Black Magic for Brunch

I can't do anything for you today. There's a nausea uprising.

I read these words this morning:

"I have friends who watched everyone they loved violently humiliated and then slaughtered right before their childhood eyes.

I've got friends who believe that when you are a positive person the universe will provide you with positivity and good.

One of my friends, the most kind and gentle person I've ever met who lost everything, is laying in a hospital bed right now with a potentially deadly disease that doesn't exist in the countries where my 'The Gift' friends float around smiling in the sun.

There is no gift, there is no positive force.

There is good luck or bad luck - decided for you at the moment of conception.

History is an unrelenting two faced cunt."

- Facebook.

Armed with a vivid imagination and a sharp mind, Matilda took a stand to change her destiny.

The tsunami wipes out the just and the unjust alike. And in the deepest parts of the ocean where they now lie, it is dark. Where your agony is, it is worse than black. It is memory, it is seeing in vivid colours, of your mother's dress, the mahogany blood, his wild brown eyes. It is excruciating pain that
should put the whole world under a dark grey cloud, but instead unfurls it under blazing blue skies and sucks you in while half the globe heads out to brunch.

"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you...

There was once a little boy, whose head was found in one corner of the reserve, his clavicle another.

Two young girls, thought to be in a peaceful Autumn slumber under a giant Victorian gum tree, kept asleep by the ropes around their necks.

A woman so fierce she kept standing up. Crawled around for six hours, while she was ripped apart and beaten over and over and over with a pole, a chair. Over and over and over. Until her brain lost to a large rock.

"...because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places... 

In this western world, if you focus on a car park being there, it will be there for you. Across the artificial borders, under the same sky, sharing the same oceans, a child wills a cup to move. Matilda had a vivid imagination and a mind as sharp as the knife the child wills to be withdrawn with her eyes. She stares down time, begging it to stop. To reverse. But she can't. And you roll happily into your parallel park, barely negotiating any other traffic in your tree-lined school zone street.

"...Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."

- Roald Dahl

I'm consumed and blinded by you right now, but I'll be back tomorrow.

White Interlude.

Before I head into Part #2 of the 'Booty and the Bomb' blog, I wanted to introduce you to one of my favourite writers, and a concept known as the White Saviour Industrial Complex.

In March this year, just more than a week after the Kony2012 video went viral, Teju Cole tweeted a seven-part explanation of this complex, and took an articulate and witty lead on the backlash against this video made by Invisible Children.

In a follow-up to my blog about child sponsorship (you may recognise it as the one about my expanding "Kanina Kanene"), and in the lead-up to a blog about Ugandan politics and the media (and a safari which may see me bump into some hippos) I am copy-and-pasting this American-Nigerian writer's definition of this complex as some food for thought.

"1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex.

2- The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.

3- The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.

4- This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah.

5- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.

6- Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that.

7- I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly."  **

My thoughts about the irresponsibility of the Kony2012 campaign, could fill 100 pages. Its inaccuracies, its lack of consultation with Ugandan people, its promotion of the justification of militarisation in a nation whose democracy is already under threat from such ideas. And I whole-heartedly agree with Teju Cole about the way Westerners support militarisation and conflict in areas such as Haiti, but will fill their do-good egos by donating when there is an earthquake in the region. However, while acknowledging Cole is mainly pointing out the hypocrisy of it all, I wonder if (in this particular White Saviour argument) he fails to recognise the separation of long-term and immediate needs and the value of small community-driven grass-roots approaches.

My questions are:

1. Are all of our attempted contributions to the smoothing out of inequalities in the world, merely selfish acts in the pursuit of a "big emotional experience" to validate our privilege?

2. If it makes a positive difference, does it matter if part of the motivation was a selfish?

3. Do all acts of kindness carry a selfish element, in our desire for the reward of seeing a smile on someone's face and feeling their gratitude? How do we give without receiving, and do we have to to make a positive contribution to the world around us?

4. How does the everyday person, who does not have time to research the political / social / cultural context of every nation in the world, make a responsible and educated contribution?

5. Many volunteers who come to Uganda, and other parts of the world, spend the majority of their time travelling and simply playing with children. There are no doubt more productive ways for them to contribute to the world around them, and an element of them simply looking for an opportunity to 'grow as an individual' and put something on their CV. But if they make a connection, learn something about human rights and wealth distribution inequalities, become more open-minded and open-hearted human beings, and have a broader perception of their place in the world, is it worth it?

6. How do people living in the developing world tell their stories, from their own perspective, and have them heard, when Invisible Children can flood Twitter while these people often don't speak English or even have a light globe?

7. How do we do a better job of educating people not just about the world's needs, but the reasons behind those needs? And if Robinah is one of the world's 'needs', and money and advocacy would be more effectively directed at the source of why she doesn't have a pen or a pair of shoes, do we ignore her immediate needs?

8. And most importantly - since I am ego-driven, self-conscious and use technology starting with 'i' (which explains my perception about where the centre of the universe is) - do you think I am a victim / perpetrator of Cole's Complex?! :)



**http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/