This is the original mass email I sent out when I first moved to Ramallah in October, 2009:
So for those of you who do not know, I moved to Ramallah, Palestine on October 4th to teach music at the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music. I've been here for 2.5 weeks and I have to say that I really love being here. I'm teaching Viola and Violin to students in Ramallah and Nablus, and this month I'm doing a bit of teaching in Jerusalem as well.
I was definitely nervous to come here, no lies there! My biggest concern was getting through passport control in Tel Aviv. After all, I was supposed to tell them I was volunteering in Jerusalem, as opposed to working in Ramallah. Unfortunately my charm did not win over the passport guard and I was told to wait in a small room for interrogating. A lady came and asked me all kinds of questions: what I was doing, where I was staying, what my father’s name is, where my parents were born, what my religion was, what my parent’s religion was (she thought I might be Jewish), do I know anyone in Israel, how long will I be staying, will I be working with the Palestinians, why am I working in East Jerusalem (the Arabic area of the city).
It was a little nerve-wracking but I guess I did a good-enough job because they let me into the country! Unfortunately they ended up stamping my passport. I was hoping they would just give me my visa stamp on a separate piece of paper (well, they did that too, actually) because then I could have a clean passport to visit other Arabic countries. As it is now, if I want to go to Lebanon or Syria (or Iran or Saudi Arabia I guess) I will have to get a second passport since those Arabic countries do not recognize Israel and won't let you in if there is proof you have been there.
So Ramallah is a beautiful city. The streets are narrow and full of shops. It actually reminds me of Africa, and Italy too, come to think of it – the multitude of random stores selling colourful items, supermarkets on every corner, garbage piling up in alleyways, no traffic laws. Practically every five steps you take you come across a falafel stand or a juice store or a cart selling kahk (basically these giant sesame-topped bagels).
These past few weeks have been incredibly hot! The days get up to around 35 degrees and the nights cool down to maybe 29 degrees. I continue to wear what I would usually wear in Canada: shorts and tanktops, while everyone else is generally much more covered up. In fact I have never ever seen another pair of bare legs in the entire time I have been here. As such I provoke stares from just about everyone I cross pathes with when I walk to work. Generally this doesn't bother me. I either smile at people or look straight ahead and ignore the looks. Honestly it's just way too hot! Thankfully it has started to cool down over the last few days.
Some of my experiences in the city so far include: shopping at the insane fruit market where I was given nearly everything for free (!), playing my ipod for a random taxi driver who was so excited he had to call his friend right then and there to tell him about it, practically OD-ing on Knafeh (Middle-Eastern sweet consisting of sweet cheese topped with cornmeal and syrup), enjoying a concert of traditional Arabic music and being endlessly fascinated with what I was hearing, hearing a girl in a hijab say "It's so hot, why can't I wear that?" in reference to my shorts and my response to her "You can!", hitching a ride with a gravel truck driver one Friday when I was late getting to work, going out to the Conservatory branch at Bir Zeit where we sang songs under the stars and ate pomegranates, joining an impromptu street hockey game while waiting for a taxi home, singing along with my ipod to a bunch of guys watching me walk by, spending a few hours walking around the Old City in Jerusalem and praying at the Western Wall, seeing my students improve in only a few weeks, and (possibly the best thing I've done here so far) spending a day in the countryside harvesting olives with an entire Palestinian family - this was such a special experience for me, to get in touch with the "real" Palestine, not the garbage you see on the news, but the generous, funny, and kind people who work this land and who do not deserve having it taken out of their grasp more and more.
The garbage situation here is quite bothersome to me. There is no real system for garbage disposal except to occasionally throw things in the bin where it is taken to be burned somewhere. The streets are littered with garbage and the fields are full of plastic bottles - it's really quite heartbreaking! Unfortunately, getting a recycling plant into Palestine is incredibly difficult since transporting large machinery from Israel is a big problem.
The truth is that Palestine is an occupied country. They are surrounded by another territory that is entirely hostile to them. Many residents of Ramallah are not allowed to travel to Jerusalem, only 6 km away. Many of these same residents grew up in Jerusalem and had their homes taken from them by the Israelis. *sigh* As much as I would have preferred to avoid the political situation here, it's near-to impossible and the more I try to avoid it, the more I feel a bit idiotic. Because honestly, the situation is ridiculous - that so many people have had their land taken from them and are under such restrictions! Of course I don't have the answer to this problem but I sure hope that one day it gets figured out...
Anyway, that's sort of my preliminary thoughts on being here over the last 2.5 weeks.
The weather has finally cooled off - believe it or not, I truly miss the changing seasons! I also miss my family and friends, pizza, Canadian beer, East Indian/Vietnamese/Thai food, and organic nut butters.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Monday, June 15, 2009
Uganda
Well I'm back in Canada after spending 3 weeks in Uganda! I have some pretty interesting stories to tell as well as my observations on this amazing country.
I was traveling with my sister, my mom, and our friend who is from Uganda. We were going for our friend's brother's wedding. We left Canada on the evening of May 22nd. We were flying Emirates so we connected in Dubai. The really great thing about Emirates is that if your layover in Dubai is longer than 8 hours, they put you up in a hotel and pay for your meals. Our layover happened to be about 14 hours. We arrived in Dubai at around 6 p.m. so it gave us a chance to look around.
We went to the Gold Souk, which has all these gold shops with amazing (and expensive) jewelry. My friend was really interested in looking around at the gold but I ventured off to check out some clothes. Everywhere there are shopkeepers beckoning you into their stores because they have "best price for you!" Their best price is usually something completely ridiculous. One man asked me for $120 US for a simple scarf. Eventually I got him down to $10 US but I didn't buy it because I really didn't even want it!
Dubai is also ridiculously hot. I had a tanktop on with a scarf around my neck, but my mom told me to cover my shoulders because I was getting strange looks. I did, unfortunately - it was incredibly humid so any extra piece of clothing made you sweat like crazy. On the way home, we arrived in Dubai at 1 a.m. and it was still 37 degrees Celsius! When we left the airport it was like walking into a wall of water, the air was so thick. Immediately my glasses fogged up haha.
So we got to Uganda on May 24th at around 4 in the afternoon. The airport is about an hour away from Kamapala, even though it's only 30 km. The roads are very twisty and it's not really a highway. There are constantly people walking or biking on the roads so you have to constantly be slowing down. I totally passed out in the car, though, so I missed the drive in to the city.
Well Uganda is a totally crazy place...the streets have giant holes in them from...honestly I don't know what. You'll be driving along and all of a sudden you have to slam on the brakes or swerve out of the way to avoid this crater in the street. Plus there's no speed limit so the city has put up all these speed bumps which are just incredibly annoying. But they have to do something, otherwise people would just be driving at maniacal speeds all the time. There's also not very many lights or lanes, so when you drive you have to constantly be on the watch for people who might be randomly darting into your path, at times driving right towards you!
I eventually got so sick of the driving. The cars in incredibly poor disrepair so they're always spewing out this thick stream of stinky diesel smoke that makes you sick to your stomach to breathe it in. Plus there's the endless lines of traffic. And it might not all be so bad, but then it's really hot too, so it makes your patience give up a lot faster.
Then there were the buses. They looked like Volkswagon vans. I can't remember what make and model they actually were, though. Anyway, they were hot and usually quite crowded. But they were so cheap - about $.50 to get into the city from where we were staying. There aren't really bus stops - well, there are places where you can go to definitely catch a bus. But if you're just walking on the street and you want to get on, you just wave at them. The bus has a guy who is always waving his arm out the window at people to try and get them on the bus.
The other form of "public transportation" are boda bodas: motorcycles you can ride on. I took one in the last week of being in Uganda and it was so fun, I wish I'd taken one sooner. It felt very safe and it was great to feel the air through your hair and on your skin. You felt so much closer to everything you drove past: all the amazing scenery, the goats, the bicyclists, the people walking. You do have to be careful, though, because some boda bodas are dangerous if the driver likes to weave in and out of traffic without checking properly.
Being white in Uganda makes you an automatic celebrity. There you are called "mzungu" which basically means "white person", but not in a derogatory racial slur kinda way, just as fact. There really weren't many "mzungu" in the area where we were staying so the kids would totally freak out when you walked by. Some would seriously shriek and laugh and cry out "mzungu mzungu!" They would LOVE it if you said "Oli otya" (hi, how are you?) to them. They just can't believe that a mzungu would know something in Lugandan.
Even with the adults (especially the men), they will be totally impressed if you say anything in their language. And they all want to talk to you, because to say "hello" to a mzungu and have you acknowledge it makes them feel pretty special.
It's so interesting that being white gets you treated that way, because in Canada you would never freak out in amazement when you see a black person walk down the street. It would be pretty ridiculous, in fact, to see a white person saying "Oh my god, it's a black person WOW!!" here in North America haha.
There is some badly needed infrastructure in Kampala. The roads are in poor condition; there is no real garbage disposal system so people just burn the garbage, including plastics; the hospitals are understaffed and underfunded; there is no minimum wage and thus no assurance of any kind of expected salary for most people; no proper drainage system so when it pours rain, the water just eats up the streets. It's sad to see the condition in which most people live. There are a lot of slums consisting of one-room houses with a dirty yard full of flea-ridden stray dogs.
Despite all this, the people are so happy all the time! People are always sitting around and talking and laughing. They live such a slow pace of life, never rushing around and hurrying - just taking their time to get done what they need to do. I would often see men just sitting underneath a tree, not doing anything. I asked our friends what all these people were doing, just hanging out - they said they were thinking or working haha. Interesting...
Then we took a side trip to Zanzibar. Well actually, we were supposed to go on a safari in Tanzania but...Okay so it started out by flying to Nairobi. Our friend's friend picked us up from the airport and took us downtown. Before we left the car, she took off all her gold jewelry and locked it up. Apparently people in Nairobi will just come up to you and try to grab it off your neck!
Anyway, then we got on this shuttle bus that was taking us to Arusha, Tanzania. It was supposed to be a 4 hr. drive on a normal highway...unfortunately that highway was under construction and we had to take a diverted road which was worse than any gravel road I've ever been on in my life. Plus this bus had no suspension to speak of. Plus I was at the very back. And last but not least there was no air-conditioning so we had to open the windows which meant by the end of the EIGHT HOUR trip, I had about two inches of dust covering my entire body. Not fun.
Then we were arranging our safari with this guy (Basil) who supposedly knew our friend's brother. Well, Basil wanted us to pay him the full amount before we even left. That was pretty sketchy and we refused. Then we found out that it was only going to be us four girls in a private car with a different driver. We figured that it was just too dangerous for four girls to go off with some random guy into the middle of a game park full of wild animals. So we canceled and booked air tickets to Zanzibar!
So we took off to Zanzibar, which is a beautiful and incredibly interesting place. The streets are very narrow, even more so than European streets. There are tons of little shops selling crafts, scarves, clothes, and food. We hired a guide when we got there, a guy named Ali who was really cute. We ended up hanging out a lot more over the next few days and...well that's all I'm going to say about that haha.
Apparently a huge boat had recently sunk just off the coast of Zanzibar...and I mean just off the coast - it was trying to dock and it sunk! This happened just a few days before we arrived. Apparently there were people who were still alive on the boat, somehow trapped in an air bubble in the boat, below the surface. You would never know that this catastrophe had taken place, though - there were hardly any police or emergency crew around the docks. If this was North America, the place would have been crawling with people! It was terribly tragic and 7 people died as a result of the laxity of others...
Zanzibar is beautiful, though. The Ocean is very calm and the beaches are amazing. We went on a spice tour where we saw all kinds of different spices including nutmeg, ginger, turmeric, cloves, cardamom and all kinds of fruit including jackfruit, dorian, mangos, bananas, etc. We had a traditional lunch of creamed spinach, rice, chapattis, and curried bananas and potatoes in a creamy coconut sauce. We also swam in the Ocean at a private beach.
I didn't want to leave Zanzibar - it was my favourite place, and kind of a magical little side excursion. But we had to get back for the wedding, so leave we did :( It was nice to get back with our friends though. And some more family members had arrived that we had never met yet so it was fun getting to know them.
The wedding was massive. About 600 people were invited. The ceremony started at 1:00 p.m. and was a full Catholic Mass so it took about an hour and a half. People were still showing up to the ceremony at around 2:15 p.m. And then the priest went WAY over time even though there was another wedding ceremony immediately after this one.
It was pretty much like your typical Western wedding. The only major difference was the fact that the speeches went on FOREVER. In total I think we had about 4 hours of speeches. I think that was probably a little (aka a lot) excessive. But I guess it's a very special day and everyone wants to have their say!
Anyway, the trip was totally amazing and there are definitely things I miss about Africa: the heat; Fanta Orange; the greenery; the food. I also like how people are pretty chilled out, but that is also one thing I don't miss at the same time. People are frequently late for things, especially meals. We went for lunch at one guy's house. We arrived late, at around 12:45/1:00 p.m. I thought we would eat fairly soon after that...nope. We didn't eat until about 3:00 p.m., by which time I was absolutely starving. Strange.
I'm so fortunate that I get to return to Africa. It's easy to put aside your experiences over there now that I've returned. But the fact I get to go back and reinforce in my mind everything that I think and love and dislike about Africa is pretty special!
I can't wait!
I was traveling with my sister, my mom, and our friend who is from Uganda. We were going for our friend's brother's wedding. We left Canada on the evening of May 22nd. We were flying Emirates so we connected in Dubai. The really great thing about Emirates is that if your layover in Dubai is longer than 8 hours, they put you up in a hotel and pay for your meals. Our layover happened to be about 14 hours. We arrived in Dubai at around 6 p.m. so it gave us a chance to look around.
We went to the Gold Souk, which has all these gold shops with amazing (and expensive) jewelry. My friend was really interested in looking around at the gold but I ventured off to check out some clothes. Everywhere there are shopkeepers beckoning you into their stores because they have "best price for you!" Their best price is usually something completely ridiculous. One man asked me for $120 US for a simple scarf. Eventually I got him down to $10 US but I didn't buy it because I really didn't even want it!
Dubai is also ridiculously hot. I had a tanktop on with a scarf around my neck, but my mom told me to cover my shoulders because I was getting strange looks. I did, unfortunately - it was incredibly humid so any extra piece of clothing made you sweat like crazy. On the way home, we arrived in Dubai at 1 a.m. and it was still 37 degrees Celsius! When we left the airport it was like walking into a wall of water, the air was so thick. Immediately my glasses fogged up haha.
So we got to Uganda on May 24th at around 4 in the afternoon. The airport is about an hour away from Kamapala, even though it's only 30 km. The roads are very twisty and it's not really a highway. There are constantly people walking or biking on the roads so you have to constantly be slowing down. I totally passed out in the car, though, so I missed the drive in to the city.
Well Uganda is a totally crazy place...the streets have giant holes in them from...honestly I don't know what. You'll be driving along and all of a sudden you have to slam on the brakes or swerve out of the way to avoid this crater in the street. Plus there's no speed limit so the city has put up all these speed bumps which are just incredibly annoying. But they have to do something, otherwise people would just be driving at maniacal speeds all the time. There's also not very many lights or lanes, so when you drive you have to constantly be on the watch for people who might be randomly darting into your path, at times driving right towards you!
I eventually got so sick of the driving. The cars in incredibly poor disrepair so they're always spewing out this thick stream of stinky diesel smoke that makes you sick to your stomach to breathe it in. Plus there's the endless lines of traffic. And it might not all be so bad, but then it's really hot too, so it makes your patience give up a lot faster.
Then there were the buses. They looked like Volkswagon vans. I can't remember what make and model they actually were, though. Anyway, they were hot and usually quite crowded. But they were so cheap - about $.50 to get into the city from where we were staying. There aren't really bus stops - well, there are places where you can go to definitely catch a bus. But if you're just walking on the street and you want to get on, you just wave at them. The bus has a guy who is always waving his arm out the window at people to try and get them on the bus.
The other form of "public transportation" are boda bodas: motorcycles you can ride on. I took one in the last week of being in Uganda and it was so fun, I wish I'd taken one sooner. It felt very safe and it was great to feel the air through your hair and on your skin. You felt so much closer to everything you drove past: all the amazing scenery, the goats, the bicyclists, the people walking. You do have to be careful, though, because some boda bodas are dangerous if the driver likes to weave in and out of traffic without checking properly.
Being white in Uganda makes you an automatic celebrity. There you are called "mzungu" which basically means "white person", but not in a derogatory racial slur kinda way, just as fact. There really weren't many "mzungu" in the area where we were staying so the kids would totally freak out when you walked by. Some would seriously shriek and laugh and cry out "mzungu mzungu!" They would LOVE it if you said "Oli otya" (hi, how are you?) to them. They just can't believe that a mzungu would know something in Lugandan.
Even with the adults (especially the men), they will be totally impressed if you say anything in their language. And they all want to talk to you, because to say "hello" to a mzungu and have you acknowledge it makes them feel pretty special.
It's so interesting that being white gets you treated that way, because in Canada you would never freak out in amazement when you see a black person walk down the street. It would be pretty ridiculous, in fact, to see a white person saying "Oh my god, it's a black person WOW!!" here in North America haha.
There is some badly needed infrastructure in Kampala. The roads are in poor condition; there is no real garbage disposal system so people just burn the garbage, including plastics; the hospitals are understaffed and underfunded; there is no minimum wage and thus no assurance of any kind of expected salary for most people; no proper drainage system so when it pours rain, the water just eats up the streets. It's sad to see the condition in which most people live. There are a lot of slums consisting of one-room houses with a dirty yard full of flea-ridden stray dogs.
Despite all this, the people are so happy all the time! People are always sitting around and talking and laughing. They live such a slow pace of life, never rushing around and hurrying - just taking their time to get done what they need to do. I would often see men just sitting underneath a tree, not doing anything. I asked our friends what all these people were doing, just hanging out - they said they were thinking or working haha. Interesting...
Then we took a side trip to Zanzibar. Well actually, we were supposed to go on a safari in Tanzania but...Okay so it started out by flying to Nairobi. Our friend's friend picked us up from the airport and took us downtown. Before we left the car, she took off all her gold jewelry and locked it up. Apparently people in Nairobi will just come up to you and try to grab it off your neck!
Anyway, then we got on this shuttle bus that was taking us to Arusha, Tanzania. It was supposed to be a 4 hr. drive on a normal highway...unfortunately that highway was under construction and we had to take a diverted road which was worse than any gravel road I've ever been on in my life. Plus this bus had no suspension to speak of. Plus I was at the very back. And last but not least there was no air-conditioning so we had to open the windows which meant by the end of the EIGHT HOUR trip, I had about two inches of dust covering my entire body. Not fun.
Then we were arranging our safari with this guy (Basil) who supposedly knew our friend's brother. Well, Basil wanted us to pay him the full amount before we even left. That was pretty sketchy and we refused. Then we found out that it was only going to be us four girls in a private car with a different driver. We figured that it was just too dangerous for four girls to go off with some random guy into the middle of a game park full of wild animals. So we canceled and booked air tickets to Zanzibar!
So we took off to Zanzibar, which is a beautiful and incredibly interesting place. The streets are very narrow, even more so than European streets. There are tons of little shops selling crafts, scarves, clothes, and food. We hired a guide when we got there, a guy named Ali who was really cute. We ended up hanging out a lot more over the next few days and...well that's all I'm going to say about that haha.
Apparently a huge boat had recently sunk just off the coast of Zanzibar...and I mean just off the coast - it was trying to dock and it sunk! This happened just a few days before we arrived. Apparently there were people who were still alive on the boat, somehow trapped in an air bubble in the boat, below the surface. You would never know that this catastrophe had taken place, though - there were hardly any police or emergency crew around the docks. If this was North America, the place would have been crawling with people! It was terribly tragic and 7 people died as a result of the laxity of others...
Zanzibar is beautiful, though. The Ocean is very calm and the beaches are amazing. We went on a spice tour where we saw all kinds of different spices including nutmeg, ginger, turmeric, cloves, cardamom and all kinds of fruit including jackfruit, dorian, mangos, bananas, etc. We had a traditional lunch of creamed spinach, rice, chapattis, and curried bananas and potatoes in a creamy coconut sauce. We also swam in the Ocean at a private beach.
I didn't want to leave Zanzibar - it was my favourite place, and kind of a magical little side excursion. But we had to get back for the wedding, so leave we did :( It was nice to get back with our friends though. And some more family members had arrived that we had never met yet so it was fun getting to know them.
The wedding was massive. About 600 people were invited. The ceremony started at 1:00 p.m. and was a full Catholic Mass so it took about an hour and a half. People were still showing up to the ceremony at around 2:15 p.m. And then the priest went WAY over time even though there was another wedding ceremony immediately after this one.
It was pretty much like your typical Western wedding. The only major difference was the fact that the speeches went on FOREVER. In total I think we had about 4 hours of speeches. I think that was probably a little (aka a lot) excessive. But I guess it's a very special day and everyone wants to have their say!
Anyway, the trip was totally amazing and there are definitely things I miss about Africa: the heat; Fanta Orange; the greenery; the food. I also like how people are pretty chilled out, but that is also one thing I don't miss at the same time. People are frequently late for things, especially meals. We went for lunch at one guy's house. We arrived late, at around 12:45/1:00 p.m. I thought we would eat fairly soon after that...nope. We didn't eat until about 3:00 p.m., by which time I was absolutely starving. Strange.
I'm so fortunate that I get to return to Africa. It's easy to put aside your experiences over there now that I've returned. But the fact I get to go back and reinforce in my mind everything that I think and love and dislike about Africa is pretty special!
I can't wait!
Friday, May 15, 2009
Three Cups of Tea
So I just finished reading Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. This book details the life of Greg Mortenson who, in the past 20-odd years, has constructed over 40 schools in rural areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
I am completely blown away by this book. I can hardly believe that the accounts I was reading were actually real. The fact that this man rallied for years and years to raise funds for promoting education (especially the education of girls) in one of the harshest regions of the world is one of the most heroic things I have ever heard.
One of the main tenets that Mortenson advocates is that education is the key to ending terrorism. This is so incredibly true. The children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, living in severe poverty, are led to madrassas, Taliban-funded schools where they learn an extremist form of Islam that promotes hatred towards Westerners. When students graduate from these schools, they are offered a paltry sum and the chance to join the Taliban. Faced with few or no other options, these students join this terrorist group.
Mortenson states that "More than 145 million of the world's children are deprived of education due to poverty, exploitation, slavery, gender discrimination, religious extremism, and corrupt governments." How completely heart-breaking that in this day and age, where in so many parts of the world tons of information can be called upon with the click of a button, there are children who do not know how to read or how to write, and perhaps they never will.
It's even more astounding when you consider that the second of the 8 Millenium Development Goals (set in 2001 as targets for the UN member states) reads as such:
Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
In Stephen Lewis' book Race Against Time, he notes that in so many of his encounters to African countries, the overwhelming desire of children is that of an education! And yet later on in the same book he states that "In 2005, the world will pass the trillion-dollar mark in the expenditure, annually, in arms. We're fighting for $50 billion annually for foreign aid for Africa: the military totally outstrips human need by 20 to 1. Can someone please explain to me our contemporary balance of values?"
And Mortenson confirms this when he says "I'm no military expert...And these figures might not be exactly right. But as best as I can tell, we've launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Now take the cost of one of those missiles tipped with a Raytheon guidance system, which I think is about $840,000. For that much money, you could build dozens of schools that could provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced nonextremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?"
As I mentioned earlier, the children of Central Asia are being educated in madrassas funded by leaders from Saudi Arabia. Mortenson describes how they land in Pakistan with suitcases full of money for the purpose of building these schools. The United States decision to fund an army to blow other countries to bits (inflicting major casualties on civilians, too, by the way!) will not solve anything in the long run. The people of Central Asia do not hate all Americans, and Three Cups of Tea is a clear testament to that!
But for everyone who still believes that the war on terror will be won by blasting as many holes into Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. as possible, then you simply must read Three Cups of Tea and Race Against Time. These two books are truly an eye-opener into the reality that education can provide the way to an incredibly brighter future - much brighter than the fading glow of a Tomahawk missile explosion against the dark night sky of Central Asia.
I am completely blown away by this book. I can hardly believe that the accounts I was reading were actually real. The fact that this man rallied for years and years to raise funds for promoting education (especially the education of girls) in one of the harshest regions of the world is one of the most heroic things I have ever heard.
One of the main tenets that Mortenson advocates is that education is the key to ending terrorism. This is so incredibly true. The children in Pakistan and Afghanistan, living in severe poverty, are led to madrassas, Taliban-funded schools where they learn an extremist form of Islam that promotes hatred towards Westerners. When students graduate from these schools, they are offered a paltry sum and the chance to join the Taliban. Faced with few or no other options, these students join this terrorist group.
Mortenson states that "More than 145 million of the world's children are deprived of education due to poverty, exploitation, slavery, gender discrimination, religious extremism, and corrupt governments." How completely heart-breaking that in this day and age, where in so many parts of the world tons of information can be called upon with the click of a button, there are children who do not know how to read or how to write, and perhaps they never will.
It's even more astounding when you consider that the second of the 8 Millenium Development Goals (set in 2001 as targets for the UN member states) reads as such:
Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
In Stephen Lewis' book Race Against Time, he notes that in so many of his encounters to African countries, the overwhelming desire of children is that of an education! And yet later on in the same book he states that "In 2005, the world will pass the trillion-dollar mark in the expenditure, annually, in arms. We're fighting for $50 billion annually for foreign aid for Africa: the military totally outstrips human need by 20 to 1. Can someone please explain to me our contemporary balance of values?"
And Mortenson confirms this when he says "I'm no military expert...And these figures might not be exactly right. But as best as I can tell, we've launched 114 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Afghanistan so far. Now take the cost of one of those missiles tipped with a Raytheon guidance system, which I think is about $840,000. For that much money, you could build dozens of schools that could provide tens of thousands of students with a balanced nonextremist education over the course of a generation. Which do you think will make us more secure?"
As I mentioned earlier, the children of Central Asia are being educated in madrassas funded by leaders from Saudi Arabia. Mortenson describes how they land in Pakistan with suitcases full of money for the purpose of building these schools. The United States decision to fund an army to blow other countries to bits (inflicting major casualties on civilians, too, by the way!) will not solve anything in the long run. The people of Central Asia do not hate all Americans, and Three Cups of Tea is a clear testament to that!
But for everyone who still believes that the war on terror will be won by blasting as many holes into Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, etc. as possible, then you simply must read Three Cups of Tea and Race Against Time. These two books are truly an eye-opener into the reality that education can provide the way to an incredibly brighter future - much brighter than the fading glow of a Tomahawk missile explosion against the dark night sky of Central Asia.
Friday, April 3, 2009
What to Say?!
I have been dying to write a blog for such a long time. As mentioned previously, I have so many topics to cover...there is just not enough time in the day. I'm so incredibly busy learning a ton of music for various things that I don't have time for sitting and musing much.
Well actually, that's not entirely true. I muse a lot at work because I basically do nothing there. It's kind of sweet actually. I mean, it's nice to get paid to sit around, but when I think about all the stuff that I really should be doing, it gets very frustrating to know that I'm sort of wasting my time at this damn job just because I need to make some cash.
Let me tell you a little something about working with the general public though - people smell. And they smell bad. I'm a receptionist and when people come up to my desk, I can notice right away when they are stinky. I don't know how many times I have had to bite my tongue so I don't blurt out "Did you take a bath in cigarette butts before coming here?" The smell of stale cigarettes is so incredibly disgusting. Then there's B.O., must, dust, mothballs, old-apartment-smell...the list goes on and on.
I'm not trying to be mean...this is a simple observation...sorry if I offended those who are prone to smelling bad. It happens...I understand.
Now for some exciting news - I'm going to Africa this summer...TWICE!!
I'm going to Uganda for 3 weeks with my mom, my sis, and our friend who is from Uganda. Her brother is getting married and she invited us along. It'll be really great to go there with someone who is from there and has family and friends there - much easier to get around and see things etc. I do want to spend some time on my own, though, just exploring and taking in things all by myself - have an adventure!
Then, a week after I get back from Uganda, I'm off to South Africa for a month to plant trees and do presentations on AIDS awareness. I'm pretty stoked about this, seeing as it ties in to my life philosophy to make the world a better place. But I have to admit, I'm really nervous about it because I have no idea what to expect. The other thing is that I'm absolutely terrified that this trip will fall through like my India trip fell through...and then I will have to consider myself one big failure at getting by butt out of Canada to opportunistic destinations on the other side of the world.
I do have to fundraise a nice chunk of change for this trip, though, so if anyone is willing to help me out and give me a donation, let me know via posting to this blog and I'll get you more details on how to go about doing that. Thanks in advance :)
What else? Well, I'm single. Not entirely freshly single though...it's been 4 months since my relationship ended with what I thought was a great guy. That illusion ended when Mr.Not-So-Wonderful came back from India engaged to a girl he'd known for a total of about 72 hours. This happened 3 days before my ex was due to come home to his ever-faithful and dutiful girlfriend (aka me). So he held off the family pressure for 5 weeks and caved at the last minute. Well if he agreed to an arranged marriage with a girl he doesn't know and who hardly speaks English, she's got to be something special - by that, I mean she's probably a looker with a nice rack.
I have to admit that I'm basically over this. I mean, it was really sad when it happened, especially because I found out from someone else, my ex being way too much of a coward to do the right thing and tell me to my face. But fortunately I have a logical pattern of thought that pulled myself together and said - Forget about this douchebag, gather yourself, stay strong because it's his loss and he knows it (and he does).
I remain optimistic that there are still good men out there who have the ability to be loyal and have the strength to say what needs to be said, when it needs to be said. It's a big world out there after all.
Also - nothing like watching the first 4 seasons of The Office post-breakup to really get you laughing again. That got me through the first bad weeks.
So to anyone going through the extremely unfortunate circumstance of heart-break, just know that there are other people who have gone through some ridiculous blows to the ego and made it through to the other side more-or-less unscathed. And actually, I have met some really great guys in the last little while - guys who are laid-back, whose company I enjoy, and who are smart, polite, and extremely personable.
Okay that's all for now.
Make sure you get your taxes done - only a few weeks til the end of April :)
Peace.
Well actually, that's not entirely true. I muse a lot at work because I basically do nothing there. It's kind of sweet actually. I mean, it's nice to get paid to sit around, but when I think about all the stuff that I really should be doing, it gets very frustrating to know that I'm sort of wasting my time at this damn job just because I need to make some cash.
Let me tell you a little something about working with the general public though - people smell. And they smell bad. I'm a receptionist and when people come up to my desk, I can notice right away when they are stinky. I don't know how many times I have had to bite my tongue so I don't blurt out "Did you take a bath in cigarette butts before coming here?" The smell of stale cigarettes is so incredibly disgusting. Then there's B.O., must, dust, mothballs, old-apartment-smell...the list goes on and on.
I'm not trying to be mean...this is a simple observation...sorry if I offended those who are prone to smelling bad. It happens...I understand.
Now for some exciting news - I'm going to Africa this summer...TWICE!!
I'm going to Uganda for 3 weeks with my mom, my sis, and our friend who is from Uganda. Her brother is getting married and she invited us along. It'll be really great to go there with someone who is from there and has family and friends there - much easier to get around and see things etc. I do want to spend some time on my own, though, just exploring and taking in things all by myself - have an adventure!
Then, a week after I get back from Uganda, I'm off to South Africa for a month to plant trees and do presentations on AIDS awareness. I'm pretty stoked about this, seeing as it ties in to my life philosophy to make the world a better place. But I have to admit, I'm really nervous about it because I have no idea what to expect. The other thing is that I'm absolutely terrified that this trip will fall through like my India trip fell through...and then I will have to consider myself one big failure at getting by butt out of Canada to opportunistic destinations on the other side of the world.
I do have to fundraise a nice chunk of change for this trip, though, so if anyone is willing to help me out and give me a donation, let me know via posting to this blog and I'll get you more details on how to go about doing that. Thanks in advance :)
What else? Well, I'm single. Not entirely freshly single though...it's been 4 months since my relationship ended with what I thought was a great guy. That illusion ended when Mr.Not-So-Wonderful came back from India engaged to a girl he'd known for a total of about 72 hours. This happened 3 days before my ex was due to come home to his ever-faithful and dutiful girlfriend (aka me). So he held off the family pressure for 5 weeks and caved at the last minute. Well if he agreed to an arranged marriage with a girl he doesn't know and who hardly speaks English, she's got to be something special - by that, I mean she's probably a looker with a nice rack.
I have to admit that I'm basically over this. I mean, it was really sad when it happened, especially because I found out from someone else, my ex being way too much of a coward to do the right thing and tell me to my face. But fortunately I have a logical pattern of thought that pulled myself together and said - Forget about this douchebag, gather yourself, stay strong because it's his loss and he knows it (and he does).
I remain optimistic that there are still good men out there who have the ability to be loyal and have the strength to say what needs to be said, when it needs to be said. It's a big world out there after all.
Also - nothing like watching the first 4 seasons of The Office post-breakup to really get you laughing again. That got me through the first bad weeks.
So to anyone going through the extremely unfortunate circumstance of heart-break, just know that there are other people who have gone through some ridiculous blows to the ego and made it through to the other side more-or-less unscathed. And actually, I have met some really great guys in the last little while - guys who are laid-back, whose company I enjoy, and who are smart, polite, and extremely personable.
Okay that's all for now.
Make sure you get your taxes done - only a few weeks til the end of April :)
Peace.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
M,I.A.
Okay so I realize that I have been M.I.A. for quite some time now. My apologies to those of you who actually read this thing. Anyway, I did actually become really busy and then went away on vacation blah blah blah. But I want to be fairly dedicated to my blog so I'm going to lay down some thoughts.
There are actually a variety of topics that I have been meaning to write about lately: Barack Obama; breast cancer; breaking up; honesty; change; and true friends. Unfortunately, I don't really have all my thoughts collected enough to write a coherent statement on any of those topics. So for now, all you get is a retraction...and a demi-retraction at best.
In a previous post, I decried Rich Terfry's musical selections for this program on CBC Radio Two. As it would happen, I ended up listening to nearly the entire show on a trip home in January. And as it would happen, I ended up thoroughly enjoying many (if not all) of the musical selections that I heard on that program.
So while I do not enjoy all of the music that Mr.Terfry plays on his show, I have to admit that he does showcase some extremely unique, talented, and exceptional artists that would otherwise not receive the attention they so deserve.
There. Happy now?
There are actually a variety of topics that I have been meaning to write about lately: Barack Obama; breast cancer; breaking up; honesty; change; and true friends. Unfortunately, I don't really have all my thoughts collected enough to write a coherent statement on any of those topics. So for now, all you get is a retraction...and a demi-retraction at best.
In a previous post, I decried Rich Terfry's musical selections for this program on CBC Radio Two. As it would happen, I ended up listening to nearly the entire show on a trip home in January. And as it would happen, I ended up thoroughly enjoying many (if not all) of the musical selections that I heard on that program.
So while I do not enjoy all of the music that Mr.Terfry plays on his show, I have to admit that he does showcase some extremely unique, talented, and exceptional artists that would otherwise not receive the attention they so deserve.
There. Happy now?
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
The Enchantress of Florence
So I just finished reading The Enchantress of Florence, the latest work by renowned author Salman Rushdie. I wasn't quite sure what to expect of this novel. I had previously read a few of Rushdie's novels: Shalimar the Clown, to which I became immediately enthralled; Fury, a good novel, but definitely a little strange; and The Satanic Verses, which I found highly overrated and way too long. I started reading The Ground Beneath Her Feet, but couldn't get into it.
I figured The Enchantress of Florence could go either way, based on my prior attempts with Rushdie. Still, I found the synopsis interesting and of course no harm done if I liked it or if I didn't - it's only a book, after all.
The novel concerns a young European traveller - 'Mogor dell'Amore' - who arrives at the court of the Emperor Akbar claiming to be the son of a lost Mughal princess: Qara Koz, a woman so beautiful she is believed to have powers of enchantment. The story covers the history of Qara Koz and how she came to arrive in Florence, following captivity by an Uzbeg warlord and then a Persian Shah. The narrator alternates between the Mughal city of Sikri and the city of Florence. The book jacket asks the question: "But is the Mogor's story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess? And if he's a liar, must he die?"
An intriguing story!! Would I be as captivated with the story as Emperor Akbar? And the verdict: I LOVED IT! You know you're going to love a book when the opening line strikes you: "In the day's last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold."
There were a few things that I found so remarkable about this book:
1) Unlike so many books today that lament how miserable everyone's life is (no really, it's true!), this book had a captivating tale that was almost like a children's story. You had kingdoms and enchantments and battles and ghosts, plus some sex and profanity. Not since Philip Pullman's Dark Materials Trilogy or Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings have I thought a story has held me in its attention so well.
2) The way in which Salman Rushdie continues to question religion. That he does so in his controversial novel The Satanic Verses is fairly obvious (though I did not find it nearly as offensive as I thought it was going to be). In The Enchantress he uses Emperor Akbar as a scapegoat in which to convey philosophical musings on whether or not humans really need God.
Consider the following quotes as examples:
However, in perhaps a contradictory statement, the Emperor reasons:
“The past was a light that if properly directed could illumine the present more brightly than any contemporary lamp…Understanding was another such flame. Knowledge was never simply born in the human mind; it was always reborn. The relaying of wisdom from one age to the next, this cycle of rebirths: this was wisdom. All else was barbarity.”
This may seem contradictory in lieu of the Emperor's comment regarding why one must follow the faith passed down by one's forefathers. Is it not the case that in religious families, parents feel the best knowledge they can pass on to their children is that of a religious nature: how to please God. I know this is certainly true in the families of many people I know. Who is to say what can be deemed as "knowledge" from the past, and what can be deemed as "a distraction, a false trail"? I don't have the answer to these questions, and merely pose them for interests' sake.
3) The power of women. Subtitled: the power women have over men/how easily men are swayed/the weakness of men. Rushdie describes many times over how the book's main woman, Qara Koz, is so beautiful that she can put a spell over people - usually men. However, we see that both men and women do her bidding. And not that she is evil in the use of her powers, but rather she uses her sorcery for harmony and contentment.
In one interesting passage, Rushdie alludes to the fact that men behave in such a way that they believe they are invincible. Granted, he is talking about soldiers. However, one could suggest that at some point in any person's life, the invicibility factor wears off and one is left with the cold reality that they will die. And in that moment, where do we turn?
On another point, and not that I am advocating using sexual favours as a means to achieve, well, anything (!), but Rushdie's book certainly uses this form of coercion on several occaisions. I would merely like to take this opportunity to illustrate that so often there is only one thing on the minds of men, and they will do many things to get it.
Of course this is certainly not the only way in which women are strong. I highly enjoyed this quote:
Well, I'm not so sure if I liked the part about keeping a good woman down...though I suppose it is true: A good woman should try and get away if you don't give her a reason to stay!
Then there is the loyalty shown between women is much higher than the loyalty between men and women:
p.204 “Women have always moaned about men…because while they expect men to be fickle, treacherous and weak, they judge their own sex by higher standards, they expect more from their own sex – loyalty, understanding, trustworthiness, love..."
And what I really enjoyed about Rushdie's painting of Qara Koz was, to be honest, the way she resembled a man in her actions. Her swiftness in choosing a new lover/transferring her loyalty. Her surprise at finding herself in love and actually having feelings for a man. And despite this, her strength and conviction that she would rise above anything and continue on, with or without a man by her side:
That last quote reminds me of myself in a way (although the circumstances were different than those of Qara Koz in this instance). I had a recent break-up and yes, I was sad. I wouldn't say I was inconsolable or wild with grief, but I certainly cried and felt like shit. However I gathered my resolve and moved on, because I'm better than some boy - I was meant for palaces and kings :)
4) Magic/Religion vs. Magic.
I don't really believe in magic. I know there are things that may not be able to be explained. But I'm not sure if I could ever agree to label them as "magic". So it's always fun to read a book where there are spells or enchantments or ghosts. It almost makes us yearn for that ability to cure everything with a simple potion. Alas, such is not the way of real life. And I guess that's why we have books - to enter a different world for a while and live vicariously through the characters who have the powers to change their circumstances without necessarily working through them the way we regular humans do.
But in a way, wouldn't magic just be a kind of religion? Some things today that people call "miracles" might be called "magic" to another person. I thought that this quote was funny in that way:
Because really, a lot of people attribute their success in work, marriage, and life to their faith in God. I do agree that people shouldn't so blindly grant their successes (or failures) in some outside power. And I also agree with the suggestions of what can be done to religion. But I don't think that "magic" deserves the kind of adoration or responsibility that is most commonly reserved for religion. We are the ones accountable for our successes and failures. Still, our world is not necessarily devoid of all magic. The magic that is in our world is the magic we create in our relationships with people; the stories we tell; the music we make. The world can be a magical place, of our own making!!
Of course, Rushdie is telling a story in a different time, so this must be taken into account as well. But really it was said best this way:
Which, of course, brings me full circle as to why I fully enjoyed this book: it was truly enchanting. I was held by the story; involved in the lives of the characters; excited at what was to come next - all tell-tale signs of a great novel!
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone. And I really hope that this post hasn't given away too much of the novel. Although I can say for a certainty that it hasn't! I don't think any of the quotes I used served to indicate the turns that are taken in the story...I merely used them to point out some of the interesting themes I thought were explored in the book. But I am sorry if I ended up ruining it for anyone...The essay-writer in me really came out tonight I guess ;)
But please, read the book if you get the chance because: “…the world is still mysterious…and the strangest story may turn out to be true.” (p.104)
Peace.
I figured The Enchantress of Florence could go either way, based on my prior attempts with Rushdie. Still, I found the synopsis interesting and of course no harm done if I liked it or if I didn't - it's only a book, after all.
The novel concerns a young European traveller - 'Mogor dell'Amore' - who arrives at the court of the Emperor Akbar claiming to be the son of a lost Mughal princess: Qara Koz, a woman so beautiful she is believed to have powers of enchantment. The story covers the history of Qara Koz and how she came to arrive in Florence, following captivity by an Uzbeg warlord and then a Persian Shah. The narrator alternates between the Mughal city of Sikri and the city of Florence. The book jacket asks the question: "But is the Mogor's story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess? And if he's a liar, must he die?"
An intriguing story!! Would I be as captivated with the story as Emperor Akbar? And the verdict: I LOVED IT! You know you're going to love a book when the opening line strikes you: "In the day's last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold."
There were a few things that I found so remarkable about this book:
1) Unlike so many books today that lament how miserable everyone's life is (no really, it's true!), this book had a captivating tale that was almost like a children's story. You had kingdoms and enchantments and battles and ghosts, plus some sex and profanity. Not since Philip Pullman's Dark Materials Trilogy or Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings have I thought a story has held me in its attention so well.
2) The way in which Salman Rushdie continues to question religion. That he does so in his controversial novel The Satanic Verses is fairly obvious (though I did not find it nearly as offensive as I thought it was going to be). In The Enchantress he uses Emperor Akbar as a scapegoat in which to convey philosophical musings on whether or not humans really need God.
Consider the following quotes as examples:
p.83 “He wanted, for example, to investigate why one should hold fast to a religion not because it was true but because it was the faith of one’s fathers. Was faith not faith but simple family habit? Maybe there was no true religion but only this eternal handing down. And error could be handed down as easily as virtue. Was faith no more than an error of our ancestors? Maybe there was no true religion. Yes, he had allowed himself to think this. He wanted to be able to tell someone of his suspicion that men had made their gods and not the other way around. He wanted to be able to say, it is man at the centre of things, not God. It is man at the heart and the bottom and the top, man at the front and the back and the side, man the angel and the devil, the miracle and the sin, man and always man, and let us henceforth have no other temples but those dedicated to mankind.”
p. 83 “If man had created god then man could uncreate him too. Or was it possible for a creation to escape the power of the creator? Could a god, once created, become impossible to destroy? Did such fictions require an autonomy of the will that made them immortal?”
However, in perhaps a contradictory statement, the Emperor reasons:
“The past was a light that if properly directed could illumine the present more brightly than any contemporary lamp…Understanding was another such flame. Knowledge was never simply born in the human mind; it was always reborn. The relaying of wisdom from one age to the next, this cycle of rebirths: this was wisdom. All else was barbarity.”
This may seem contradictory in lieu of the Emperor's comment regarding why one must follow the faith passed down by one's forefathers. Is it not the case that in religious families, parents feel the best knowledge they can pass on to their children is that of a religious nature: how to please God. I know this is certainly true in the families of many people I know. Who is to say what can be deemed as "knowledge" from the past, and what can be deemed as "a distraction, a false trail"? I don't have the answer to these questions, and merely pose them for interests' sake.
3) The power of women. Subtitled: the power women have over men/how easily men are swayed/the weakness of men. Rushdie describes many times over how the book's main woman, Qara Koz, is so beautiful that she can put a spell over people - usually men. However, we see that both men and women do her bidding. And not that she is evil in the use of her powers, but rather she uses her sorcery for harmony and contentment.
In one interesting passage, Rushdie alludes to the fact that men behave in such a way that they believe they are invincible. Granted, he is talking about soldiers. However, one could suggest that at some point in any person's life, the invicibility factor wears off and one is left with the cold reality that they will die. And in that moment, where do we turn?
p.214-215 “There is a weakness that comes over men at the battle’s end, when they become aware of the fragility of life, they clutch it to their bosoms like a crystal bowl they almost dropped, and the treasure of life scares away their courage. At such a time all men are cowards, and can think of nothing but women’s embraces, nothing but the healing words only women can whisper, nothing but the joy of losing themselves in the fatal labyrinths of love. In the grip of this weakness a man will do things which unravel his best-laid plans, he can make promises which change his future.”
p.215 “The need for a woman to cure the loneliness of murder…To wipe away the guilt of victory of the vainglory of defeat. To still the tremble in the bones. To dry the hot tears of relief and shame. To hold you while you feel the ebbing tide of your hatred and its replacement by a form of higher embarrassment. To sprinkle you with lavender to hide the scent of blood on the fingertips and the gore stinking in the beard. The need for a woman to tell you that you are hers and to turn your mind away from death. To quell your curiosity about how it might be to stand at the Judgement Seat, to take away your envy of those who have gone before you to see the Almighty plain, and to soothe the doubts twisting in your stomach, about the existence of the afterlife and even of God himself, because the slain are so utterly dead, and no higher purpose seems to exist at all.”
On another point, and not that I am advocating using sexual favours as a means to achieve, well, anything (!), but Rushdie's book certainly uses this form of coercion on several occaisions. I would merely like to take this opportunity to illustrate that so often there is only one thing on the minds of men, and they will do many things to get it.
Of course this is certainly not the only way in which women are strong. I highly enjoyed this quote:
p.51 “Women think less about men in general than the generality of men can imagine. Women think about their own men less often than their men like to believe. All women need all men less than all men need them. That is why it is so important to keep a good woman down. If you do not keep her down she will surely get away.”
Well, I'm not so sure if I liked the part about keeping a good woman down...though I suppose it is true: A good woman should try and get away if you don't give her a reason to stay!
Then there is the loyalty shown between women is much higher than the loyalty between men and women:
p.204 “Women have always moaned about men…because while they expect men to be fickle, treacherous and weak, they judge their own sex by higher standards, they expect more from their own sex – loyalty, understanding, trustworthiness, love..."
And what I really enjoyed about Rushdie's painting of Qara Koz was, to be honest, the way she resembled a man in her actions. Her swiftness in choosing a new lover/transferring her loyalty. Her surprise at finding herself in love and actually having feelings for a man. And despite this, her strength and conviction that she would rise above anything and continue on, with or without a man by her side:
p.259 “But if she lost him, she would grieve wildly, she would be inconsolable, and then she would do what she had to do. She would find her way. Whatever happened today, she would make her journey to the palace soon enough. She was meant for palaces and kings.”
That last quote reminds me of myself in a way (although the circumstances were different than those of Qara Koz in this instance). I had a recent break-up and yes, I was sad. I wouldn't say I was inconsolable or wild with grief, but I certainly cried and felt like shit. However I gathered my resolve and moved on, because I'm better than some boy - I was meant for palaces and kings :)
4) Magic/Religion vs. Magic.
I don't really believe in magic. I know there are things that may not be able to be explained. But I'm not sure if I could ever agree to label them as "magic". So it's always fun to read a book where there are spells or enchantments or ghosts. It almost makes us yearn for that ability to cure everything with a simple potion. Alas, such is not the way of real life. And I guess that's why we have books - to enter a different world for a while and live vicariously through the characters who have the powers to change their circumstances without necessarily working through them the way we regular humans do.
But in a way, wouldn't magic just be a kind of religion? Some things today that people call "miracles" might be called "magic" to another person. I thought that this quote was funny in that way:
p.318 “It was important not to offend against the laws of magic. If a woman left you it was because you did not cast the right spell over her, or else because someone else cast a stronger enchantment than yours, or else because your marriage was cursed in such a way that it cut the ties of love between husband and wife. Why did So-and-so rather than Such-and-such enjoy success in his businesses? Because he visited the right enchanter. There was a thing in the emperor that rebelled against all this flummery, for was it not a kind of infantilization of the self to give up one’s power of agency and believe that such power resided outside oneself rather than within? This was also his objection to God, that his existence deprived human beings of the right to form ethical structures by themselves. But magic was all around and would not be denied, and it would be a rash ruler who pooh-poohed it. Religion could be rethought, re-examined, remade, perhaps even discarded; magic was impervious to such assaults.”
Because really, a lot of people attribute their success in work, marriage, and life to their faith in God. I do agree that people shouldn't so blindly grant their successes (or failures) in some outside power. And I also agree with the suggestions of what can be done to religion. But I don't think that "magic" deserves the kind of adoration or responsibility that is most commonly reserved for religion. We are the ones accountable for our successes and failures. Still, our world is not necessarily devoid of all magic. The magic that is in our world is the magic we create in our relationships with people; the stories we tell; the music we make. The world can be a magical place, of our own making!!
Of course, Rushdie is telling a story in a different time, so this must be taken into account as well. But really it was said best this way:
p.75 “…witchcraft requires no potions, familiar spirits or magic wands. Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough.”
Which, of course, brings me full circle as to why I fully enjoyed this book: it was truly enchanting. I was held by the story; involved in the lives of the characters; excited at what was to come next - all tell-tale signs of a great novel!
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone. And I really hope that this post hasn't given away too much of the novel. Although I can say for a certainty that it hasn't! I don't think any of the quotes I used served to indicate the turns that are taken in the story...I merely used them to point out some of the interesting themes I thought were explored in the book. But I am sorry if I ended up ruining it for anyone...The essay-writer in me really came out tonight I guess ;)
But please, read the book if you get the chance because: “…the world is still mysterious…and the strangest story may turn out to be true.” (p.104)
Peace.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Pending
I will never ever cease to be amazed at how stupid people can be. You think you can have faith in the human race to get their shit together, and then you end up being completely astounded at the way thoughts get connected in someone's mind.
And that's not to say that everything that goes through my head is 100% logical all the time. But I pride myself on having the mental capacity to examine my thoughts and consider what makes sense and what doesn't.
The very fact that people on this planet rarely do this kind of self-analysis on their thoughts is the reason why everything is so fucked up!
I'm going to post more things later. There have been some extremely interesting occurrences in my life as of late and I really think they ought to be shared. It's just such a fitting example of how ridiculously people behave. Honestly though, life is way too screwed up. You know when you watch a movie and you think "Wow that is fucked" - well I bet that some of the things that happen in those movies have actually happened in someone's life. Because seriously, my life could be made into a movie and people would literally say "Wow that is fucked"...well, my life doens't even need to be made into a movie for people to say that...that's what they say everyday when I tell them about recent events.
I've been waiting to write about this because I've been collecting my thoughts for some time now...but in due course I will definitely have something to share!
And that's not to say that everything that goes through my head is 100% logical all the time. But I pride myself on having the mental capacity to examine my thoughts and consider what makes sense and what doesn't.
The very fact that people on this planet rarely do this kind of self-analysis on their thoughts is the reason why everything is so fucked up!
I'm going to post more things later. There have been some extremely interesting occurrences in my life as of late and I really think they ought to be shared. It's just such a fitting example of how ridiculously people behave. Honestly though, life is way too screwed up. You know when you watch a movie and you think "Wow that is fucked" - well I bet that some of the things that happen in those movies have actually happened in someone's life. Because seriously, my life could be made into a movie and people would literally say "Wow that is fucked"...well, my life doens't even need to be made into a movie for people to say that...that's what they say everyday when I tell them about recent events.
I've been waiting to write about this because I've been collecting my thoughts for some time now...but in due course I will definitely have something to share!
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