The Dog Incident 2012

Today started off as a regular day. I woke up at 7 when my mom left to go on a walk around the neighborhood, grumbled and went back to bed, then woke up again around 8:50. Since the day was looking particularly grey and dreary, I pulled on my fleece to go on a short run.
There was nothing abnormal about my run. People stared curiously as usual (not as badly as China, of course, but still…maybe women don’t really run around the neighborhood? I’ve only seen one woman on my 5 runs, and several men). I sped down the hills then realized my mistake as I puffed up the same hills on my way back. Finally, when I was maybe 2 minutes from the house, I came across a gardener/caretaker who was taking out 3 tiny dogs for a walk. None were on a leash. Two of the dogs seemed normal enough-small, scruffy, annoying things-but the third was growling and acting weird. I stopped running, because I knew that if you run away dogs might smell fear and come bite you. And so, even though I was walking, the small, vicious white dog growled at my ankles and then nipped me. All the while, the caretaker was saying “they’re just playing/cheza, tu!”
Darn! I thought to myself. What luck. I was just reading over the rabies precaution in my touristy, awful but convenient Lonely Planet guidebook the night before. I should have said, “your dog bit me!” But no English or Swahili words came to mind, so I just ran back to the house and told my mom, “Oh. I’ve been nipped.”
While we were talking to the caretaker about the dogs, a curious young man stopped by and listened to the discussion/argument as my mom was getting angry (as she often does). The man said, “what? A shot for that tiny thing?” and then he showed us a recent dog bite scar on his knee…it was huge. I shivered.
And since people don’t really take their dogs to the vet and give them rabies shots, I had to go get 2 shots (and I have four more this month) because of this tiny nip. Seriously, it’s like a dot of a scar on my leg.
So, lesson learned…if you want to go running around a neighborhood in Kenya, beware of the dogs! Seriously.

Arrival

Arrival time on Friday, May 11th: 8:30 P.M, KLM flight  from Amsterdam, Netherlands. I left the jetway and immediately met the oppressive heat of Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. As I looked over the waiting areas and duty free shops, I remembered the last time I was here, 5 years ago, when I was 14. It feels like forever ago.

I met my mom at the airport and we took a taxi back to my aunt’s house. Everyone was asleep, but my mom, the maid and I had some late dinner before I crashed. In the morning, my cousin and aunts welcomed me, I unpacked the mountain of Ensure I’d brought for my grandmother, and together with my mom we went to say good morning.

Speaking to my grandmother is always an interesting experience, because I really don’t speak to her. I nod, I say yes and no, I answer simple questions, but my knowledge of the language is only enough to understand most of what she’s saying. I hardly speak. The words feel foreign in my mouth, they have an undeniable, annoying American accent that makes every word sound ridiculous to me. I listened as she gave me life advice. She told me to stay in school until I learn everything there is to know about everything. She said, forget about boys until you graduate!

Nobody knows how old my grandmother is, but most say she’s definitely over 100 years old. I’ve only met my grandmother 2 or 3 times, but every time my mother, brother and I have stayed with her for a month or so. Every time I see her, she doesn’t seem to have changed much. In my memory, she was always small, she always had trouble walking, but was incredibly resilient, stubborn, independent, and ready to yell at her dogs or chase the cows out of the garden. It’s strange to see her out of her home, sleeping in my aunt’s, with a flushing toilet just feet away from her bed and no cows to chase.

My mom always tell me, don’t ever put me in a nursing home. Because she’s is helping me through school, giving me medical insurance and protection, supporting me until I graduate, in return I’m expected to support her in her old age and promise to not let strangers take care of her. I feel that this push to take care of your parents is common among many children of immigrants. The family bond prevails over everything. Now that I see my grandmother surrounded by family, many who are taking time off from work to take care of her, I see the importance of that family bond. I can’t imagine how scary and lonely it can be to be in a nursing home where your children and grandchildren only visit you once in a while. So while I always begrudgingly said “of course” to my mom’s requests about taking care of her when she’s older, I now see why that’s so important.

 

Departure

This is the time of year when I suddenly have so many hours in the day, and so much more time for blogging. And so, because I always love writing in airports, I’m sitting here blogging from Boston Logan (which, by the way, is ENORMOUS. And they have free wi-fi. Nice.)

I didn’t sleep on my last night. Or rather, I slept for maybe 30 minutes. The rest of my time was spent bothering friends who were supposed to be doing work, discussing appropriate punishments for children, learning about Nathan Hare (father of Black Studies) and figuring out exactly why Asian American should never ever be hyphenated (and no that’s not sarcasm!) I was going to sleep, and then I figured, this is my last night. Why not pull a non-academic all-nighter and soak in all my friends before leaving for 6 months? Pizza was ordered, cookies were eaten, much fun was had.

I then went back to my room, realized that the clothes I’d spent 2 hours drying were still NOT dry, resolved to have awful smelly wet clothes in my luggage, vacuumed, found time for a nap, took a shower, and it was suddenly 6:30.

Saying goodbye is strange, awkward, and something I’m not good at. I’m also not a good hugger. I still can’t believe I won’t see people for a year! I think it began to sink in as my bus was leaving Amherst. It was drizzling and gross outside, and I just stared at raindrops and remembered all the amazing things I’d done over the year:

-Montreal for the first time

-Dim Sum for the first time

-MoMA

-NYC with the rents/NYC with R/C

-Going home with R/C and introducing them to CHIK FIL A (delicious food fried with hatred…)

-Learning more about Maghrebi-French film than I ever cared to know

-Spending more hours in Frost than I’d ever spent before/checking out more books than I’d ever checked out before

-Being a music tutor/reader to reader mentor/photographer/blog writer/blahblahblah

-Accepted to study abroad in PARIS

-Going home, seeing friends, eating amazing cafeteria food (they are SO SPOILED), going to the Hunger Games midnight premiere

-Reading articles linked from friends  relating race/gender to The Hunger Games, feeling like my academic life and fun/social life was overlapping dramatically

-Learning more about the injustices in this system (and this world), being angry, frustrated, upset

-Battling KONY2012/being wary of everything relating to Africa, money, and children,

-Eating pad thai for the first time, and drinking thai iced tea for the first time, and then ordering it every single time I went to a thai restaurant

Delicious delicious Pad Thai from Bangkok Yum Yum

-Women of Amherst, which I didn’t want to be a part of at first, and didn’t really know how I felt about it until we started dress rehearsal and I realized (1) how amazing our show was (2) how amazing the women of the show were (3) how proud I felt to have been a part of the show, especially when my guy/male acquaintances (athletes, etc. who I sadly would not expect to see at such a show) told me “you did great at the show!” I think that attests to just how large our impact was. I’m so eager to be a part of WoA for the next 2 years.

-Getting really stir crazy at Amherst, but then realizing how much I would miss the people (but not necessarily the institution.)

Ah! This year dude. So many things happened at Amherst. Tipis. AAS. Faculty diversity. Heightened awareness of sexual assault issues. For some reason, it feels like this year some kind of curtain was pulled down and little by little we’re seeing just what lies beneath the beautiful Amherst facade. Hopefully, with the help of friends, professors and the like, we can work together to uncover the injustices on our own campus…

Um, that post didn’t end the same way it started…but I don’t mind.

Upcoming Destinations

As I’m finishing up this (awfully written) French paper and cramming over 250 characters in my head, the only thing I can think of is Kenya, Kenya, Kenya.

I didn’t realize it would come so soon.

I booked my ticket thinking I would want to leave earlier, but now that Thursday is getting closer and closer, I’m realizing that I won’t see most people for more than 6 months, or even up to a year. Although I’ll be thrilled to go abroad and explore and maybe even do some more research for a potential thesis, I’m saddened by the fact that I won’t see many of my good friends until we’re both seniors, and about to leave Amherst for the real world.

Today I was thinking to myself on my walk to Val, and I was saying how I do dislike a lot of things about Amherst, and I do think we could be doing much better. Amherst needs 24 hour adult sexual assault counselors. Amherst needs to have critical debates about race, ethnicity, sexuality and religion occurring as soon as students set foot on campus-Orientation should be restructured to make diversity less of a falsified add-on. This year, so many things have happened that have just uncovered the underlying flaws beneath our towering trees and gorgeous quads.

And yet, these flaws are prevalent across higher education in the United States. Sometimes its hard for me to remember that Amherst is only a microcosm of greater society. It doesn’t get everything perfect, but it tries (as little as it possibly can) to make things move in the write directions. Biddy is a good sign for the college–I feel like she wants a new direction, and she was just testing out the waters this year. I’m looking forward to some real changes.

But I wasn’t really thinking all of this on my walk to Val, I was thinking about how yes, Amherst is flawed, but I am still so grateful to be here. I find that my parents are proud to say where I go to school. Whenever I go home my mom eagerly asks, hows Amherst? How are the classes? When I came home for break, slightly defeated and definitely suffering from cabin fever, my mother seemed concerned. You don’t like it? she asked. You can transfer, she said. But that’s not what I wanted to do. I like Amherst. Love, maybe not-but love takes a lot of comittment and time. Sometimes I think, what if I’d applied to Smith? From the outside, their community looks so warm, so loving, so social justice-y. Yet recent events have allowed me to see that Smith has its own problems with racism, problems that I almost didn’t expect. We’re all living in very small microcosms that coincide with what the real world is like-and so, I have to keep this in mind when I critique my school. Because in the end, it’s my school-I may hate it sometimes, but I’m here for the next 2 years.

Honestly, I’m just ready to go to Paris. (and Kenya until June 16th!)

Peace.

I’ve sent away…

I’ve sent away my prospectus to be edited, I’ve finished my Chinese homework, and for the first time in a while, I have free time to just surf YouTube for an hour and not feel guilty.

It feel so good!

I feel like I’ve piled on so much this semester-yearbook, frisbee, two dances, violin lessons, music tutoring, plus trying to do SPLASH as well. I felt like because my courseload was a bit lighter, I felt like I could sacrifice some extra time for more outside activities-well it didn’t really work out. I’ve managed to keep up with everything, but I literally have to schedule my days out sometimes…I have whole sheets of paper full of daily schedules I make for myself. And if I don’t go to frisbee, carving out gym or running time is so hard-I don’t get it. 

And sometimes it’s just not fun to wake up at 5 A.M for a tournament-but I do feel great about it when I come home.

I feel like I need to practice at least 3 times a week or more-how else will I improve? Especially now that I’ve added orchestra to my list of activities…

I don’t know. i love everything I do, but juggling it all is a real hassle. Next year, after I come back from Paris, i’ll have to make some decisions.

I don’t know. Time. It just goes away like that.

And I thought spending less time at ACH would help-and it does, kind of. I do miss it, but there’s no way I can get work done if I stick around there for too long. And it just feels like a different place now. My room is also super big, so I like to do work here…

Hm.

Unrelated-I tried to get a yellow fever vaccination today, but UMASS is booked until the 18th. If I’m quarantined in NBO airport because I don’t have the vaccination…

oh god

Contemplations

Every Friday I try to go to the Bangs center for craft club with P., a senior that I’m working with at the center for my collaborative art class. Today, I brought in my pretty horrible attempt at knitting-I’m trying to make a doll-and sat down next to J., a wonderful, kind senior who works on coloring a design every week. Today she described to me her childhood home Vienna-I wondered where she was from because her voice had a slight accent to it that I couldn’t place. I sat, knitting, thinking about just how many people came here from so many different places. P. from Iran, J. from Vienna, others from Syria, Germany, who knows! And to think, Amherst has such a tiny population, only 30,000 people live here…mostly related to the five colleges. I dunno, I just liked thinking about that, about the (flawed, unequal) melting pot…

And there’s so many issues with the term melting pot itself! Some people did not choose to be melted into this pot! I dunno, I was just thinking.

Jack Wills Summer Internship: Best Summer Job in America (for a select few).

The few, the white, the rich. That’s who Jack Wills, an expensive, chino-khakis-summer-dresses-and-british-polos type of clothing company, is marketing its paid summer internship to. I just saw this invite on Facebook, telling met o vote for a fellow classmate who is applying to get paid $20,000 this summer to intern in Nantucket for 6 weeks. He wants people to vote for him every day, for 17 days.

I looked up the video advertisement for said internship, and was surprised to see the sharp design and beautiful images–this video was crafted like an advertisement for the company, not for a summer internship position. The basic premise of the internship was this-get paid $20,000 (college tuition, presumably) to intern + party in Nantucket. They don’t even bother hiding the true fact and goal of the internship-let kids have fun while supposedly learning about marketing, or something. Here’s the official contest page.

What’s my issue? Well. The video advertisement is lily-white. The clothing is very expensive and out of range of most middle-class budgets. The whole idea is a little ridiculous. Paying “one girl and one guy” $20,000 in college tuition to party? I highly doubt anyone who applies for this is in serious need of that $20,000 college tuition. I think that money could go to fund students who are seriously invested in their education-who don’t feel the need to give up a summer to party.

Sorry. This is an obvious rant, but I needed it (plus I haven’t blogged in a while.) Also, I was peeved by this guys audacity to invite like 1,500 people to his group. Seriously?

Don’t Vote KONY

In an interview for All Africa’s on-line magazine, Jason Russell states that the goal of his video was to tell the audience “exactly what the facts are.” Well, he failed miserably-as anyone who has read the critiques and articles related to KONY 2012 would have found out, Russell failed to mention that the 100 U.S “advisors” that were deployed were mostly there before Barack Obama’s letter, that the Ugandan army is conflicted and corrupt, and that what KONY 2012 is supporting is primarily, military intervention.

What KONY 2012 has offered us is a model of international intervention using the social media tools that have now come to be ubiquitous. The campaign is successfully using flashy graphics and stunning “facts” to woo audiences into supporting the cause. Behind the Mumford and Sons soundtrack lies a dangerous idea-that the western world should use its power to crash into a foreign country and solve its problems with a little military help.

The problem of the “white man’s burden” lies at the heart of too many non-profit endeavors in Africa. This problem can be expanded to “western man’s burden”, a burden that has led so many to buy TOMS or support Darfurians or purchase flashy Invisible Children bracelets and t-shirts. The western man takes it upon himself to solve the world’s problems. Jason plays his role wonderfully: “We created jobs. We built schools.” We made things better for these people, because we saw things were bad and brought in our money and time to do what we thought they couldn’t do themselves. Give us money so we can build more schools and create more jobs.

The campaign creates more problems by making the issue so black and white or good guy/bad guy. The lines get blurred when you realize that Kony’s bodyguards are children-and so the Ugandan army would almost definitely have to kill children in order to secure Kony. The ethical implications of the conflict aren’t explored in the movie, all you hear is “Kony is evil. He must be stopped.” I haven’t even begun to touch on the issues with Invisible Children as a foundation-only 37% of the funds raised by the “charity” actually goes to support the children and schools. The rest goes to fund the staff.

And in the end, if the whole world knows about Kony, so what? Joseph Kony is a single man, a single figure upon which the entire LRA movement of child abduction has been pinned. If he falls, the course of human history will not change very much. Child abduction might not end with his demise. If he falls, Invsible Children will no longer have a unifying cause.

What I’m trying to encourage is research before reblogging, retweeting or posting the video. Our Facebook culture encourages slacktivsm-post one thing related to human rights and be a social activist for a day, then you’re good for the year. Think twice, or maybe three times before you fall into the same trap .

SOPA/PIPA:The Power of The Internet

Yesterday, (English) Wikipedia, Reddit, Tumblr and several other websites opted to blackout their sites against the proposed SOPA/PIPA legislation, which aims to combat online piracy, a real issue and crime, but could possibly allow the government to censor creative content on the internet. Read the bill here: SOPA . I didn’t read the entire bill, but what I did read was very confusing and vague. I have my doubts about the appropriateness of such a bill, especially since it could possibly hurt websites such as Youtube.

I feel that there’s a better way to combat online piracy. Shutting down huge websites such as Pirate Bay and websites that allow illegal downloads of movies and TV shows could be one step. However, there is a fine line between combating piracy by shutting down these websites and deciding that creative writing, art and photography should be censored on a website like Tumblr. And it’s true that we have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act   that protects the MPAA from being copyrighted online-and it has been working pretty well for the most part.

Support against the bill was overwhelming-4.5 million people signed Google’s petition against SOPA/PIPA legislation, it was all over Facebook as people changed their statuses to appear “censored” or switched profile pictures to an anti-SOPA image, and twitter was abuzz with SOPA/PIPA news. I think what saddens me the most is that this has been an issue for quite a while, but it took the blacking out of several websites for people to realize what could possibly happen. It seems like my generation has become so hooked to technology, Tumblr, Reddit, Wikipedia, WordPress (ha!) and other websites, that it takes the blackout of all of these websites for them to realize that something bad is happening.

Additionally, I’m bothered by the one-sided, blind hatred of congress that this bill has caused. I saw several Facebook posts that derided congress as stupid, painting the entire congress with one brush. For one thing, SOPA was put forth by only a few members of congress, some of which have since turned against it. Obama himself has made his distaste for the bill public. These people are making congress to be some Big Brother, 1984 organization. I think some people should get more informed about the complexities of bills, congress, and SOPA/PIPA itself before making broad generalizations.

I, myself, am guilty of making broad generalizations of many things…but that’s another issue.

What makes me sad about all the support for this bill is that I didn’t see Facebook on fire about the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Bill that was proposed in the early winter and could discriminate against minority women who want to get abortions, or the bill in Arizona that banned ethnic studies in public school classrooms, or the South Dakota bill which could allow people to kill abortion providers (check the Update for more information). When it comes to social or racial justice, people just don’t seem to get as excited. When Reddit is in danger of being shut down, the whole internet world stops to move against SOPA/PIPA.

It’s a sad world for people for those who want to fight for justice.

Waiting for Super…who?

Waiting for Superman is essentially arguing that by following the KIPP: and Harlem Children’s Zone model of accountability, extended hours, excellent teachers and a high standard of excellence, we can fix our broken education system. The thing is, it’s not that easy.

You don’t just need good people, good teachers, neighbors, family-you need to address the root of the problem which is economic inequity. Children living in poverty are still performing at a far lower rate than middle-class and higher class children. Not to mention that our methods of measurement and testing are screwed up as well. There is no “standardized test”, each state has their own format where one student could succeed in one state but fail 20 miles away (this is an issue that requires a post of its own). We should change how we measure our students, and also make a real rating system for teachers.

And you can’t just do away with benefits like tenure in an effort to make change happen. You have to consider those teachers who perform well and are on tenure, and fix the issue of low-performing teachers with a well-established rating plan and higher accountability. Teachers need their benefits, and they need to be paid well. Teaching is hard. You can’t expect them to agree to give up their union rights.

And charter schools/KIPP:/etc…these schools only work for children who have parents that care so deeply about their futures that they will invest huge amounts of time and energy into making sure their child makes it to college. What about those parents who can’t afford to invest so much time in their children? Those single mothers working 9-5 jobs, young mothers, elderely caretakers like grandparents. What about them? Where is their lottery?

The thing is, Waiting for Superman was great. It was touching. It was a very important film to watch. But the solution is much more complicated than what they suggest. Texting “possible” to whatever number they give at the end cannot solve the education problem in the U.S. Sure, maybe it’s a start…but I’m afraid that this movie will give/has given a lot of important-feeling people the idea that they’ve helped by doing this tiny little thing…when this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I guess you can’t address everything in 150 minutes…