Hilary Beans

Sunday, March 26, 2006

What is responsibility?

What do you do when someone gives you a story of needing $20 to go to school? When they cannot afford to pay that twenty dollars because they do not have a job? When they do not have a job for reasons that you do not understand completely, particularly in a country and a place where there is so, so much that needs to be done? It is that you need more educated people to bring up everyone else? Is it that the needs cannot be met by people that have not been to secondary school? This seems impossible. There is plenty to do, to fish, to learn, to work as a guide, to talk to everyone until you find someone who will hire you to do something. How can you have an economy that really has no jobs? I could give the Tsh20000, equivalent to twenty dollars, that must be paid in school fees. But do I believe that that is all it costs? Do I hand over my dollars hoping that he will use it to go to school? How do I react when told “All I want is assistance,” and, “If you return and want to take me to the United States, it would be very good”. I am not in a situation to bring someone to the United States, how do I explain, and more so, how do I justify, saying that it is not in my plans to adopt a 25 year old Tanzanian father to bring him to the United States to be educated?
How do I reconcile the fact that I will get on a plane on Tuesday and travel to another country, and another, and another, before going home to a comfortable house where if I choose to, I can turn on the television and forget about Noah in Kigoma Tanzania who would like to go to school, but lacks the dollar? Where if something comes on the news to remind me of him, of his life, I can click my tongue, think that is too bad, and switch the channel to watch some more Friends? After seeing and being in these places, how can I head back to that life, and forget? Or ignore? What kind of human being would that make me? Privileged? Callous? Fortunate? Selfish?
Some of us are born into white, upper class families in first world countries. Others are born into poor black families in third world countries. No one is to blame, but how do we understand the relationship that exists between those two people? It is just luck that the one has easy access to school and enough to eat, and the other nothing? Doesn’t that one have some responsibility to the other? What is that responsibility, and how can it best be met? Is aid enough? What does that even mean? It is just my fortunate lot that I can go away and think no more about parasites and children with inflated bellies? If I cast my lot with those of my own nation, with our shopping malls and gas-guzzling cars, where does that leave everyone else? Does having been born there make it alright for me to choose that scene in which I have a sense of comfort, albeit while I am uncomforted by the known discomfort of others? After these experiences, can that life really be comfortable, or will I forever be plagued by knowing what things I have, and knowing how many other people do not have them? Things that are necessary, key, important, life sustaining? I don’t know. Over and over again, I am faced with situations that make me uncomfortable, make me think, make me wonder. Sometimes they make me wonder why I come out at all, why do I not just stay home and be comfortable and happy in my storybook American life? This happens particularly when I am faced with someone asking me for something that I cannot or will not give, though I know they have as much a right to it as I do. Other times these experiences make me wonder why government does or does not work, what is human nature, can the world be fair? Why is there enough money for politicians to get rich but not enough to send youth to school? Other times it makes me wonder what it is to connect with people, how culture is different, how can I not be upset by people outrightly asking me for things that I could give them, but don’t want to because then I would be without. After all, how important are my sunglasses, or my shoes? I have other access, why am I so loathe to give them up? What right do I have to my four pairs of pants when people here have only one? Or none? What, what is right? How do I understand all of this? What choices can I make? Which ones are right or fair or just? How do you effect change when there is so much to be changed? And deal with knowing you have advantages based on pure luck? Can I turn my back on others simply because they were not so “lucky” as I?

5 Comments:

  • I don't believe that its luck at all. The socioeconomic position of white upper-class living in the first world and poor black people living in the third world emerges out of a context of colonialism and imperialism which has sustained itself through the creation of vast systemic inequalities.
    Nobody's social location is random.
    Missing you and need some info about finding a place to stay in Nicaragua.
    Love you!
    Danielle

    By Blogger D.M.R, at 11:02 AM  

  • oh yeah, and given that nobody's social location is random, we must account for our privileges and oppressions by fighting the systemic inequalities that divided us.

    By Blogger D.M.R, at 11:04 AM  

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