ORIGINAL POST: October 23, 2007


So, is anybody else wanting to ask me this? I've had it put to me several times since the Kenya announcement.

"Why do you want to go to the other side of the world to help when there are so many problems here?" One even added, "like in West Terre Haute."

This is a question that initially had my mouth numb and open, a twitch in my neck, and a complete loss for words. Allow me to vent.

America's problems are of our own doing. Please offer me an American public health or social problem that is not a direct result of our misuse of unprioritized resources. Obese? Eat walnuts, not Whoppers. Worried about cancer? Consider maybe, that the toxic river water downstream from the pharmaceutical plant is more potent than the chemo drugs being manufactured. Besides, the good stuff comes in a bottle, right? Homelessness? Poverty? Drug addiction? It all comes with the capitalism, take it or leave it. What we do not have to worry about is basic sanitation; endemic mosquito-born illness; the availability of food; or, civil war over the remaining resources not monopolized by the West using the firearms they sold you.

Before you stop me, know that I am not romanticizing Arica or struggling with guilty whiteboy syndrome. Americans do suffer and Africans are not saints. I think a little population regression would do wonders for everyone. Simply put, ours are diseases of affluence, while most of the world still deals with true external hardship.

I'm not even setting out to save the world. I'm going as a student. I'm looking to confront myself with a simpler standard of living and to learn essential healthcare that we can't conceive. Because someday soon (and I mean in YOUR lifetime) this petrochemical orgy we've swam in for a hundred years will dry up and the folk out in the bush of Africa will fare alot better than most of us.

So, West T will just have to manage without me for now.

(Sorry...

ORIGINAL POST: October 23, 2007


So, is anybody else wanting to ask me this? I've had it put to me several times since the Kenya announcement.

"Why do you want to go to the other side of the world to help when there are so many problems here?" One even added, "like in West Terre Haute."

This is a question that initially had my mouth numb and open, a twitch in my neck, and a complete loss for words. Allow me to vent.

America's problems are of our own doing. Please offer me an American public health or social problem that is not a direct result of our misuse of unprioritized resources. Obese? Eat walnuts, not Whoppers. Worried about cancer? Consider maybe, that the toxic river water downstream from the pharmaceutical plant is more potent than the chemo drugs being manufactured. Besides, the good stuff comes in a bottle, right? Homelessness? Poverty? Drug addiction? It all comes with the capitalism, take it or leave it. What we do not have to worry about is basic sanitation; endemic mosquito-born illness; the availability of food; or, civil war over the remaining resources not monopolized by the West using the firearms they sold you.

Before you stop me, know that I am not romanticizing Arica or struggling with guilty whiteboy syndrome. Americans do suffer and Africans are not saints. I think a little population regression would do wonders for everyone. Simply put, ours are diseases of affluence, while most of the world still deals with true external hardship.

I'm not even setting out to save the world. I'm going as a student. I'm looking to confront myself with a simpler standard of living and to learn essential healthcare that we can't conceive. Because someday soon (and I mean in YOUR lifetime) this petrochemical orgy we've swam in for a hundred years will dry up and the folk out in the bush of Africa will fare alot better than most of us.

So, West T will just have to manage without me for now.

(Sorry about all that. I'm just dealing with my own helplessness and lack of productivity.)