Thoughts of Tanzania

[Nyakahanga Designated District Hospital, Karagwe District, Tanzania]

 Today I was continuing to lecture about the AIDS epidemic and specifically how it is playing out in Sub-Saharan Africa. The crisis involves economic issues, infrastructure, working with local customs and traditions, and a number of other factors.

This made me think of my brief one month visit to a more rural part of northern Tanzania, the Karagwe District in the Kagera Region. I was assisting with the guidance and instruction of students participating in a research-oriented study abroad project with an emphasis on community health. Naturally I thought of the hospital (the entrance to the ground shown above) that was at the center of much of what we did.

Mixed in with the lecture was a discussion of the economic challenges posed by having otherwise healthy, working-age adults to sick to work or in too many cases deceased because of diseases like AIDS. And then there is the social and personal cost. All of which is represented by the larger number of AIDS orphans in hard hit areas of Africa.

Having met some of those sick parents as well as children orphaned by AIDS, and greatly helped by organizations such as the local AIDS Control Project, discussing this and related topics took on a much different feel and tone that went beyond the basic academic analysis and reflection.

But my thoughts aren't just of poverty and disease, which is a part of every human community, but of the amazing people I had to good fortune to meet and the perspective I was able to cultivate way from the Western cultural and media bubble that even season travelers often fail to escape. I am wondering about what changes may have come in the couple of years since I was there, and what has remained the same. Whether the dreams and wishes we heard about are still alive in the hearts of those who shared them, and what the future hold for the communities we visited. It is too easy to generalize or romanticize about far away places and memories, so I leave you with footage that may portend that future from one of the schools we visited.


[Children from a school in the Karagwe District of Tanzania.]
Be well.

Happy Diwali! We need a New Enlightenment

[Pretty lights]

Yeah, I know, I just did a holiday post a couple of days ago. But this one is a festival of lights from India known as Diwali, so that means a pic candles lighting up the darkness.

This is a common theme of fall and winter holidays, marking the growing length of night and in the northern hemisphere the increasing cold. Whatever there other religious and cultural significance, Chanukah later this month and Bodhi Day, Christmas, Kwanza, and the rest in December also celebrate the theme of light shining in the deepest dark, hope in the midst of shadows of despair, and wisdom revealing itself in the heart of ignorance.

In other words, it was a way for people in a pre-industrial agrarian society to acknowledge and transform the situation they were facing each fall and winter, when having shelter and enough to eat was more important than ever. Prior to gas and later electric lamps, the world was truly dark when long nights fell save for your candles and lanterns here and there.

Certainly the whole "hope and wisdom" angle is still something those of us in the age of perpetual artificial light can acknowledge. And the value of light itself may still have special meaning for individuals who are still impacted by the change of season, like people suffering from seasonal affective disorder. I am not a SAD sufferer myself but I know one or two people who are.

One of the things we have ignored so well over the last century or two is that we are a part of our physical, ecological, and social environments. We evolved within them as a species, we develop and live within them as individuals. We do not exist apart from them.

I don't just mean we can't live without them, which is true enough. I mean that who we are, biologically and socially, is to a significant degree dependent on these environments. The belief that we can alter these environments to suit whatever our cultural values or collective desires dictate without real consequences is absurd and dangerous.

There are many ways our species, in either ignorance or arrogance, has altered how we exist by altering our environment. Some such as global warming and the destruction of biodiversity, get lots of press but relatively little serious commitment by nation-states and the globalized politico-economic systems to which modern nations are bound. Others, such as the affect of being taken off of a natural light cycle, are on the verge of breaking into the broader popular consciousness.

I don't know about you, but I dear reader think we could use some wisdom and inspiration. A new Enlightenment that combines the best of traditional cultures, modernism, and post-modern critique, drawing on all sources of human compassion and insight.

We need that kind of Light, and we need it now. Learn how to shine and how to see the light in others. That's what I wishing you for any and all of these holidays.

Be well.