final 2 posts in one (!)

I was working on portfolio stuff for last week and consequently forgot about my blog. So I’m combining that blog and my final summation blog into one 1000 word post.

First, if my topic were a junk food, what would it be? I’d have to say it’d probably be some kind of obscure little debbie treat that everyone has tried but no one remembers. I think most people have seen or heard about Lincoln’s refugee community (it’s hard to avoid them because of how many there are) but a lot of us aren’t doing what we can to assist them as they adjust to life in their new community. I think it’s very easy, in the midst of your day-to-day life, to get really caught up in all that you feel like you have to get done and consequently we forget about those less fortunate than us (and everything else unrelated to our to do list, for that matter).

If my topic were a record, what would it be? Oh… I like this one. Perhaps something from Of Montreal? They’re a semi-obscure band but if you’ve heard them you’re smiling right now because they’re just really really fun. That’s kind of how the refugee community in Lincoln is. Not a lot of people work with them, but all those who do talk about what a blessing it is to be able to invest in their lives. If you haven’t considered working with the refugee community of Lincoln (or in your hometown… summer volunteer work perhaps?), you really should. You won’t regret it.

A pre-teen book… Hmm, well, I don’t know that many pre-teen books. Maybe The Hobbit? It’s a story of a small, forgotten character who overcomes all the odds to do something great. And that is the story many refugees hope to someday be able to tell. (On an unrelated note I now want to go read The Hobbit)

Actually, I’m not sure the Hobbit is the best choice because that story ends with Bilbo going home. I suppose some refugees might want to return home but many are ready to begin a new life in the USA. A return to their home country is likely impossible anyway, and even if it were, I’m not sure how many would go back. This is me speculating as an outsider, but I’m not sure many would go back if they could. When we experience great heartache, we often want to get as far away from the event causing that heartache as is possible. In the case of many Americans we do that by changing a circle of friends, or changing a habit, but for many refugees the heartache is so intimately tied with the place in which it occurred, many, I presume, would prefer to stay here.

Of course, there are some who certainly would return, so great is their pride in their homeland. There’s a large movement in the States amongst the Sudanese refugees to create a free, South Sudan that is independent of the Muslim north. You can see a clip of one of their meetings in the documentary, “The Lost Boys of Sudan.”

Summation post:

I’ve greatly enjoyed the project. It’s been enormously educational for me, there was a lot I didn’t know about refugees and what being a refugee entails when I began this project. Moving to a new country is a very complicated process in any case, but especially when you’re being forced out against your will and arriving in your new country with next-to-nothing. There are so many things that need to be taken care of, medicine, housing, employment, school, possibly child care, English lessons. And these are just things I’m thinking of off the top of my head, there almost certainly are many more. And each aspect I just named can prove to be very complicated on its own.

If you look at medicine, they get medicaid for 8 months, that’s it. After that they’re expected to take care of their own medical needs, meaning mom or dad better have a job with good health insurance or they could be really hurting. One major health-related issue faced by many refugees is managing their weight. They aren’t used to our foods and most of the food they can afford (McDonalds, frozen dinners, etc.) is very, very unhealthy. I knew one refugee at the mission who had gained 40 pounds since arriving in the states. But they can’t afford to buy lots of healthy foods either because those foods are very expensive.

Housing is equally complex, the government pays for a few months, but after that, they’re on their own. And besides that obvious practical issue, many refugees aren’t used to living in such an atmosphere and there are tremendous emotional obstacles to  be overcome as well because they have to make adjustments to new living conditions.  They need to get used to having cars passing by in front of their home on a regular basis or to living in an apartment complex with many other people. Their children have to get used to not having as much room to play as they did in their home country.

Employment is also a difficult obstacle as they adjust to life in the states. Many of the women don’t speak English at all and the men only speak broken English. This immediately disqualifies them from 99% of the jobs offered in the States. About all that is left to them is hard manual labor. However, they’re not eating a diet that is conducive to doing lots of strenuous work so now they have those two things working against each other. But they get jobs in construction or landscaping anyway and work as hard as they can, earning a low wage, trying to support their family. But then winter comes and in most the country that means no construction work. So now the father and husband has no job and no way of supporting his family. As a result, they are forced to move to a new city to find more work, but this hinders the children’s:

Education: It’s very difficult to get a good education when you’re consistently under/poorly-nourished and are constantly moving. Combine this with parents who are perhaps illiterate and don’t understand any of what you’re being taught (meaning they can’t help you with homework) and you’re beginning to understand the problems many young refugee children  have to work around. Besides that, sometimes the material is so functionally-racist by choosing to focus only on western history to the exclusion of everything else. Obviously, emphasizing western history makes sense, this being a western country, however, if the goal of history is to help us understand the mistakes of the past in order that we avoid them, isn’t there just as much to be gained in studying African history? Or are we afraid that seeing such ugly western imperialism might sour our children on the world they grow up in? It’s a difficult, complicated issue that is seldom appreciated as it deserves to be.

These are just some of the issues I’ve learned about as I studied, researched, and interacted with members of our refugee community and those who work with them.

what i’m doing

so this is a great topic for me to write about today because i just got a great new opportunity to work w/ the refugee community starting this fall.

to preface, i should say that i scheduled all my classes for monday, wednesday, and friday specifically so i would have tuesday and thursday open all day to work w/ a refugee organization of some kind. And this past sunday at church i met a guy who works with the local Iraqi refugee community who needs someone to teach adult refugees English. So hopefully this fall I will be teaching Iraqi refugees how to speak, read, and write in English. (Best part: This provides an excuse to go to visit my favorite restaurant more often- I’m just helping my students have a taste of home)

This is such a perfect opportunity for me because one of the things I’ve thought about pursuing long term is teaching ESL somewhere in Africa to help the people there either get a better job there or be more prepared if they wish to come to the United States. It’ll be awesome to get some experience doing that while still in college and fresh off returning from Zambia (which is where I will be for two months this summer).

Also in terms of what I’m doing to welcome refugees- I’ve recently become acquainted with one of the Sudanese lost boys who is in my art history class. For those unfamiliar, the lost boys of Sudan are thousands of boys who are orphans and spent years wondering the Sudan before finally arriving at a Kenyan refugee camp. Many are now in the United States, doing the best they can to support themselves. Some, like Gabrial, are blessed enough to be able to attend UNL. It’s been wonderful getting to know him and getting his perspective on African politics and culture. It’s so good for me to be able to hear about it and think through these things on a more informed, more critical level. It’s also a blessing to see how much he enjoys talking about his home.

Finally, I’m doing this project. I’m going around the community learning as much as I can about the state of the refugee community in Lincoln and I’m writing essays, poems, narratives, and soon a letter to my congressman, all analyzing how we care for our refugee population. The good news is Lincoln is doing a wonderful job, but the bad news is that there’s still a lot of people who fall through the cracks. Through this project I’ve learned a lot more about refugees and I’ve also been able to have some wonderful conversations w/ friends about this issue. It’s really been an enjoyable project.

As it comes to a close, I’m realizing that there’s still a lot to be done, but I’m very grateful for the many individuals who are doing wonderful things to assist the very need refugee community. It’s a beautiful thing to see human beings working together to make this world a better place for all of us and I’m very excited at what the future may hold.

free blog

Last night I was watching Blood Diamond, and one of the lines that really struck me was, “TIA… this is Africa.” It was used when something awful happened or when an extremely idealistic person would try to create change. The attitude was basically, “this is Africa, it will always be this way, don’t waste your time with naive idealism, learn to look out for yourself.”

And I’m never sure how to respond to this. I could disagree, and argue that it’s never hopeless, that there’s always reason to hope for a better tomorrow. But what do I know? I’m 19 years old. I’m part of the wealthiest one percent of people in the world and I’m also part of the one percent of people who will go to university. So what do I know of living in fear of the government, of not having access to water, of watching a loved one die before your eyes. I know nothing. So who am I to correct someone who has experienced those things?

But on the other hand, what happens if I don’t? What happens if I do as they suggest and do live just to get by? I suppose if the situation really is hopeless, then nothing. But what if it isn’t hopeless but I live as if it is? What waste! There is such great need, a cure for AIDS, clean water, basic sanitation, basic education, activists who will fight against tyrannical governments. Assuming there’s a reasonable hope we can have for this place, how dare we fail to use our lives for some redemptive, meaningful purpose!

I guess my basic fear is that I would waste my life. I believe God entrusts us with certain gifts and abilities and we are expected to use those gifts for a redemptive purpose in a broken world. What if there were a wealthy land-owner in Burundi, a country plagued by poverty, who just reaped a massive harvest. He had all this food to do whatever he wanted with. And as he sat in his home he could not figure out what to do with it until he came up with a brilliant idea. He would build many barns and store his food in the barns. What would we say of such a man? We would think him horrible, greedy, and, basically, worthless. Yet don’t we do this very thing with our lives? In this very city there are organizations that could serve the marginalized, oppressed, and impoverished in such dynamic ways, if only they had the volunteers to do it.

I struggle with how to phrase all this… I feel like there’s such wealth here and such poverty in other places and it’s such a struggle for me to not be carried away by my anger. I don’t want to be angry, but I desperately wish to see God’s kingdom advanced and one of the ways to do that is by raising the standard of living in Africa. And I refuse to think that this is impossible. I refuse to say This is Africa. Rather, I choose to believe the Christian scriptures when they tell us there is always hope for redemption, that all things will be redeemed by Jesus. And I choose to do everything I can to join with Jesus in the redemption of the world.

7 pet peeves

Here are seven things related to refugees and how we care for them that drive me crazy and make me want to smash either my own or the head of another person through a concrete wall:

1) Get over the idea of one country, one language. Borok and his kids may not have perfect English but they had more important things to worry about while they were running for their lives. It is extremely frustrating when I hear people say “one country one language” and expect the discussion to end there . Yes, one language is useful for practical reasons, however to expect everyone entering our country to know English is foolish, inconsiderate, and unrealistic. Patience and grace (two things we as a country could stand to have a bit more of) are essential in all relationships, but especially when dealing with immigrants and even more so when dealing with refugees.

2) Get over your stereotypes about the poor. There are few things more complicated than poverty, it is almost never simply a matter of someone making a stupid decision and that causing their poverty. There are almost ways additional complicating factors- family difficulties, language barriers, struggles to adapt to a new culture or job, etc.

3) Get over the whole bootstrap myth of economic flexibility. For most climbing the economic ladder to the next class is, for all intensive purposes, impossible. There are rare cases where this is possible, and much is made of them (see: The Pursuit of Happyness- don’t get me wrong, awesome movie, but be careful in how you apply those lessons) but it almost never works out that way. Chris Gardner’s case was exceptional- he was brilliant at math and was also one of the few people who could go through all that he did without completely buckling under the immense pressure. He struggled greatly but he never quit- I’m not sure how many people, rich or poor, have that kind of perseverance. For most people, it’s not that easy to move beyond the economic class of their parents.

4) In the case of college students, please don’t say you can’t be generous financially because you’re a poor college student. I’ve used this excuse in the past but I’m beginning to realize that often it’s just a cop out. I know there are some students who really can’t afford to give anything, and that’s fine. But most of us are well off enough for late-night fun runs to wal-mart, or wealthy enough to buy the new cd we want, or to go get coffee three days a week someplace. If you have enough money for that, you have enough to make a minimal donation to an organization like the Lincoln Literacy Center or the People’s City Mission.

5) Don’t assume- you know the old saying, to assume makes an ass of you and me. So don’t do that with refugees. Don’t assume that because you’ve seen a movie or read a book that you have the slightest idea what they’ve been through. You don’t. So don’t pretend that you do. Just spend time with them, laugh with them, cry with them, be there for them. But don’t pretend that you understand what they’ve been through.

6) Don’t stand on the sidelines! There are tons of ways you can assist the refugee population. One of the greatest needs mentioned by both Catholic Social Services and Heartland Refugee Resettlement is for people to drive the refugees to appointments, the store, the doctor, etc. If you have a car, you can do that. What I’m going to do for the fall is try to schedule my classes so that they are all on monday, wednesday, and friday and then on tuesday and thursday I’ll have an open schedule so that I can provide transportation for a refugee family. Or, if you want, you can be an English tutor or provide childcare at language classes with the Lincoln Literacy Center.

7)  However, if you do get involved, do everything you can to stay involved. You’re going to be doing a lot with a family and you’re going to become a major part of their lives. In all likelihood, the relationship will mean a lot to them, even if it doesn’t mean as much to you, though hopefully it will come to be something that is profound and significant in your life. Just don’t jump in, and then 2 months later say, “Oh, I’m really busy with class, I can’t do it anymore.” Be aware of your own limitations when you volunteer and don’t take on more than you can handle.

Interview

From http://www.counterpunch.org/quigley04022005.html, here’s an interview with Jeffrey Sachs, who I’ve referenced previously and who is probably the foremost economic theorist in the area of fighting poverty.

The Economics of Global Poverty

An Interview with Jeffrey Sachs

By FRAN QUIGLEY

Indianapolis, Indiana

In a world of plenty, twenty thousand people died today because of extreme poverty. Tomorrow, twenty thousand more–many of them children–will succumb to the hunger and disease that prey on the poor of the developing world. Twenty thousand more will die the day after that, and so on.

Jeffrey Sachs’ message in his new book, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, is a simple one: It does not have to be this way. Sachs is called a “celebrity economist” by Time magazine–not because of his alliance with Bono, who wrote the forward to the book, but because Sachs is the director of both the Columbia University Earth Institute and the United Nations Millennium Project and has earned an international reputation for his work to reform failing economies in Latin American, Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.

In an interview last week, Sachs talked about the book and his focus on achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed-upon plan to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015. The Goals hinge on wealthy nations like the U.S. keeping a promise to devote 0.7 % of their national income to the world’s poor. (The U.S. currently devotes about 0.15% of gross national product to development assistance, the lowest percentage among the world’s donor countries.)

Q. In your book, you describe a rural family in Malawi led by a grandmother raising fifteen orphaned grandchildren. The family has been ravaged by AIDS, malaria and agricultural failures. How does foreign aid solve their problems?

SACHS: The theme of the book is that there are crises that are so severe that they are claiming millions of lives, but they’re not unsolvable. They are problems with practical, known solutions. Carol Bellamy of UNICEF has rightly described Malawi as a “perfect storm”: It is a place of chronic hunger, vulnerability to drought, endemic malaria and of course a massive AIDS crisis. Each of these is horrific in the scale of the suffering and tragedy it causes, but each also has practical solutions.

With farming, the problem in Africa is that farmers don’t have access right now to the basic inputs of modern farming: fertilizers, irrigation and improved seeds. Poverty is largely in farm households, and it is solvable directly through increasing the productivity of farmers and increasing rural productivity in general.

As for the disease burden, this is a case of mass death and even more mass suffering from diseases that are highly preventable and largely treatable. Malaria is a disease that has long inflicted havoc in Africa, yet malaria can be substantially reduced by the use of insecticide-treated bed nets, effective medication and community health workers to train households in how to use both the bed nets and the medication. This would be a very, very small investment for a very large return, yet none of the children shown in the book sleep under a bed net. None of those families can afford even a five-dollar bed net that lasts for five years.

With AIDS, the number of Africans infected with the virus who have access to anti-retroviral therapy, which now costs about 30 cents per day, is shockingly low. So each of the problems do lend themselves to practical approaches that would allow households trapped in extreme poverty to get in a position to start achieving economic improvement.

Q. In September 2000, the largest gathering of world leaders in history-147 heads of state and government-came to the UN and began the process of adopting the Millennium Development Goals you are pursuing, which include eradicating extreme poverty, achieving universal primary education and eliminating gender disparity. How did 9/11 affect the pursuit of those goals?

A. We opened the millennium with worries, but also with expectations that we could make a great amount of headway for the benefit of those who are suffering around the world. 9/11 threw off the process for a few years-there was the shock of the event itself, then the war in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq completely dominated global diplomacy. So the agenda of poverty reduction was put aside for a number of years. But there is a feeling now, although not as shared in the U.S. as it is in the rest of the world, that it is time to get back to that agenda of eliminating extreme poverty. Now, post-9/11, I actually sense an even stronger commitment throughout the world to address the problems of poverty, disease and hunger.

Q. The Millennium Development Goals are targeted to 2015 and then the elimination of extreme poverty by 2025, but people are dying every day right now. How much of this plan has to wait for another decade to pass?

SACHS: I can give you three examples of what we call “Quick Wins” that will save lives right away:

First, an absolutely simple step is to drop the user fees that are still pervasive in the poorer places in the world. We’ve found that when a government eliminates user fees on clinics and schools, the use of those services rises dramatically. So I propose in the book that we drop the user fees in those places, and compensate the government with just a little bit of aid from abroad in the form of debt cancellation or increased cash outlays to those governments.

A second kind of quick win is to allow farmers to get some of the most basic inputs, especially fertilizer, so that their crop yields can go up significantly, and then use part of that increased yield to provide food to local schools. I describe in the book how we are doing that in Kenya right now. With a little bit of logistics, we could have a massive increase in the next three years in the number of schools in poor areas that provide school meals, and we know from a lot of experience that this would make a huge change in the proportion of children that go to school.

A third way for quick progress is to control malaria. I believe it will be possible by the end of the year 2008 to get insecticide-treated bed nets and effective medication throughout Africa on a mass-distribution basis, and thereby make a tremendous advance in the control of the disease.

Q. Hopefully, we can assume that most Americans care about poverty-caused suffering and death. But most of us are not economists or elected officials, and most of us have no direct contact with anyone in the developing world. What can we do to stop this?

SACHS: Politicians in Washington think Americans don’t care. I don’t believe that. The Americans I know do care, but they need to tell their members of Congress that it is not a dangerous vote to support increased U.S. efforts to help the poorest of the poor in the world.

Just drop a one-sentence note to your Congressman and Senators: “This is not a dangerous vote. We want to help. It is going to make a safer world for us, and it is part of our moral and religious values. We want to be saving children if they can be saved.”

The political voice is crucial because our country needs to stand up and do more than we are doing right now. Our country is not really engaged in this effort with the intensity many Americans assume we are, and certainly not at the level we have promised to be and can afford to be. Public opinion polls show Americans believe we spend 25% of our federal budget on foreign aid, when it is really less than 1%. We’re providing very, very small amounts of help, much smaller than we said we would. (The U.S. promised at the Monterrey Financing for Development Conference in 2002 to spend billions more on aid than is currently being provided.)

This is where I think the President and Congress should be doing a great deal better than they are doing now. They can tell the American people, adult to adult: Here is what we are doing, here is what’s needed, here is what it would cost, and here is what we would accomplish. And then ask, “Are you for it, or you against it?” My feeling is that Americans would absolutely be for it. They are just assuming it is already happening.

Also, there are very rewarding ways to make individual contributions. Our UN Millennium Project allows a donation of six dollars to get a bed net right to a village in Africa. Communities can adopt and promote a counterpart community in a very poor region. Our calculations are that about $50 per person per year can make the difference between life and death. Some businesses and churches are helping that way, and the Millennium Project is trying to help any Americans who want to make that kind of contribution insure they are making direct impact. And, of course, there are many charitable organizations in the U.S. working in these countries as well.

Q. In your book, you cite the movements to abolish slavery in England during the 19th century, and the 20th century efforts to abolish colonialism in India and elsewhere, along with the civil rights movement in the U.S. What are the parallels between those efforts and the quest to end extreme global poverty?

SACHS: First of all, they were moral movements, often led in the churches, and they were based on values about the kind of world we want to live in and have the responsibility to create. The end of slavery in England didn’t happen because slavery became un-economic, it was because the Quakers and Methodists and others said, “Enough is enough, we have to behave with proper values.” And they changed history. The civil rights movement in our country and the end of colonialism were similar. These were mass movements for human dignity.

And that’s what we’re taking about now, but it’s even more than dignity, it is survival. When you see people dying because poverty prevents the proper medicines from being available–and I’ve seen too much of it–you realize that this is not just about dignity, and stability and fighting against the conditions that lead to violence in the world. It’s also life and death–nothing less than that.

The UN Millennium Project’s website is www.unmillenniumproject.org

Fran Quigley is an attorney and journalist in Indianapolis, Indiana. He can be reached at: fran.quigley@iclu.org

Sources

Sachs, Jeffrey D. “The End of Poverty.” Time. 6 March 2005

Accessed on 16 January 2007 <http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1034738,00.html>

Sach’s article discusses the problem of poverty and how we can end it within our lifetime. He makes several suggestions on basic changes westerners can make to their lifestyles that, if all are initiated, could conceivably end global poverty in the very near future.

 

Slater, Lauren, ed. The Best American Essays of 2006

            2006 Boston: Houghton Mifflin

Slater edited a collection of the best essays by American authors in 2006, for my second writing project I analyzed one essay included in this collection, 501 Minutes to Christ by Poe Ballantine

 

Wysocki, Anne Francis, and Dennis A. Lynch. Compose Design Advocate

            New York: Pearson Longman

Wysocki and Lynch authored a very helpful book discussing the purpose of rhetoric and the many ways we use it and how we might improve ourselves as rhetoricians. The book has been helpful to me as I’ve been challenged not only as a writer but also as a human being. Much of what they say about being a good rhetorician is really about being a good human being.

 

Global Issues 2007. Accessed 28 January 2007

            <http:/www.globalissues.org>

I came across this resource through a sermon I listened to by a pastor named Rob Bell. He was discussing global poverty and affluent American lifestyles and cited many disturbing statistics (as well as equally disturbing quotes from American politicians). Most of the stats he cite came from this site, the home page of a well respected human rights organization.

 

The God Who Wasn’t There Dir. Brian Flemming 2005

Flemming’s film is a no-holds-barred attack on everything Christian. He questions historic, philosophic, and moral aspects of Christianity and he does so with an irreverent but endearing sense of humor that causes the viewer to be empathetic, even if they disagree. Flemming’s film was relied upon extensively for my third writing project.

 

The Lost Boys of Sudan Dir. Megan Mylen and John Shenk 2003

Mylen and Shenk directed a film telling the story of two of the many Lost Boys of Sudan. They are boys whose villages were destroyed in the civil war and were left without family. Eventually they found their way to a refugee camp in Kenya and then, years later, some of them found their way to America. This film is the story of two of those boys.

 

The One Campaign 2006. Accessed 21 January 2007

            <http://www.one.org>

The ONE Campaign is a group launched by Bono, the lead singer of U2, advocating that western governments set aside an additional one percent of their budget annually for fighting poverty. It works closely with other human rights organizations to fight poverty and provide a higher standard of living for the many marginalized and oppressed people groups in the world today.

 Overall, the two sources I’ve valued the most are the Time article by Sachs and the global issues website. Global issues gives you hard data that allows you to begin to see the problem and then Sach’s analysis enables you to better interpret the data. Together they work beautifully because they provide a great balance of hard, objective data with lucid analysis.

Tres otros blogs

Not even sure that’s the correct way of saying that… oh well.

So I looked at Emily’s blog, Drew’s, and Sarah’s and was pleasantly surprised at how each one connected fairly well with mine.

Drew’s is the most obvious, he is advocating for requiring students to study abroad to get their undergrad degree. Personally, I’m not comfortable going that far, I think students should be able to decide for themselves if that’s something they want to do, but I definitely appreciate his desire to get more students travelling outside of America and seeing that the world is a much larger place, I love that idea and would be thrilled if more students were traveling abroad. He had some good ideas on how to promote that as well. It would help greatly with my advocacy topic as well because if you were to go to parts of the world that are more dangerous, from where most of our refugee population comes, I think people would see what the refugees have left behind, both good and bad, and feel a greater desire to help them. They’ll see the homeland they left behind which should instill a desire to help, and that desire should be strengthened by also seeing the conditions under which they lef.

Emily’s blog is a little less obvious, but I think it still ties in. Her blog is dealing with religious tolerance and, sadly, I think one of the main culprits in failing to assist the refugee population are religious conservatives. They often do a poor job of attempting to relate (this is seen firsthand in The Lost Boys of Sudan) to the struggles of the refugees. I think they believe that if they just Americanize the refugees then everything will be great, and that simply isn’t how it is. I once heard a religious conservative say that anyone who wishes to enter the country should be required to know English. I wanted to respond with a smart aleck comment like, “Well, please forgive my friend Borok for not knowing English… he was too busy running for his life trying to save his four kids from being killed by armed mercenaries hired by his nation’s government to kill him. He must have forgotten to take that English class with all the spare time he had….” Obviously, disrespectful approaches like that get one nowhere (and it’s exactly those kind of responses that necessitate Emily advocating for greater religious tolerance). But honestly, where is the love and compassion that religious people claim their religion teaches them? That is why Emily has to write her blog, which she is doing a very good job on so far, it’s very hard to maintain a proper respect for human beings when exposed to such ugly arrogance, and yet Emily does a good job of staying respectful while also being very pro-active in suggesting a way forward.

Of course, going back to my point about religious conservatives, to be fair it should also be said that it’s also conservative religious people who are doing the most for the refugee population. I don’t see many non-religious far-left-wing people helping out down at the mission.

In any event, when we learn to tolerate each other’s religious differences, we might also learn to respect other differences and assist those in need.

Finally, Sarah’s blog is discussing feminism. I struggle a lot in relating to the feminists I’ve spoken with, I’m totally with them in saying that guys have often done horrible things to women, but I feel a little frustrated when I speak with them because they often seem very angry and seem to dislike anything remotely resembling authority. I think Sarah does a good job of avoiding that, but it’s an ever-present danger in movements that emerge from a counter-culture. I’m not denying that authority can mess things up, but you can’t just rebel against all authority, without authority, society cannot function for the good of all its citizens. I also really appreciate her emphasis on the rights of individuals and our need to appreciate and protect those rights. If we did that for the Sudanese, Somalians, and other refugees to the states, perhaps they’d be faring a little better.

8 things to do…

8 things you can do to help support refugees in Lincoln:

1) Get involved at the People’s City Mission, Friendship Home, or with City Impact. All three of these groups desperately need volunteers and all work with refugees (and other under-resourced members of our community). I volunteered with the People’s City Mission for 18 months before starting at UNL and finding that, unfortunately I simply didn’t have the time anymore. It’s an extremely rewarding experience and I would strongly encourage you to pursue it. I especially loved the Sudanese people I met at the mission. There is a happiness about them that seems to be immune to all the suffering they’ve experienced. As you get to know them you realize that isn’t the case, they are perfectly aware of their suffering and it takes a horrible toll on them, as you would expect. But they don’t go around whining about it all the time, looking for pity. Considering how many of us do that over really stupid things, the attitude of the Sudanese is refreshing.

(note: most of the remaining things will relate to this first one)

2) Try to understand their culture, try to learn a few words of their language. Obviously you probably don’t have time to learn a new language, but learn a few words. It’s a good way to show respect and affection toward them by saying, “I care enough about you to try to learn about your culture.” It means a lot.

3) Be patient as they’re learning our culture. Much of what you consider to be simple or common sense is brand new and unfamiliar to them. In my documentary the Sudanese boys had to have all kinds of things explained to them, like why they need to wear deoderant, how to pay their rent, where to get food, etc. It’s all brand new and it’s really really overwhelming. Be patient.

4) Ask the right questions about their culture. Don’t ask questions that will bring up painful memories, but asking questions about what they did for fun, what their food is like, etc. show, again, your interest in them. And you’ll hear some really cool stories while you’re doing that. One of my Sudanese friends talked about how he used to swim in the Nile almots every day.

5) Be aware of what has caused them to have to flee their country. If you’re working with Sudanese, understand the situation there. For sure understand Darfur, that’s a big part of it, but the civil war there has been going on much longer than Darfur has. Have some prior knowledge about it, don’t just say, “Tell me about your country.” Where do they begin? There’s so much that they’d want to tell you, but where to begin? And how many others have asked that same question? Try asking specific questions, but to do that you’ll probably need some prior knowledge.

6) Play their games with them and teach them our games. For me at the mission this meant if the kids wanted to play a different game I would be as supportive as possible and affirming in telling them how much I enjoyed their game. It also meant that if they didn’t know what to play I might introduce them to a game kids play a lot over here. It’s not done to try to Americanize them, but just to teach them a game they can play with other kids at school and perhaps, in doing, start to form some friendships. It’s very difficult to make friends and if they don’t know any of our games it’s even harder.

7) Introduce them to other people. It’s awkward introducing yourself, especially if you’re not real confident with your English. So if you’re playing with a Sudanese kid, introduce them to some of their peers. In my experience with kids, lots of friendships are formed after someone else introduces them to each other, there aren’t many kids who will simply go up and introduce themselves to everyone. Likewise, with the adults, help them get to know some adults their age that they may be able to relate to a little.

8) Do things to try to encourage them. For example, I had a friend in high school from the Sudan and there wasn’t anyone else on campus who was from the Sudan. So I took him with me to the mission a couple times, he got to hang out with some of the Sudanese there, speak his language, talk about his past with people who actually understood it, etc. and it was a great time for him. He thanked me multiple times for taking him with. So look for ways that you might encourage a refugee. Life in a new country is never easy, and little things often mean a tremendous amount.

Because no one is heartless…

I had a hard time doing today’s blog. After all, no one is going to say, “Let them starve.” So instead what I did was find an article that shows how Americans say those words every day with the choices we make. But what that means is that, rather than interacting with an idea opposed to fighting poverty (I couldn’t find any), I’m interacting with a lifestyle that promotes poverty for most of the world. Therefore, the article I’m discussing is actually not a scholarly work but an article from the USA Today discussing American spending.

The article may be read here.

The article highlights American spending during the holiday season. Every year from the Friday after Thanksgiving until January 1st, Americans spend approximately 457 billion dollars. The appalling thing about this is that, according to globalissues.org, the total cost to provide basic education, sanitation, health care, and women’s reproductive health for everyone on the planet is around 40 billion dollars.

In other words, if Americans spent 10% less during the holiday season and gave that entire 10% to the right people, we could save millions of lives annually by providing clean water, sanitation, and health care, reducing the infant mortality rate, educating the lower classes so that they can find better jobs, etc.

Surely this shows how self-absorbed we tend to be as Americans and how little we care about poverty. Often, though we won’t say certain things, our actions say those same things far more powerfully. We might not say that we don’t care about poverty. We certainly aren’t willing to say, “Let the children starve,” but our actions show that, functionally, that’s exactly how we feel.

Here are some other statistics pointing out the same fact (these are all from globalissues):

American spend 8 billion dollars annually on cosmetics.

Europeans spend 11 billion on ice cream

Americans and Europeans combine to spend 12 billion on perfumes

They also combine to spend 17 billion on pet food.

Japan spends 35 billio annually on business entertainment.

Europeans spend 50 billion annually on cigarettes.  (They also spend 105 billion on alcohol.)

Worldwide, 400 billion is spent on narcotic drugs.

And .13% of the world’s population, controls 25% of the world’s total assets.

All of these things make it undeniably clear that, though we say we care, functionally we’re really alright with millions dying for lack of clean water as long as we can have our make-up, ice cream, and beer.

I don’t claim to have all the answers on how to address this, and I’m not going to advocate that we stop buying some of those luxury items entirely, but I am advocating a more responsible approach to wealth and money. And especially during the Holiday season, that phrase, “holiday” originally meant Holy Day. They’re meant to be days set aside for reflection, gratitude, and rejoicing with family and friends. And we’ve made them into a celebration of consumerism. I’m reminded of Jesus’ words when he cleared out the temple- “My Father’s house is to be a house of prayer and you’ve made it into a robber’s den.” What would happen in the temple is that Jews would come to exchange their different kinds of currency for whatever kind was neccesary to buy the animal required for their sacrifice. And what the money changers would do is cheat the poor who came in to exchange their money. It’d be like if today you went to Canada and wanted to exchange 60 American dollars- according to the exchange rate they should give you $100 Canadian in exchange. But now imagine if they gave you $30 Canadian instead. That’s what the money lenders would do. In one sense, they’re far more brazen about their greed than we are. It’s not as if we’re taking money directly from a poor single mother in the Sudan, but in another sense, we’re no different from the money lenders.

Our primary concern, like theirs, is our own personal comfort, rather than what is best for the poor and the oppressed.

So where do we begin to fix the problem? How do you convince Americans they don’t need that new HD-TV, or that their kid doesn’t need another video game? We can start with ourselves, we can try to limit our own spending and use our time and money to serve the poor and the oppressed. In the words of Gandhi, you must be the change you want to see in the world.

The Lost Boys of Sudan

I just finished watching a film called The Lost Boys of Sudan and I’m not really sure where to begin. I think I’m just going to make a list of thoughts I had during the film because, as much as I hate lists, there simply isn’t any other way for me to do this right now. I’ll need to give my thoughts some time to simmer before I’m capable of any other kind of response:

1) There is a tremendous hope and optimism amongst the Sudanese before they come to the United States. The film highlights the first year in America for two of the Sudanese Lost Boys. They’re called Lost Boys because they’re parents and sisters were killed or kidnapped and they were left to wander in Southern Sudan. After a few years of wandering, they came to a refugee camp in Kenya and from there they came to the USA. Before they come here, they are very optimistic. They’re desire is to come here, get an education, and then return to their homeland to establish a New Sudan. I don’t think a lot of us really understand how important their homeland is to them. Like for me, I’m a total mutt. I’m part Swedish, part Greek, part Dutch, part German, part Norwegian and God knows what else. It’s really hard for me to feel any kind of attachment to my homeland because I’m only the third generation that was born here and my family’s homelands are on the other side of the world. Furthermore, because of the Melting Pot effect in the USA, I really don’t have the same kind of attachment to a distinctive culture that the Sudanese do. They have a deep, deep love for their homeland and their people, it’s just as much a part of them as their gender, hair color, etc.

So when they come here, they don’t want to be Americanized, they want to retain their Sudanese culture while acquiring the skills needed to fight oppression in their homeland. I don’t think we really understand this. I had a friend in high school who was one of the Lost Boys and all he wanted out of his education in America was to learn to be a plumber so he could go back to Sudan and help establish basic sanitation and plumbing systems in his village. But we’re requiring him to take English classes studying our literature, history classes studying our history, etc. He has no use for those. He needs math and science, that’s it, but we treat him like he’s an American kid. I think the criticism of Pink Floyd’s The Wall is worth mentioning here because they talk about how our education system just makes clones. It’s like we put kids on an assembly line and run them through the factory. But they’re not products, they’re human beings, and they’re unique, and these Lost Boys don’t care about who wrote The Catcher in the Rye or who the author of the Declaration of Independence was- and why do they need to know that? I’d better stop at this point before I get too much further of track. Basically, the sum of what I’m saying is that the Lost Boys have great optimism when they come here because they have a certain set of understandable expectations and once they arrive they realize that we have very different plans for them.

2) We simply don’t understand what they’re struggling with. I saw scene after scene of this in the film. A well-meaning woman who was doing many, many great things for the Boys, including providing furniture for them, makes a rather insensitive remark to some of the boys about how one of the others is very angry. But she has no idea what he’s going through, she doesn’t understand any of his problems and thinks just giving him some stuff is going to solve everything. Don’t get me wrong, it does help greatly, but what they need is community and a taste of home. They need people interacting with them and forming meaningful relationships. One of the most beautiful scenes of the film is when a girl from oen of the boy’s schools comes to visit him, and though it isn’t really a date, it does a lot to encourage that boy. And there is another scene at the first Lost Boys reunion when they were singing a song from the Sudan in Dinka and they were so happy, it was beautiful. And we think if we give them a chair then we’ve solved the problem and they shouldn’t be angry.

Another example that cut deeply for me is a scene when Peter, one of the boys, was at a Christian youth group meeting at someone’s house, and everyone treated him like an alien, and it only reinforced in his mind the idea that he didn’t belong. Of course they meant well, the leader talked about loving people because God loves us even though we do nothing to deserve it. But as they talk about that, and then go into their time of music they don’t even realize how awkward it is for Peter because all this only reinforces the fact that his home is on the other side of the world and he is all alone.

3) There is still hope. The film ends with a photo taken of Peter on the day he graduated from high-school. As discouraging as the film is much of the time, it is a beautiful final scene that reminds us of all that is good, that there is a fundamental beauty and goodness to human beings and that it isn’t something that can be destroyed easily.