Warning- Long, long, long post ahead...
You know, it's hard to write about sad and/or difficult experiences on these things; I think there's always a subtle pressure for the content to fit the medium, and thus I fill my entries up with breezy, amusing anecdotes and save the personal struggles for letters. But I had a good moment last week that I think should be shared, even if it would be better in a letter, even if it isn't entriely appropriate for a blog.
You remember I'd been in Dar? Well, the third afternoon there was a rough one and while there's no point in going into the gory details, it was enough to make even the most ardent idealist doubt human nature, to take the Hobbsian worldview and agree that life is indeed "ugly, brutish, and short." Not that I came here thinking things were going to be easy, or looking to avoid challenges; I think I just thought that the challenges would be of a different nature, simpler somehow. I think when I left New York, I was looking forward to simplifying by coming here, anticipating a life free from unnecessary accoutrements and mind-altering substances. I anticipated more basic challenges (A village needs a well, you dig one. Kids need to learn math, you teach them.) I left New York utterly deppressed about the state of race relations in America, and even less sure about the right way to start effecting change; I think I thought Tanzania's challenges would be at least straighforward, if not quite easy.
Well, anyone who has worked in development is probably already shaking their head; after 3 months here I don't know if I've ever been less certain about what's comic, what's serious, and am forced to conceed that I'm just an ordinary person, with no special powers of insight, with no way to discern the best thing to do for these people, this country. I came here with residual echoes of Nyerere's Arusha declaration ringing in my ears ("The development of a country is brought about by people, not by money. Money, and the wealth it represents, is the result and not the basis of development...The biggest requirement is hard work. Let us go to the villages and talk to our people and see whether or not it is possible for them to work harder...") and thought that my challenges would be based around just that- hard work. Tanzania, due to its socially brilliant, economically disasterous policy of villagization in the 60's (families were uprooted and placed in centrally located villages where they learned a common language, Kiswahili, and forged a common identity apart from tribal lines) has an amazing sense of national identity, leading to stablity, peace, and its recent status as a development darling of the western world. Indeed, you can't throw a stick here without hitting an SUV owned by some wealthy group of do-gooders and recently I've started asking myself...just what am I working so hard here for?Am I doing the right thing writing dozens of grant applications, looking for ways to get my kids into American colleges? I'm just doing what my school wants me to do, and I hate the condescending hypocracy of so many peace/global studies types who think they know better about what a country needs/should be doing than the people living there,...but, well it's heartbreaking watching students shirking their beautiful traditions, songs, and dances to embrace 50 cent. And it's depressing to think that even if I were to succeed here- completely, beyond my wildest expectations- all I'd have in the end is another America. In short, I was starting to lose faith in what I'm doing...why work for anything when people are so horrible to each other, why think anything will change when the suffering numbers the stars. But I digress, going back to my good moment...
I'd been thumbing through the sparse bookself at the VSO office after the tough afternoon, feeling pretty jaded and cranky (and increasingly incredulous at the selection- who reads some of this stuff?) until from the back left corner, between a book of erotica and a true-crime thriller there emerged a copy of "The Brother's Karamazov," albeit with a quarter of it's pages missing (there's an idea for an English major's circle of Hell- an infinite library of books, all missing the last chapter...chilling isn't it!) No matter, some Dostoyevsky is better than none, and sure enough, later that night I found an old passage, almost forgotten that reminded me not of why I came to Tanzania, but why I needn't worry about failure.
(this is long, but worth it- Gordon Thompson is proud of me somewhere- it's at the part where Mitya is being accused of the murder of his father)
They proceeded to a final revision of the protocal. Mitya got up, moved from his chair to the corner by the curtain, lay down on a large chest covered by a rug, and instantly fell asleep. He had a strange dream, utterly out of keeping with the place and the time. He was driving somewhere in the Steppes, where he had been stationed long ago, and a peasant was driving him in a cart with a pair of horses, through snow and sleet. Not far off was a village; he could see the black huts, and half the huts were burned down, there were only the charred beams sticking up. And as they drove in, there were peasant women drawn up along the road, a lot of women, a whole row, all thin and wan, with their faces a sort of browinsh colour, especially one at the edge, a tall boney woman, who looked forty, but might have been only twenty, with a long thin face. And in her arms was a little baby crying. And her breasts seemed so dried up that there was not a drop of milk in them. And the child cried and cried, and held out its little bare arms, with its little fists blue from cold.
'Why are they crying? Why are they crying?' Mitya asked as they dashed gaily by.
'It's the babe,' answered the driver. 'The babe weeping.'
And Mitya was struck by his saying, in his peasant way, 'the babe,' and he liked the peasant calling it 'the babe'. There seemed more pity in it.
'But why is it weeping?' Mitya perisisted stupidly. 'Why are its little arms bare? Why don't they wrap it up?'
'Why, they're poor people, burnt out. They've no bread. They're begging because they've been burnt out.'
'No, no,' Mitya, as it were, still did not understand. 'Tell me, why is it those poor mothers stand there? Why are the people poor? Why is the babe poor? Why is the steppe barren? Why don't they hug each other and kiss? Why don't they sing songs of joy? Why are they so dark from black misery? Why don't they feed the babe?'
And he felt that, though his questions were unreasonable and senseless, yet he wanted to ask just that, and he had to ask it in just that way. And he felt that a passion of pity, such as he had never known before, was rising in his heart, that he wanted to cry, that he wanted to do something for them all, so that the babe should weep no more, so that the dark-faced dried-up mother should not weep, that no one should shed tears again from that moment, and he wanted to do it at once, at once, regardless of obstacles, with all the recklessness of the Karamazovs...And his heart glowed, and he struggled forward towards the light, and he longed to live, to go on and on, towards the new beckoning light, and to hasten, hasten, now, at once!
'What! Where?' he exclaimed, opening his eyes, and sitting up on the chest, as though he had revived from a swoon, smiling brightly. Nikolay Parfenovitch was standing over him, suggesting that he should hear the protocol read aloud and sign it. Mitya guessed that he had been asleep an hour or more, but he did not hear Nikolay Parfenovitch. He was suddenly struck by the fact that there was a pillow under his head, which hadn't been there when he leant back exhausted, on the chest.
'Who put that pillow under my head? Who was so kind?' he cried, with a sort of ecstatic gratitude, and tears in his voice, as though some great kindness had been shown him.
He never found out who this kind man was, perhaps one of the peasant witnesses, or Nikolay Parfenovitch's little secretary had compassionately thought to put a pillow under his head, but his whole soul was quivering with tears. He went to the table and said he would sign whatever they liked.
'I've had a good dream, gentlemen,' he said in a strange voice, with a new light, as of joy, in his face.
Admit it, you're moved. I was (am) too. I'd by lying if I said that the reasons I came to Tanzania are echoed in Mitya's words; no, I'm far too selfish to be moved entirely, or even mostly for those reasons, although at my best I'd aspire to such a thing (and Mitya (indeed, most of the characters in this book- Aloysha, Smerdyakov) functions so effectively as an everyman that it's easy to place yourself in his shoes and think yourself so noble.) No, I think the comfort in this passage came from the touchstones of love and compassion that Dostoyevsky kept coming back to, and to the prohetic vision he alludes to. This is the genius of the great Russian novelists at work, this ability to create such space that we see all of our actions as a part of a great, uniterrupted entity, separate and distinct but connected to all the others (as E.M. Forster puts it- 'the sea is in the fish, and the fish is in the sea.') and I think that's what I feel reading this; that all people would be similarly moved, that at the core there is love and compassion and that this is expressed in the multitude of small kindnesses perpetrated everyday, in the tenuous, but unmistakable connection we share with each other. I'm not talking about the vague love of humanity more than the individual, but the opposite- essentially the bible maxim "love your neighbor as yourself." The danger comes when you start talling up the evils of humanity, the crimes, the cruelty, and pretty soon you no longer see individuals, but a whole sea of lost souls and whatever idealism/motivation you had, is lost in the face of such insurmountable evil. What I think Dostoyevsky was saying (and what, at that point I desperately needed to be reminded of) is that one can't answer evil and human suffering at a global level (indeed such a battle is made to be lost) but must instead focus on active love for individuals. I can't be sure that my actions are the best thing for Tanzania, I can't be sure that they will lead to an alliviation of suffering at some point down the road; alas, my powers of insight can't see that far ahead and I'll just loose faith in the squinting. But if I can actively love the people around me, sleep easy at night knowing that I'm doing the best I can for them...well, at the end of the day that's enough. I'll leave the long-term visions to the prophets.
Reading over this, it sounds like an exceptionally basic truth, like something I should have figured out before turning 24; maybe it was something I knew once but had since forgotten. And maybe I'll change my mind about it eventually, but I think here, (where there is so much suffering, where you live so far on the margin, so close to that delicate line delineating life and death) it is the only way to keep your faith in humanity and thus avoid despair.
Anyway, it's a miracle if any of you have made it this far (and feel free to challenge my interpretation of Dostoyevsky...you'll remember I was only auditing that Russian Lit. class so maybe I've got it wrong somewhere :) but in any case take care and I'll try to post again before my trip south to Mozambique for Christmas and the New Year. Sending lots of warm thoughts west..Kate
You remember I'd been in Dar? Well, the third afternoon there was a rough one and while there's no point in going into the gory details, it was enough to make even the most ardent idealist doubt human nature, to take the Hobbsian worldview and agree that life is indeed "ugly, brutish, and short." Not that I came here thinking things were going to be easy, or looking to avoid challenges; I think I just thought that the challenges would be of a different nature, simpler somehow. I think when I left New York, I was looking forward to simplifying by coming here, anticipating a life free from unnecessary accoutrements and mind-altering substances. I anticipated more basic challenges (A village needs a well, you dig one. Kids need to learn math, you teach them.) I left New York utterly deppressed about the state of race relations in America, and even less sure about the right way to start effecting change; I think I thought Tanzania's challenges would be at least straighforward, if not quite easy.
Well, anyone who has worked in development is probably already shaking their head; after 3 months here I don't know if I've ever been less certain about what's comic, what's serious, and am forced to conceed that I'm just an ordinary person, with no special powers of insight, with no way to discern the best thing to do for these people, this country. I came here with residual echoes of Nyerere's Arusha declaration ringing in my ears ("The development of a country is brought about by people, not by money. Money, and the wealth it represents, is the result and not the basis of development...The biggest requirement is hard work. Let us go to the villages and talk to our people and see whether or not it is possible for them to work harder...") and thought that my challenges would be based around just that- hard work. Tanzania, due to its socially brilliant, economically disasterous policy of villagization in the 60's (families were uprooted and placed in centrally located villages where they learned a common language, Kiswahili, and forged a common identity apart from tribal lines) has an amazing sense of national identity, leading to stablity, peace, and its recent status as a development darling of the western world. Indeed, you can't throw a stick here without hitting an SUV owned by some wealthy group of do-gooders and recently I've started asking myself...just what am I working so hard here for?Am I doing the right thing writing dozens of grant applications, looking for ways to get my kids into American colleges? I'm just doing what my school wants me to do, and I hate the condescending hypocracy of so many peace/global studies types who think they know better about what a country needs/should be doing than the people living there,...but, well it's heartbreaking watching students shirking their beautiful traditions, songs, and dances to embrace 50 cent. And it's depressing to think that even if I were to succeed here- completely, beyond my wildest expectations- all I'd have in the end is another America. In short, I was starting to lose faith in what I'm doing...why work for anything when people are so horrible to each other, why think anything will change when the suffering numbers the stars. But I digress, going back to my good moment...
I'd been thumbing through the sparse bookself at the VSO office after the tough afternoon, feeling pretty jaded and cranky (and increasingly incredulous at the selection- who reads some of this stuff?) until from the back left corner, between a book of erotica and a true-crime thriller there emerged a copy of "The Brother's Karamazov," albeit with a quarter of it's pages missing (there's an idea for an English major's circle of Hell- an infinite library of books, all missing the last chapter...chilling isn't it!) No matter, some Dostoyevsky is better than none, and sure enough, later that night I found an old passage, almost forgotten that reminded me not of why I came to Tanzania, but why I needn't worry about failure.
(this is long, but worth it- Gordon Thompson is proud of me somewhere- it's at the part where Mitya is being accused of the murder of his father)
They proceeded to a final revision of the protocal. Mitya got up, moved from his chair to the corner by the curtain, lay down on a large chest covered by a rug, and instantly fell asleep. He had a strange dream, utterly out of keeping with the place and the time. He was driving somewhere in the Steppes, where he had been stationed long ago, and a peasant was driving him in a cart with a pair of horses, through snow and sleet. Not far off was a village; he could see the black huts, and half the huts were burned down, there were only the charred beams sticking up. And as they drove in, there were peasant women drawn up along the road, a lot of women, a whole row, all thin and wan, with their faces a sort of browinsh colour, especially one at the edge, a tall boney woman, who looked forty, but might have been only twenty, with a long thin face. And in her arms was a little baby crying. And her breasts seemed so dried up that there was not a drop of milk in them. And the child cried and cried, and held out its little bare arms, with its little fists blue from cold.
'Why are they crying? Why are they crying?' Mitya asked as they dashed gaily by.
'It's the babe,' answered the driver. 'The babe weeping.'
And Mitya was struck by his saying, in his peasant way, 'the babe,' and he liked the peasant calling it 'the babe'. There seemed more pity in it.
'But why is it weeping?' Mitya perisisted stupidly. 'Why are its little arms bare? Why don't they wrap it up?'
'Why, they're poor people, burnt out. They've no bread. They're begging because they've been burnt out.'
'No, no,' Mitya, as it were, still did not understand. 'Tell me, why is it those poor mothers stand there? Why are the people poor? Why is the babe poor? Why is the steppe barren? Why don't they hug each other and kiss? Why don't they sing songs of joy? Why are they so dark from black misery? Why don't they feed the babe?'
And he felt that, though his questions were unreasonable and senseless, yet he wanted to ask just that, and he had to ask it in just that way. And he felt that a passion of pity, such as he had never known before, was rising in his heart, that he wanted to cry, that he wanted to do something for them all, so that the babe should weep no more, so that the dark-faced dried-up mother should not weep, that no one should shed tears again from that moment, and he wanted to do it at once, at once, regardless of obstacles, with all the recklessness of the Karamazovs...And his heart glowed, and he struggled forward towards the light, and he longed to live, to go on and on, towards the new beckoning light, and to hasten, hasten, now, at once!
'What! Where?' he exclaimed, opening his eyes, and sitting up on the chest, as though he had revived from a swoon, smiling brightly. Nikolay Parfenovitch was standing over him, suggesting that he should hear the protocol read aloud and sign it. Mitya guessed that he had been asleep an hour or more, but he did not hear Nikolay Parfenovitch. He was suddenly struck by the fact that there was a pillow under his head, which hadn't been there when he leant back exhausted, on the chest.
'Who put that pillow under my head? Who was so kind?' he cried, with a sort of ecstatic gratitude, and tears in his voice, as though some great kindness had been shown him.
He never found out who this kind man was, perhaps one of the peasant witnesses, or Nikolay Parfenovitch's little secretary had compassionately thought to put a pillow under his head, but his whole soul was quivering with tears. He went to the table and said he would sign whatever they liked.
'I've had a good dream, gentlemen,' he said in a strange voice, with a new light, as of joy, in his face.
Admit it, you're moved. I was (am) too. I'd by lying if I said that the reasons I came to Tanzania are echoed in Mitya's words; no, I'm far too selfish to be moved entirely, or even mostly for those reasons, although at my best I'd aspire to such a thing (and Mitya (indeed, most of the characters in this book- Aloysha, Smerdyakov) functions so effectively as an everyman that it's easy to place yourself in his shoes and think yourself so noble.) No, I think the comfort in this passage came from the touchstones of love and compassion that Dostoyevsky kept coming back to, and to the prohetic vision he alludes to. This is the genius of the great Russian novelists at work, this ability to create such space that we see all of our actions as a part of a great, uniterrupted entity, separate and distinct but connected to all the others (as E.M. Forster puts it- 'the sea is in the fish, and the fish is in the sea.') and I think that's what I feel reading this; that all people would be similarly moved, that at the core there is love and compassion and that this is expressed in the multitude of small kindnesses perpetrated everyday, in the tenuous, but unmistakable connection we share with each other. I'm not talking about the vague love of humanity more than the individual, but the opposite- essentially the bible maxim "love your neighbor as yourself." The danger comes when you start talling up the evils of humanity, the crimes, the cruelty, and pretty soon you no longer see individuals, but a whole sea of lost souls and whatever idealism/motivation you had, is lost in the face of such insurmountable evil. What I think Dostoyevsky was saying (and what, at that point I desperately needed to be reminded of) is that one can't answer evil and human suffering at a global level (indeed such a battle is made to be lost) but must instead focus on active love for individuals. I can't be sure that my actions are the best thing for Tanzania, I can't be sure that they will lead to an alliviation of suffering at some point down the road; alas, my powers of insight can't see that far ahead and I'll just loose faith in the squinting. But if I can actively love the people around me, sleep easy at night knowing that I'm doing the best I can for them...well, at the end of the day that's enough. I'll leave the long-term visions to the prophets.
Reading over this, it sounds like an exceptionally basic truth, like something I should have figured out before turning 24; maybe it was something I knew once but had since forgotten. And maybe I'll change my mind about it eventually, but I think here, (where there is so much suffering, where you live so far on the margin, so close to that delicate line delineating life and death) it is the only way to keep your faith in humanity and thus avoid despair.
Anyway, it's a miracle if any of you have made it this far (and feel free to challenge my interpretation of Dostoyevsky...you'll remember I was only auditing that Russian Lit. class so maybe I've got it wrong somewhere :) but in any case take care and I'll try to post again before my trip south to Mozambique for Christmas and the New Year. Sending lots of warm thoughts west..Kate
posted by Katie at 4:58 PM
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