spanishify my spanish, i.e. study more so i don't make a fool of myself by going into a store and starting to say "can i have..." and realize i don't actually know the word, and then i'm stuck finishing lamely with "that" or spend ten minutes beating around the bush trying to describe it "well, it's a small grey thing that you put in the wall, and if you have an electrical chord with three arms, but your wall only has two holes for them, it changes it and makes it work..." but i figure using more colombian terms can't hurt with making me fit in more. maybe then if i mess up my spanish, people will think i'm not foreign, just stupid.

part of my plan of attack is pronunciation. in colombia, the double ll is pronounced almost like the chinese zh, or a cross between an english j and an sh. (if you put your tongue in position to say sh but say j instead). it feels really strange to say basic things like botella, ella, calle pronounced like botezha, ezha, cazhe. sometimes i go overboard and people don't understand me at all. but sometimes people understand me better and treat me more like a local when i pronounce things like that.

i've also been trying to learn more colombian slang. i've found some lists online, we got a few lists during teacher training collected from past volunteers, and i've been studying my fabulously helpful and entertaining book d!rty spanish. a number of the words, unsurprisingly, have something to do with drugs or lawlessness. creepy means marijuana. as in the inspired lyrics of the song that comes on the radio every 10 minutes "la niña quiere creepy creepy. por que la pone happy happy." also, interestingly enough, the word bomba (lit. bomb) means balloon. gives new meaning to the song "99 luftballons...

apparently, i use a lot of mexican slang. i didn't even know i'd picked it up, but i guess most of the words my lovely roommate rosita taught me during my summer in guadalajara were pretty region-specific. for example, qué chido no mames, no manches, qué padre, mande, órale, ándale. i've been using them here, and sometimes it flies and sometimes it doesn't, but it does nothing to help me fit in. [fun fact: rosita would never tell me what the direct translation of 'no mames' was, just that i should use 'no manches' in polite company, the same way people use 'heck' for 'hell.' well i finally looked it up. it sort of means 'don't suck.' ahem ;) ] so anyway, i've been trying to replace that with colombian slang.

i think it's really cute that random people i talk to, like shopkeepers and crossing guards, call me muñeca, mi amor, reinita and such. they're not hitting on me—everyone does it, guys girls young old. it's just kinda how it's done here. i kinda wish people were affectionate like that to strangers in the US. it gives a warmish vibe to the most mundane of interactions.

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i've also been thinking about the way religion finds its way into language. specifically, how spanish and Catholic go together like bread and butter, but there are a number of linguistic oddities that give spanish a decidedly non-Catholic flavour. for example, the word for God, Dios, looks plural.

i'm not really sure why that is. it could be related to the royal we. or to the fact that God refers to himself in the plural in the old testament ("let us make man in our image, after our likeness" and don't eat the fruit or else"ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil," etc. that pluralization is in itself the subject of a lot of debate; some people think it speaks to pre-monotheistic creation myths) but i think it's interesting considering that one of the main reasons Catholicism caught on in latin america was a sort of syncretism with local polytheistic religions. the saints matched up nicely with local dieties (note the plural there). i doubt protestant conquistadors could have converted the continent.

another note is on the word adiós, which of course means goodbye. the meaning is closer to "go with God," but it literally means "go to God." considering how crazily most colombians drive, i always find this a little disconcerting.

another religious note is the common spanish phrase "ojalá que," which means hopefully, if only, i hope that, god willing, i wish that, etc.(as in the awesome song "ojalá que llueva café") it comes from the arabic phrase, "inshaa'Allaah," which means god willing. i guess it probably hopped over the border back in the day, it's only a few miles from southern spain to morocco. still, i think it's kind of darkly funny that after all the conflict in spain between catholics and muslims, people not only in spain but in all of their former colonies are running around saying "ojalá que." take that, isabel, ferdinand, and the inquisition!

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and i shall close with an amusing linguistic faux pas: i was talking about my job to a fellow i met at the gre exam, and he asked me about discipline in the classroom. i said that it's a bit rough, and was trying to explain that part of the reason is that a lot of the students at my school are there because they were kicked out of other schools. i wasn't really sure how to express the phrasal verb "kicked out," but gave it a shot with:

"pues, parte del problema es que muchos de los estudiantes asistieron a otros colegios, pero por problemas de disciplina, los directores tiraron a los estudiantes afuera."

he gave me a an odd look. "expelaron" he corrected. then he said delicately "aquí en colombia, la palabra tirar tiene... dos significados."

"tirar una pelota..." i said, miming throwing a ball. "y... ¿qué mas?" he raised his eyebrows. i gasped, covering my mouth with my hands in shock. "¡ay, no!"

so apparently, tirar, to throw, has a number of meanings. throw, throw out, pull out, withdraw, extract, expel, eject... you get the idea ;)

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

hoists from afar

wow, i haven't written in a long time! i have a bunch of ideas and half-finished posts, but i've been too swamped with lesson planning and cramming for the gre to write much. but i just wanted to give a quick update.

classes are going pretty well. i'm starting to feel like a real teacher, and i didn't even get lost walking to/from school today, which is a first. i love my little students, even if some of them are an absolute nightmare discipline-wise. some days when i arrive at the designated hour for english lessons, the teacher is nowhere to be found and i can hear the class shouting and shrieking at each other from outside the building. i come in the classroom, and they're running all over the place, jumping on the desks, talking, laughing, screaming, wrestling under the desks, smacking each other on the head, etc.

i spend most of the hour trying to make myself heard over the din and keep them from killing each other. i say in loud spanglish, using all my actor's training to project my voice: "ok, let's work on the pronunciation now: 7 is seh-vin—sergio, sit down—repeat please, seh-vin—miguel stop hitting him—that's it, seh-vin—marcela stop talking to her, eyes up here please—now 8 is eht—comic books away, laura—repeat please, eht—david, what are you doing under your desk?

but other times it's great. most of the kids are super enthusiastic, and in some classes they're jumping out of their chairs to answer questions. especially in the lower primary school, as soon as the guard un-padlocks the gate in the barbed wire fence, i am swarmed with little people shouting "la teacher de inglés! la teacher de inglés!" they grab my legs and hands and kiss my cheeks and drag me across the soccer field, cheering. when i run into some of them around the school grounds, some shout "hola ey-low ticher! ow are yew?" and i feel all warm and fuzzy inside. after class one day, one of the little girls gave me a card she'd made. it was decorated with hearts and flowers, and in adorably misspelled spanish, in an eclectic mix of capital and lower-case letters, she wrote "to the english teacher who is katalina, good morning thank you for coming here to be with us. i hope we will be friends forever, good bye!"

my kiddos even cheered when i gave them homework. what strange children. i kind of doubt they'll actually do it, based on what i've heard from other teachers. but nevertheless, i appreciate the enthusiasm. it was a pretty cute worksheet, if i do say so myself. i used dora the explorer characters to illustrate introductions using the verb to be. my cousin diego is quite a fan of the series, perhaps because it features "go diego go!" well these kids seemed equally excited. oh, also, while looking for dora pictures online, i found out that the girl who does the voice for dora is named caitlin! also, i came across this amusing article about an unfortunate dvd store mix-up between "go diego go: nickelodeon all star sports day!" and "bubble butt bonanza no. 17."

in class today we were making posters about numbers. i heartell that posters on the wall help create a positive learning environment and reinforce what is taught in class, but we haven't got the money for such frivolities, so i decided we'd make our own. each pair had a number, and was to write the digit, english word, and number of objects on a piece of paper: 1 star, 2 houses, 3 smiley faces, etc. i was wandering between the desks, monitoring and commenting, "good job, very nice, how pretty!" they didn't know what i was saying, but i hoped my tone expressed the meaning. i came to one boy and said in spanish "oops, check your notes again. is that how it's spelled 'tweny'? sound it out, twehn-tee. ok, now what are you going to draw?"

"20 machine guns!" he shouted, leaping out of his chair and miming shooting. "pow pow pow!"

he took me completely off guard and i snapped angrily "NO, you will NOT draw guns now sit down and pick something else!" i guess i was a little harsh, as i hadn't specified. but i didn't write a thesis on peace education for nothing. a bunch of these kids are only here in bogotá because they were displaced because of the fighting. i will damn well not have a picture of a gun in my classroom. much less twenty.

it's odd how the war finds its way into everyday life. as the guards were letting me into the schoolyard, i saw a group of people waiting outside the gate--relatives of new students waiting to register them. a young fellow in the front of the line, who couldn't have been much older than me, looked up to ring the buzzer, and i saw on his neck a hideous scar. it stretched more than a hand's width across his neck and was poorly healed, raised in some places to the thickness of a pinky. it looked like someone had slashed at his neck, trying to slit his throat, but he had somehow survived. it reminded me of the scars i saw on people's faces in uganda and rwanda. i shivered.

on our way to school the other day, my host papi pointed out a large, ostentatiously decorated house. "this is the house of a big narcotrafficker. they were very rich, and looved to flaunt their wealth. he drove a mercedes!"
"do they still live there?" i asked, a bit nervous about living in such close proximity to a narcotrafficker.
"oh no, they died young. they were both shot," he said casually.

ok, i ought to go study now. i'm off to medellín on friday to go take the grrrrrrrrrrre.