When we don’t understand

Case in point:

I am found lost in a slumber when Sheldon and Kayla move to squeeze past as I shuffle to make room for them in my seat. The assumption: they are both going to the office for some ’small business’ – a Tanzanian euphemism for number ones.

A small business merger. A sort of husband/wife thing. This leads me to consider other husband/wife things that I do not have and, well, how at this window in time I would quite like it.

For my mind, a logical progression.

The raspy intercom requests the presence of a medical practitioner. Of which I am not.

And Sheldon and Kayla seem to be taking a fair time forming a trade deal with the porcelain industry.

After some time, I glance back to see Sheldon kneeling in the rear cabin. Walking back I notice Kayla perched low on a make-shift seat, shrouded in burgundy blanket and both hands clutching a plastic cup of water.

“What’s happening?” I shakily inquire.

“Kayla fainted in her seat,” he replies, a little taken a back that I did not notice anything.

“I’m sorry, I was sleeping at the time.”

“We don’t know what’s going on,” he says.

And in the stumble back to my seat, self doubt throws me around. The conviction rises that my thoughts were so easily fixed on my own need not at all considering those of my dearest friends. And that now, still strapped in seat 20A, I wrestle for my response, my help, my light in this mist.

Do they desire my presence or the space of my absence?

“Just pray,” Sheldon asks.

I’m not a very good pray-er – not that anyone is – so I write, praying it acts as veiled prayer.

A doctor awaits us in Doha, I’m told. An english speaking one, I secretly hope. So now, we chase the cause of this sickness, all the while Kayla internally assesses her own fear and self doubt.

And we all learn to relinquish control.

Written on a flight from Dar Es Salaam to Doha, 25 June 2009.

Coffee, chocolate and bacon

There a things I miss. Things like coffee, chocolate and bacon. Things a man never really needs, but I do quite like.

And on my return, what does it look like to engage with the option of these things – and others, like ice cream, chips and quick curries – when my friends elsewhere, like Max and Maggie and Mama Helen, do not have such the luxury? Can I justify the three dollars, six dollars, twelve dollars? I surely have enough words and withdrawals for a good argument.

Of equal concern is that this Zanzibar Resort – for that, regardless of our well-bargained price, is what it is – is only inhabited by white people.

Wazungu.

White people means rich people. Which is why the angry woman and the angry man at the local lunch bar earlier today are justified in their frustration and request compensation for our presence.

Even though I may wrestle against seeing a poor black man to seeing only a poor man, I am still white in their eyes. I may not be American, but I still look like one. And let’s state these affairs for what they are: We’d all rather be mistaken for Americans than become the poor black man and move here.

Sure, we would all claim to be happy born poor and black and African, but to overtly choose these things is a very different path.

As long as we have the choice of their world or ours, we will always choose ours. Even if you decide to enter their world, like many have done for varied and noble reasons, you still enter as a shard of ours.

You will always want coffee, chocolate and bacon.

And you will always hold near the truth that you can go home.

My colour will always be a ticket out of what ever uncomfortable world I find myself in. A ticket back to the illusion of safety, security and comfort. I may come to hold not a single asset, but wealth is in the pigment of my skin. And at present this is an insurmountable mountain on the ranges of inequality.

It may not be overt, especially when you have an African neighbour or frequent the Chinese-run bakery, but this racism of wealth is implicit. Like we become shards of wealth in their world, they are splinters of poverty in ours. Some send their money home. We spend it on ourselves. They are vying for a slice of the wealth pie. We choose the pies flavour, ingredients and how it’s cooked.

So, white brothers and sisters, do what you can and complain less. You have more than you know. You have luxury of choice. You are white.

Written on Jambiani Beach, Zanzibar, 23 June 2009.

Seeking solid ground

I can’t remember the last time I slept in a double bed. It’s a great feeling, perfecting the star fish and exploring every square inch of the mattress. The silence of Eze, France is an ocean away from the tunes of taxi horns and street chatter in Harlem, New York. And that ocean is on my front door step.

Today I dipped my feet in that ocean off a pearl-coloured boulder in the beautiful Calanques of Marseille. A friend and I shared a baguette as we fought for reality, searching for it wedged in between crystal-clear fiords and towering cliff faces.

“Are we really here?” we echoed to each other. The sound waves bounced back and forth, and the tides of perception rolled in.

Bare feet and barely present, we tried our best to give our senses their fill.

“The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.”

Suffering

I’m writing through the haze of jet-lag after eight hours worth of flights.

I left New York at 6:30pm. It just hit midday in Frankfurt. And I’ve had two hours sleep in economy.

International traveling is weird. As you fly, time is suspended. Swirling around you, but never gaining a footing. Then you arrive in what seems like an alternate universe, experiencing the affects of the journey but oddly detached from their cause. Is this what a black hole feels like?

Right now I am tempted to rouse Deutschland to throw a pity party due to my all-pervading feelings of crapness.

[Insert segue]

In these trivial things I can’t seem to shake the thought of those that suffer throughout the world daily through toil, hunger, and injustice.

Because tonight I will sleep.

And tomorrow I will eat.

Others don’t see an end in sight.

These troubles that weave their ways into our cotton-wool lives are but a passing apparition of the true suffering: a lack of recognition of one’s humanness and its associated rights. The simple reality that my complaints are formed from the freedom, opportunity and cash to travel proves how much of a dichotomy exists.

When I was in Washington D.C. I visited the US Holocaust Museum. It was shocking to engage with the reality of millions of Jews – women, men, children – murdered on mass for simply existing. Crammed into train carriages, lead to a slaughtering ground, and asphyxiated thousands at a time. And with them, the songs and stories and laughs and lectures joined the black hole.

Travel blogs asking the same questions as I don’t exist.

So what should be my response? And am I capable of carrying it out?

Why you haven’t heard from me

Currently I’m on a quarter-filled bus back to the land of opportunity, New York, after spending three days of crappy weather in Washington D.C. Coldplay’s Prospekt’s March EP serenades me through the gaunt, leafless trees as a pack of peanut M&M’s keeps me company by my seat. I admit, I thought for a moment about one friend’s decision to eat only Fair Trade chocolate, but ignored the conviction. Ignorance is a bliss that melts in your hand, not in your mouth.

Though you no doubt know I’m prone to procrastination, in some senses this feels like the first spare moment I’ve had to write here – that is, without the preference to eat, sleep or pen cluttered rants in a 1B5.

Every morning I experience this strange sensation where I arise, peel back the night’s protection and am compelled to venture out into a strange city in search of something fresh and new. To be honest, I feel kind of bad writing because any time spent resting is time not spent up atop a tall building, or watching a gorilla, or learning about the eugenical foundations to the Holocaust.

My tendency to ignore my duty to “E’s Motions”, my journal and poetry does have its ramifications: I am stuffed full of revelation but starved of reflection.

With each day comes a new set of questions, challenges, thoughts and feelings, not to mention it’s own unique experiences. And it truly deserves an exposition of its own. However, by the time the sun is pulled forward from my New York evening to a Wellington afternoon, I’m just too dusted to give anything to anyone, even myself.

I know I benefit from this expression, I just fail to put into practice disciplines that I know will develop me. Sound familiar? As a single 23-year-old floating across the seas of opportunity, any discipline would be beneficial right now.

Maybe I just need to take the bus more often.

My return and a poem

After a hefty sabbatical from writing things for you to read, I’m returning to fifteenminutes.co.nz with a different slant. Dust Off The Bookshelf was a great idea, but suffered the same wheezy cough that has plagued communism for the last century. Namely, praxis. In the second incarnation of this blog, I’ll be writing about my travels to distant shores. If that gets boring, I’ll resort to uninformed critique.

To begin, a poem:

Drinking Coffee

Drinking coffee
By myself
In a New Plymouth cafe
Writing
I wonder if this will be my life for the next three months
As I seek respite from New York’s ego
Run from Italy’s affluence
Escape from my Parisian loneliness
Hide from Tanzania’s groans
These are the assumptions I hold about the world out there
The very things that will be stretched, twisted and wrung out
Because New York will have no ego
I’ll meet the poor in Italy
Fall in love in Paris
See the sons of God revealed in Tanzania
If I’ve learnt anything
I’ve learnt that any thing is nothing
And nothing is ever what you thought she would be
And this is the beauty of life
That you start with nothing
End with nothing
And everything happens in between
So this Friday I leave
In search of everything
And of nothing
All the while people sit in cafes
in New Plymouth
Drinking coffee

An Invisible Divide

[ CHAPTER TWO | The End of Poverty ]

Borders are funny things. Aside from the various ceremonies conducted at them, the idea that an imaginary line defines one nation, one law, and one people, from another is a little absurd. And to think of the patriotism and passion that this imaginary line can arouse in a person. Consider the historical divide between India and Pakistan; geographically metres away, but at times relationally worlds apart. And I need not remind you of what happens when different countries meet on the sports field, even if they are from opposite sides of the world.

Economic Snakes and Ladders

[ CHAPTER ONE | The End of Poverty ]

Ignorance is bliss. That is, until you catch a whiff of truth. At which point you’re thrown into an endless whirlwind trying to discover more of whatever that truth may be. We find this law at work in science, spirituality, and worst of all, women. I fear I’m embarking on such an adventure with looking into global poverty.

I’m probably not the first to admit I’m ignorant. Actually, I’d rather not talk about it. Suffice to say, poverty used to sit in a couple of little boxes stored away in my mind. One was labelled ‘Africa’, the other had something to do with ‘flies and no food’, but the label’s kind of been peeling away for a little while now. After a little bit of thinking, I’ve not only torn off the labels, but thrown the whole blasted box system out the window. We’re talking ladders baby, snakes and ladders.

The Bono Ultimatum

[ FOREWORD | The End of Poverty ]

I can hear it already. Seeds of doubt are blossoming as you wonder which inane U2 fact I’m going to subtly reference, or what inspiring Paul Hewson sound bite I’ll infer as gospel. “It’s all been said before,” the thoughts spin in your head. “Does the world really need another article about Bono?”

Well, not if he’s writing them himself.

Those four, bold, red letters on the cover of The End of Poverty represent a man you either love, hate… or are largely indifferent about. Regardless of your thoughts on the matter, he must be a pretty big deal. Case in point, his name on the cover is exactly the same font size as author Jeffrey Sachs (yes, I used a ruler). Bono wrote three pages in this book. Sachs wrote the other 413. Pretty good deal if you ask me. There’s a lesson in there somewhere about working smarter…

BACKGROUND | The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs

Whenever I go back to my home in New Plymouth I am not only inundated by hugs and kisses, tasty meals and requests to return more often, but hundreds upon hundreds of books that stare at me with a faint charm, silently petitioning, “READ ME.” My father’s book collection makes me nervous. Like a bad smorgasbord experience, I just want to down everything at once, but I know I’d get serious intellectual indigestion if I was to read in such haste.

Thankfully, last weekend Dad had something special for me. Knowing about my growing interest in poverty alleviation, he flicked me The End Of Poverty. Upon first glance, I didn’t think too much of it. Then I did a little research on the author.