Inertia
I have been fantasizing for the past several hours. In my fantasy, I'm crouched down on a sandy concrete floor examining a four year old child, my hands under her chin, feeling for submandibular lymph nodes. I'm wearing khakis and a white tee-shirt. A powerful and hot African sun is streaming through the window behind me, lighting the girl's face. The room is bare save a cot, maybe a tin sink. The roof is tin, too. I look up for a second and spot Mike walking down the hallway in scrubs.
This is what had become of me after listening to Eleanor talk about screening 500+ women for cervical cancer in Kisoro, Uganda where Ke is right now. I called Mike on my way out of the auditorium, still intoxicated with my reverie. Mike the world's biggest idealist and optimist, ever-sympathetic, ever good-doer. He's a nurse, for god's sake, he'll eat this up, I'm thinking, while flipping my phone open to punch in the number that he is on my speed dial. I'm thinking he probably already has dreams even plans to spend months, years in Africa in a godforsaken town with little in the way of electricity or running water. He answers. Let's go to Uganda, I say. What? I have almost pressured speech for a minute or two, describing Eleanor's project, the talk Stephen Lewis gave, wanting to do something important with my life. Mike says: I'm happy you liked the talk so much. But, haven't I told you before that I have this problem with inertia. Besides, what's so wrong about being comfortable? But I'm not comfortable, I try to explain. I feel like I'm not doing anything important. I'm not doing anything like this. But my mental film of the clinic in Uganda and me in khakis is already deflating into a black and white caricature inside a thought bubble drawn on a cartoon.
Everytime I go to these talks, which I used to do much more often, I start daydreaming overly romantic visions of what it would be like to do humanitarian work. On second thought, the way I fantasize about it- it's not humantarian work at all, but self-serving ego-stroking work. Taking my overly fed overly privileged overly educated self into an impoverished starved undereducated community just to give myself something that I can pat myself on the back for, provide myself with something more potent than Ambien so that I can sleep better knowing that I'm doing "good in the world." But then again, who cares? It's work that has to be done, so what if I'm doing it naively, selfishly. So I can try to replace my ridiculously hollywood fantasy with a more politically correct definition of what it means to help developing countries. I can do research, I can read about grassroots projects and sustainability. I can try to cure my ignorance about everything from the politics to the religion to the epidemiology of diseases in Africa. At the end of the day, I will probably not ever go to Uganda, maybe not ever go to Africa at all. Maybe I will read Stephanie Nolan's "28: Stories in Africa." And just become another liability -- another someone who could have done something and didn't really do anything at all.
So, I'm left here sleeplessly blogging this absurd sounding post and wading through jumbled thoughts about facts that I've known and yet been reminded of tonight. Like the diet that Darfur was put on when the UN realized in April of 2006 that they could no longer provide the minimum daily requirement of food for the hungry. Indigenously grown food wasn't available for at least 5 months of that period of time. I had trouble finding what the status is currently, but from the last UNICEF report it seems hunger levels are higher than ever, with UN efforts to get food supplies to many regions stifled by the instability and violence. One blog I found, listed precisely what one could expect to live on per day assuming they got access to food supplies: 1 banana, 1 cup of milk, ½ cup of flour, ½ cup of rice, ¼ cup of lentils, and ½ cup of soybeans. I'm not sure if I feel guiltier for eating so much more than that or for wishing that I could voluntarily restrict myself to a diet that meager. Am I mocking these people's suffering every time I shamefully plot a crash diet to fit into a dress for a wedding.
The thing is, if doing some good is all I'm looking for, I don't need to go to Uganda. And though the Bronx may not be as romantic or exotic as eastern Africa sounds from all the way over here, I have the reality to fact that this is where I am now and I'm not moving anytime too soon. If I need something to do to help me live with myself a little more comfortably, unfortunately for many of my neighbors, there's plenty of work around here. There has been plenty to do for a very long time. So why am I not doing it, then? Inertia? But Mike reminds me, it works two ways. I may be slow to get moving, but once I start, I just keep going. I hope the same will be true for me.
I have been fantasizing for the past several hours. In my fantasy, I'm crouched down on a sandy concrete floor examining a four year old child, my hands under her chin, feeling for submandibular lymph nodes. I'm wearing khakis and a white tee-shirt. A powerful and hot African sun is streaming through the window behind me, lighting the girl's face. The room is bare save a cot, maybe a tin sink. The roof is tin, too. I look up for a second and spot Mike walking down the hallway in scrubs.
This is what had become of me after listening to Eleanor talk about screening 500+ women for cervical cancer in Kisoro, Uganda where Ke is right now. I called Mike on my way out of the auditorium, still intoxicated with my reverie. Mike the world's biggest idealist and optimist, ever-sympathetic, ever good-doer. He's a nurse, for god's sake, he'll eat this up, I'm thinking, while flipping my phone open to punch in the number that he is on my speed dial. I'm thinking he probably already has dreams even plans to spend months, years in Africa in a godforsaken town with little in the way of electricity or running water. He answers. Let's go to Uganda, I say. What? I have almost pressured speech for a minute or two, describing Eleanor's project, the talk Stephen Lewis gave, wanting to do something important with my life. Mike says: I'm happy you liked the talk so much. But, haven't I told you before that I have this problem with inertia. Besides, what's so wrong about being comfortable? But I'm not comfortable, I try to explain. I feel like I'm not doing anything important. I'm not doing anything like this. But my mental film of the clinic in Uganda and me in khakis is already deflating into a black and white caricature inside a thought bubble drawn on a cartoon.
Everytime I go to these talks, which I used to do much more often, I start daydreaming overly romantic visions of what it would be like to do humanitarian work. On second thought, the way I fantasize about it- it's not humantarian work at all, but self-serving ego-stroking work. Taking my overly fed overly privileged overly educated self into an impoverished starved undereducated community just to give myself something that I can pat myself on the back for, provide myself with something more potent than Ambien so that I can sleep better knowing that I'm doing "good in the world." But then again, who cares? It's work that has to be done, so what if I'm doing it naively, selfishly. So I can try to replace my ridiculously hollywood fantasy with a more politically correct definition of what it means to help developing countries. I can do research, I can read about grassroots projects and sustainability. I can try to cure my ignorance about everything from the politics to the religion to the epidemiology of diseases in Africa. At the end of the day, I will probably not ever go to Uganda, maybe not ever go to Africa at all. Maybe I will read Stephanie Nolan's "28: Stories in Africa." And just become another liability -- another someone who could have done something and didn't really do anything at all.
So, I'm left here sleeplessly blogging this absurd sounding post and wading through jumbled thoughts about facts that I've known and yet been reminded of tonight. Like the diet that Darfur was put on when the UN realized in April of 2006 that they could no longer provide the minimum daily requirement of food for the hungry. Indigenously grown food wasn't available for at least 5 months of that period of time. I had trouble finding what the status is currently, but from the last UNICEF report it seems hunger levels are higher than ever, with UN efforts to get food supplies to many regions stifled by the instability and violence. One blog I found, listed precisely what one could expect to live on per day assuming they got access to food supplies: 1 banana, 1 cup of milk, ½ cup of flour, ½ cup of rice, ¼ cup of lentils, and ½ cup of soybeans. I'm not sure if I feel guiltier for eating so much more than that or for wishing that I could voluntarily restrict myself to a diet that meager. Am I mocking these people's suffering every time I shamefully plot a crash diet to fit into a dress for a wedding.
The thing is, if doing some good is all I'm looking for, I don't need to go to Uganda. And though the Bronx may not be as romantic or exotic as eastern Africa sounds from all the way over here, I have the reality to fact that this is where I am now and I'm not moving anytime too soon. If I need something to do to help me live with myself a little more comfortably, unfortunately for many of my neighbors, there's plenty of work around here. There has been plenty to do for a very long time. So why am I not doing it, then? Inertia? But Mike reminds me, it works two ways. I may be slow to get moving, but once I start, I just keep going. I hope the same will be true for me.
posted by tami at 1:44 AM
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