Spreading awareness - Arthur

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A few days ago we visited the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center and had a sit-down with the director of the hospital. After his lecture we had the opportunity to ask him questions. Shreve asked, 'What is the single most dangerous threat to the health of Tanzania?' And the director replied, 'Financing.' The simplicity of solutions I guess are often marred by our indifference to many of the world's problems. There ARE actually starving kids in Africa. How do you get people to listen? I don't know but I thought I'd ask.

I really don't know what to write about. That and the internet is timed which doesnt help. But now that I'm trying to think of stuff to write about there are a lot of things that anger me. Like the mass indifference to whats actually going on here. When we were visiting a boarding house in Karatu yesterday, the teacher took us to see the classrooms and we met a four year old who was a drug addict. He said that a lot of the kids do drugs becuase it's either too cold to fall asleep, or too dangerous to fall asleep in the streets. She tugged on my pants, and I won't lie, the way she was, I didn't want her to. Be indifferent to that.

There's a lot thats bad here, but that shouln't overshadow the good. Like the kids at the new school - many of them have had very bad lives so far. But when they are at school, they are smiling and willing to learn. In the older stuents you see a focus and a motivation that is for the most part absent in American high schools. Even today, May 27, we played a secondary school futbol team in a local park - they had an energy about them. Y'know. A look in the eye.

My greatest fear up to this point is that I might return home and not do anything to help the kids here. We are graduating NS this year, and in some ways it feels that once we get our diplomas we will leave this project behind. Maybe it is just me and some notion, but I do not want this to happen.

I want to tell people what its really like here, but thats easier said than done... There's an interesting quote in our last AP English read, a novel by Coetzee, 'Age of Iron.' And it goes, "To speak of this one would need the tongue of a God," or something like that. I don't really think I could capture the trip in words. Its something everyone needs to experience for themselves. Its sad that they probably never will.

And, its not that there's only a body of few elite who want to make a difference. I belive that many people do worry about poverty and climate change and these types of issues, but they prioritize. They put their lives and families before these issues because that is what they are obligated to do.

So I think the main issue here is to spread awareness. Original, hmm?

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