When you Reach the End of your Rope.....

“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on!” ~ Thomas Jefferson

One of Guled's teachers sent a weekly newsletter with this great quote. Validity undetermined by me, I find it timely and invaluable anyway as some of us moms who have taken on the education role of our children find frustrations abounding.

So, in honor of my friend TB and her younglings, we share some good ol' Founding Father wisdom and take a break outdoors on this fine leap day to suck up the Colorado sunshine!

THE UNPOPULAR BUT POTENTIALLY NECESSARY VIEW

The quote at the end is worth reading if nothing else. History purportedly helps us to come face-to-face with our humanity, perhaps in the hopes that we may replicate that which in hindsight was “good”, and even predict and thus avoid that which we have determined is “bad.”

Thanks to my former husband/current friend, I know of a news outlet called Al-Jazeera. I have partaken of Al-Jazeera as access allows for some years now, simply for the fresh view and unique story priority they present. Case in point: the Oscars is not headlining their front page. Al-Jazeera is winning awards and becoming more widely known, however, the streaming newscast (similar to CNN 24 hour) is not permitted on American television at this time.

To cut to the chase, I have just read an article in Al-Jazeera English online for Monday February 27, 2012. I am concerned that we are living this very day, today, a moment in history that our children will study in hindsight, a moment where an entire “race” or “group” of people was targeted for the acts of a few, and "oh how awful," and "we will not ever let that happen in our time." I recall saying that as a young 5th grade student while watching a subtitled movie about Hitler called something like Night and Fog.

I also recall in history times where entire groups were targeted as “bad”, on more than one occasion in fact and repetitively over centuries. Do you? Does your own recall allow you to remember when entire groups of people were targeted and subsequently watched, controlled (using the law and/or the military), imprisoned, removed, and even eradicated just because they had a belief system that frightened the power majority, and the power majority made certain that the masses became afraid and moved towards mob rule? The group ate differently, spoke different languages, danced and dressed differently, saw God differently, and perhaps lived in a different kind of society? Because they represented the thing to be feared, they had to be stopped ….. to save everyone else you see.

The article, "Documents expose NYPD 'mosque crawlers'", contains a video stream I have not watched. The story tells about New York City’s efforts to make certain that the tragedy we know as September 11th does not happen again. Fair enough. We as a country have every right to protect ourselves; New Yorker’s have every right to protect themselves specifically because it happened to them, though we all share some sense of the tragedy.

Fast forward more than ten years, and we see the implementation of that need to protect. It is here that I believe hindsight down the road will shed light on the slippery slope we have begun to traverse. A few excerpts from the article at this point will help (though I will have to restrain myself from editing some spelling and grammar):

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has targeted Muslim places of worship using tactics normally reserved for criminal organisations, according to newly obtained police documents.

The files, obtained by the Associated Press news agency, show police collecting license plates of worshippers, monitoring them on surveillance cameras and cataloguing sermons via an informant network.

New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, using the 1993 bombings of the World Trade Center as a precedent, called the secret operation monitoring Muslims was ``legal,'' ``appropriate'' and ``constitutional'' on Friday.

"We cannot let our guard down again. We cannot slack in our vigilance. The threat was real. The threat is real. The threat is not going away'', said Bloomberg.

NYPD spokesman, Paul Browne, also defended the tactics, telling reporters a day earlier, that the New York Police Departments' officers may go wherever the public goes and collect intelligence, even outside city limits. . . .

Oh really? Expanding the jurisdiction of the city police to monitor an entire group in this manner is legal and consistent with constitutional principles? Imagine if this was applied to Black Americans. Oh wait….. ok, onward:

“It seems horrible to me that the NYPD is treating an entire religious community as potential terrorists,'' said civil rights lawyer Jethro Eisenstein, who reviewed some of the documents and is involved in a decades-old class-action lawsuit against the police department for spying on protesters and political dissidents.

I’m giggling because the attorney’s last name emanates from Judaic roots, whether in fact he is Jewish or not. The idea of Jewish people supporting Muslim people warms my heart.

Al Jazeera's Cath Turner, reporting live from Patterson, New Jersey, where a local mosque has been targeted by the NYPD, said the Muslim community of New Jersey, "feel betrayed by the NYPD because they say they are citizens in this country and go about living their lives and feel they have been vilified based soley because of their religion". . . .

When New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor were killed on October 11, 2006, after their small plane crashed into a Manhattan bulding, the NYPD's mosque crawlers reported to police about what they heard at sermons and among worshippers though terrorism was ruled out as a cause hours after the crash.

At the Brooklyn Islamic Centre, a confidential informant "noted chatter among the regulars expressing relief and thanks to God that the crash was only an accident and not an act of terrorism", one report reads.

"The worshippers made remarks to the effect that 'it better be an accident; we don't need any more heat,'" an undercover officer reported from the Al-Tawheed Islamic Centre in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Of course they made remarks like that. These citizens of the United States of America have lived as outcasts and “untouchables” for years. They do not, nor did they ever, subscribe to bombings and mass murder as a means to get their religious-political views expressed.

Of COURSE they made those remarks. To construe and then vilify such a remark just astounds me, but then again I mingle with people of the Muslim faith. I eat meals with them. I marry them and have babies with them. I ask them questions about how they view things and what September 11, 2001 felt like to them. On some level it destroyed my marriage, but I am not afraid any more. Perhaps it enlightened me to how I can propogate such a witch hunt if I am not careful. The Imam (similar to the pastor or priest of a church) at one of the mosques (like a church or congregation) commented pretty pointedly:

They're viewing Muslims like they're crazy. They're terrorists. They all must be fanatics", said Abdul Akbar Mohammed, the imam for the past eight years at the Masjid Imam Ali K. Muslim in Newark. "That's not right."

No Imam Mohammed, that is not right. Our Constitution pretty much makes it clear as a bell that this outcome is not right, unless of course we re-interpret that document to say otherwise.

History is repeating itself again me thinks. Be warned. I think I am going to teach history… global human history mixed with some political theory and governance… to the younglings… often and with great passion.

… and even as I write, a school shooting in Chardon, Ohio is breaking news, and a female reporter speaking to a dad, with a line of questioning that appears to have an agenda…to get him to place blame on the school for not having metal detectors at the school. He keeps saying he believes the school does an excellent job, this kind of thing does not happen in Chardon, and she finally concedes and lets him go get his high school daughter…

Listen people, fear makes us do crazy things. I get that. I fight it all the time in my own personal life. I heard about a guy named Ambrose Redmoon on the radio a few days ago. Here is Wikipedia’s entry on him: James Neil Hollingworth (1933–1996) was a beatnik, hippie, writer, and former manager of the psychedelic folk rock bands Quicksilver Messenger Service and Ace of Cups. He wrote under the pseudonym Ambrose Redmoon.

I offer his words relatively intact as my parting thought:

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.”

Ahab the Arab - Camel Ride

I have attempted this day to put the camel ride videos together for your entertainment pleasure. I actually have NO clue how to post a video on here, and after numerous failed attempts, I published it on Facebook and am attempting to embed it here. Here goes:

The Entrepreneurs of the Kibera

I pride myself (probably more than I ought) on looking at the world from different perspectives so that I can shake things up a bit. Just seems unusually restrictive and unfair to view things in one, sort of “status quo” manner propounded by the media or whatever outlet I’m viewing.


An article in the Denver Post this morning about rapper “Fiddy Cent” (sorry, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson) visiting 'impoverished parts of Africa' is giving me an opportunity to share my process of viewing differently. Interestingly, the article comes out of Nairobi, Kenya. I am assuming before I read it that he saw the Kibera slums in Nairobi on his tour. I will read and return....

.... Yes indeed, 50 Cent visited the camps at the border with Somalia and then the Kibera in western Nairobi. He certainly sets an admirable goal of one billion meals to feed the hungry. The problem with one billion meals is that at the end of the meals, the people are still hungry. But perhaps with such an impressive number, other aid agencies will contribute is the thinking.



Nonetheless I digress. Here is the thought that came to me as we took our own driving tour of the Kibera less than 10 days ago: These “orphan kids” (in the Kibera anyway) are orphaned because of war in neighboring countries like Rwanda I was told. The genocide happened in the 90’s and now the children we see are the result of the Rwandan refugees mixing with other squatters and the Kenyans and literally forming a new community. They interestingly have good body weight, they are mobile and can run, their eyes are clear, their hair is strong and healthy, their clothing is dirty, feet are pretty dirty (like the rest of us walking everywhere), and their teeth appear strong and healthy as they smile and say to me, "Come on, Mama, I need some" gesturing a need for food with fingers to their mouths. Mind you, they do not want my leftover Samosa. They want my western watch and earrings and leather hand bag and the American dollars inside. They know full well that their dusty and impoverished presentation will garner pitty and thus some kind of monetary support from the “Mama” tourists.

But make no mistake - these are the entrepreneurs of the Kibera slum, and they are far wiser, tougher, and educated than the aid agency rumors in the media would indicate. My fear of them was replaced by my amazement of them as survivalists and humans. Oh, I still kept my wallet buried between me and Guled in hiding. You bet.

These "poor", "slum" kids are far more able to survive than any of us here in my town under similar circumstances. The Kibera has developed a civil code of its own, developed businesses and survival systems, and developed protective measures to insulate family and shack. Sure, the survival code has elements that offend our Western (or Eastern for that matter) sense of justice and fairness, but I suppose when your country implodes and you run to a neighboring place for survival, the systems that develop will not mirror white anglo civil justice. Both Hakim and our driver JJ told me that if we walked through the winding alley-type paths of the Kibera, I would be mugged with 100% surety. I was pretty tempted to take up the challenge at one point actually. I laughed about that, saying I had nothing for them to take! Apparently, I just don't think I do. The ingenious entrepreneurs borne of survival are able to find good use out of the most unimaginable (to me) things... like cloth, soles of shoes, metals, buttons, baubles, strings.... and I realized that my civility really has rendered me fairly weak in the survival world.

I applaud Mr. Jackson for taking the time and offering resources to a humanitarian need. The majority of Nairobi money appeared to me to be in the form of humanitarian government aid, NGO's, and private Trusts set up for humanitarian purposes. The indigenous folks live off the crumbs and the administrators of the programs drive BMWs and Mercedes and live in exotic homes. So be it. But what I would think might be a cool experiment is to approach the problem from the viewpoint that these little entrepreneurs are far smarter about some things, including the "business of survival" than they are poor and destitute, and perhaps “The Trump” might consider hosting a few on that TV show he does... “The Apprentice”…? I think that was it.

You can feed a billion meals, or you can feed maybe 200 million meals and take the rest of that money to set up vocational training and a few resources .... and some civil law training. The Kibera entrepreneurs will need that because the code of survival means that if you are hungry, take and eat, with no regard for "rights" in the Western sense.

I am frankly astounded by these young people, rather than feeling pity for their impoverished lives, at least in general terms. I feel momentary bits of pity for me and mine because I don't know that I could survive with such vibrancy. I think I experienced a moment of awareness with a young boy as he put his precious 10 year old face into my window and asked “Mama” for something. I offered my leftover food and water. He laughed, looked up to the sky as he walked following our car, then turned and met my gaze full on and knowingly, and with a chuckle told me, “My stomach is satisfied fully. Mamas are good to me today. I will take the water.” He probably would have taken it if he were able to reach it.

And out of some place that I have determined was respect peppered liberally with Kibera charm, I acquiesced and gave him one of our unopened water bottles… and he accepted.