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31.1.10

The High Cost of Low Prices


I realize that this post is long overdue, and I apologize for that oversight. That said, it's time I gave you some concrete information about the companies' human rights records and what code I shop by. For those of you who want to take a step to more sustainable shopping that will help your dollars go to support a better tomorrow for not only America, but for the countries that supply our goods.

I've tried to draw these into a step by step approach, but you should always do your own research, double check my facts, and determine what products need to change in your household. For me, it was coffee, tea and sugar, my clothing, and shoes. You may find that you need to put a larger emphasis on clothing or another product.

Here are some steps to take with your daily/weekly shopping for a better today, and a brighter tomorrow.

1. Buy local. Supporting your local businesses means that you have actual interaction with the person who owns it, you know directly where your money is going, and often, you are paying the direct paycheck of a person you know. For Wacoans, that means your only option for coffee/tea is pretty much Common Grounds, or the lesser known World Cup Cafe (run by Mission Waco).

2. Do some preliminary research. One of the sites I primarily used last year when I started to research companies was Green America (formerly Co-Op America) Responsible Shopper Guide. Since then, numerous watchdog websites have popped up with information on companies, such as Free2Work, which is specifically targeted at slave labor goods, and Change.org, which is much much larger in scope, but contains numerous articles/blog posts about the ethical behavior of various large monopolies. The recently discovered (by me) SweatFree.org is also a good resource.

3. Look for the fair trade label on goods that are commonly tainted by slave labor. These goods include coffee, tea, chocolate, cotton materials, sugar, etc. Fair Trade Certified guarantees that labor practices are done in an ethical manner, that the workers producing the goods are paid a living wage, and are not working an obscene number of hours in the day. Fair Trade, is, unfortunately more expensive, but a couple extra dollars is well worth it for me to be able to drink my coffee with a good peace of mind too. If the fair trade label isn't there, research the company. Some companies have fair trade practices, but can't afford to certify (it takes a lot of money, unfortunately, to get inspectors out there and get it certified). Republic of Tea, for one, practices completely fair trade, but only has the label on a few of their product lines (Common Grounds carries this tea, by the way).

4. Avoid companies that have monopolies on the market. This means, yes, Wal-Mart is out. If you walk into a Wal-Mart anywhere in America, it will be hard to swing a dead cat without hitting goods made by slave labor. It's about time I got on my soapbox and talked about the "always low prices" company, for at least a little bit. I have not been inside a WalMart in 3 years, and I don't plan to return. Why?

-Wal-Mart has been known to take every step they can to prevent workers from unionizing.
-Wal-Mart was investigated in 2007 by the Human Rights Watch for their labor practices in supply factories overseas. They are the only major company to have this happen.
-Wal-Mart, though having been a company on the mainstay of the American mind for 40-some years, only just formed a human rights committee in 2008, only after they were investigated by the HRW. Since then, they have stopped production at only one company, in South America, but its supplier factories in China, India, and other Southeast Asia companies are still up and running just fine.
-Wal-Mart has documented cases of child labor in its factories overseas.
-Wal-Mart has fired executives for being "too aggressive" over enforcing labor/working condition violations in its Central American factories.

Wal-Mart's been extremely slow to move on any of these violations, and continues to carry goods produced by child and forced labor at their stores because Americans demand their "always low prices." They also refuse transparency about their product lines, so you never know completely whether or not the company's telling the truth about fixing their problem because all the checks and balances are internal.

Other large companies are no angels: Target almost exclusively carries Mossimo, a brand known to use child and sweat shop labor in overseas factories. Nike has been embroiled in huge human rights violations for years, and have been extremely slow to move to change their policies.

The State Department recently released an official report of goods most like tainted by child labor, listed by country. Unfortunately, no companies are named, but it gives you a good idea that if your cotton comes from Uzbekistan, chances are it's a tainted good (IKEA sources a lot of their cotton from there, by the way). Nestle, also, uses cocoa sourced from areas known to use child labor; Kraft has extremely poor labor records, etc.

5. Stick to your guns. It's going to get expensive. It's going to get frustrating when you have a craving for something. There's a reason I put a picture of the little kids from Mypadu on the inside of my wallet - I remember that the human being on the other end of the supply line is far more important than how much I want a nice bubbly Coke right then.

I do not have all the answers by any stretch of the imagination. One thing that has helped me is purchasing the Better World Shopping Guide which is, also, by no means extensive, but gives you a general idea of what to get. It's been a life saver when checking what companies to buy from in the store if I couldn't recall what brand to get.

Essentially, what this boils down to is transparency between the customer and the company. How quick is the company to solve a violation? How willing is the company to say, "here are our labor practices, come look at our supply line"? How is the company making an effort to respond to human rights around the world? And frankly, if a company has a monopoly on the market, if a company is so huge that they can have a shoplifting policy for only charging customers who take a certain amount or more, then it makes it clear that their goal is about the zero-sum, dollar amount at the end of the day.

Human rights are not operated in a zero sum. Do your research, put your money toward companies that aren't just about the bottom line. If we do that, maybe they'll stay in business long enough to threaten the big guns.

Thanks for reading this rather scatter-brained post. I hope this points you in the right direction for some things, and I look forward to seeing big changes in the way companies operate around the world.

29.1.10

The Myth of Redemptive Violence: James Cameron's Avatar

There are occasions when everyday life takes over my patterns of thought when it comes to blog entries. This is one of those times. There is very little of India in this entry, but it's there, if only in the background. This entry may go beyond the purview of this particular blog, but hey, it's still a thought, and I appreciate your readership. :) Now, read on!

For those of you who know me, you know I like movies. For those of you who don't know me, well, I like movies. So much so that I regret that my undergraduate college didn't have a film studies degree and that I learned too late that I could minor in film studies at Baylor during my graduate degree. I have been fortunate, however, to have some brief study in film over the course of my years, and consider myself to have pretty good taste.

I was sad, however, a few weeks ago when Avatar won a Golden Globe for best picture-drama. The reason? Now I'd have to see it. I make a point of seeing the best picture winners at the very least. Last year, I had the special privilege of seeing Slumdog Millionaire when it was in special review screenings held by Fox Searchlight (one of the reasons I've so glad I live close to Austin). Ask me about it sometime; it's one of my favorite stories to tell. But I digress--I make an effort to see the front runners, and Avatar winning the Golden Globe puts it in the front-runner spot. (This policy also means that I need to see The Hangover and The Hurt Locker, too).

Anyway, I tell you all this for a specific reason: to get my prejudice about the movie out there. I saw it tonight out of obligation to my own standard of keeping up on what's being put out in the world of film, and not out of any actual desire to see the film. Frankly, it looked like a ridiculous action film with a rehashed plot. And I warn you, this post will contain spoilers about Avatar, and if you don't want those, well, wait until my next entry for reading material, then.

I will say this: Avatar is a beautifully done movie. Far from a masterpiece--it plays to the 3D aspect far too much, and will have trouble functioning as 2D on a DVD--but the CG effects are fantastic and there were several points when I was amazed by the detail they put into it. Now, if they'd taken that same fine toothed comb to the script, we might not be having this discussion...

The plot of Avatar can be summed up in a simple statement: "War bad; Nature good." or "Imperialism/Corporatism bad; Communing with 'Mother Earth' good." Essentially, it's Pocahontas, but with blue people on an alien planet 5 years from Earth. Got a basic idea of the plot? Good, because now I'm going to deconstruct it, so to speak [for those of you unfamiliar with the plot of Pocahontas, here's a quick summary].

I was following along with the quite neatly predictable plot, recognizing the twists before they came (like ya do), when a move on the part of the Na'vi--aka, the Natives, who were quite clearly supposed to resemble a combination between Native Americans and African, right down to the long black hair, braids and bone structure--took me by surprise because it didn't seem to fit with the philosophy of the movie as it had been set up.

Previously in the film, we're shown that the Na'vi, through their connection with Mother Earth, respect the balance in life. For each animal they kill, they thank it and say a kind of 'death rite' over its body. They develop communal relationships with the animals around them, and talk of not taking more than they need, giving back to the earth, and essentially living in the most-environmentally friendly, green hippie way possible. Groovy. So, while many of these people are hunters (and indeed, hunter is pretty much the highest ranking you could get in the tribe), they seem essentially nonviolent in that they rarely kill each other or humans.

Or so it seems. In contrast to the brash and violent Marine-gone-corporate-stooge, the Na'vi seem positively peaceful, until you think back and remember that our main female was going to kill off our main male character until Ewya--Mother Earth--gave her a sign not to. The Na'vi are violent in their own ways, which is why the final battle seems so correct and yet so disturbing.

When it is revealed that the corporation plans to go through with destroying the Na'vi's home, killing men, women and children in an act of wanton destruction, the argument is made (by our good white guys who made friends with the natives): "They're people, too! Don't you see that?" Of course, the Marine and corporate leader, blinded by their prejudice, see them as nothing more than roaches, an infestation keeping them from getting to what they want--a mineral called (and I swear I am not making this up) "unobtainium." (Seriously, Jim? You're taking the metaphor a bit too literally there. Ugh.).

Anyway, up until this point, I'm with them--yeah, the Na'vi are people! I can buy this. I love the idea that they have gotten to know these people who are so utterly foreign to begin with, and have now become friends with them. It is, indeed, what we are called to do--love our neighbor by getting to know them, a repeated theme on this blog. So when Sigourney Weaver's character makes the argument to protect the Na'vi solely on the basis that they are humans with something fantastic to contribute to our understanding of how life works, I'm with her. I cheered silently and went, "Yeah! Down with Imperialism!"

However, the big action-y battle scene at the end undermines that entire rhetoric. When the bad guy Marine destroys Hometree, as they call it, the Na'vi get mad--as anyone would--and our hero, good ol' Whiteboy Marine, comes in to save the day, to rescue the natives in a glorious bloody battle.

As the animals went up against the big bad machines, and the natives took down men with guns with simple bows and arrows (that somehow doubled in strength in the course of a day...hmm), I couldn't help but feel a sense of unease.

What about these nameless marines? Sure, they're an invading force. Sure, they destroyed Hometree. But is balance really going to be restored by destroying so many lives? From the appearance of the movie, no death rites are said over the fallen Marines, or if they are, we're not privy to such information. These marines, who also have families, who are also sons and daughters, who may have sons and daughters of their own, who are just like the Na'vi in so many ways, are allowed to become the entirely abstracted enemy, just as the Na'vi were to them.

It's a philosophy of redemptive violence that fails under closer examination. While it's viscerally exciting to see the Na'vi eliminate the invading force from their home, it's a hollow victory: thousands upon thousands of lives are destroyed, probably unnecessarily so. Violence is still the answer to violence, and regardless of what good ol' Jim Cameron may wish us to believe in the end, I can't help but think that those Marines who died, who become threatened prisoners of war, who were forced off of Pandora, are also people.

Are their lives somehow forfeit because the Na'vi are somehow more pure? Because they are a more primitive people? Because they hunt with bow and arrow instead of gun and bullet? That's a dangerous argument to make because it gives the Na'vi an excuse for their actions, it gives them the excuse to use violence, as though the lives of those others that they are fighting are somehow worthless. It allows them to make the same mistake the Marine and Greedy Americans made: thinking of the other person as merely an object, a force to be stopped, and not a member of a community, not a functioning being with eyes, ears, hands and feet not all that unlike one's own.

It reverses the actions for peace, and knocks everything out of balance. The Marines who died were simply obeying orders, and in the end, a message that was meant to erase national (read: planetary) lines and boundaries simply redraws them because rather than living peaceably with the white man, the Na'vi remove them from their land entirely, with the exception of a few nice ones. In reality, no one really works with each other, and there's no great bridge between cultures that gets built. The Na'vi stay in Pandora, and the Americans (and it's very specifically all white, or white-looking Americans in the film, at least on the bad guy side, quite purposefully) go back to the "no longer green" Earth.

So, in attempting to maintain their culture and balance, the Na'vi evidently entirely forget it, and forget that the Marines are people too, and we get a hollow, surface level victory that doesn't stand up to closer scrutiny.

Recognizing that people are people also requires recognizing that the ones you're fighting against are people too, and violence solves nothing, and cannot be redemptive because it fails to recognize the enemy as human, something most films have yet to grasp.

Thanks for reading. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

24.1.10

Sometimes I think sittin' on trains...

It's about time I told some actual stories from our India trip, because, after all, this is what this blog is for (to some extent, at least). This first is about our first train ride, and bear with me on the descriptions - I'm not the best storyteller, but I want to describe this experience.

Three years ago, when I was traveling across Europe for a couple weeks after my semester abroad, my dad and I decided to take a train ride from Paris to Rome. It was a 12 hour ride from the morning to the evening on a Sunday. I sat by the window, read Lewis' The Four Loves, listened to Dropkick Murphy's (seriously, "Green Fields of France" takes on new meaning when you're actually looking at green fields in France), and watched the scenery as we passed by - I saw the Alps, too! Overall, it was a very comfortable, almost relaxing train ride, not unlike a road trip.

This was my one experience with long-term train travel. Sure, I'd ridden subways and such before, but spending 12 hours on a train was quite the experience.

Needless to say, when we got our itinerary a few days before the trip and I saw that we had a train ride starting at 9PM one evening and supposedly ending at 8PM the next evening, I figured there was some sort of typo. Surely we're not spending 23 hours on a train? How in the world could a train ride take that long? India's not that big.

Oh but it can. I discovered, somewhat to my dismay, that yes, indeed, our train ride was scheduled to be that long. Having never seen a sleeper car outside of Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited, that was what I thought it might be like: something between a moving hotel room and the Hogwart's Express.

Boy, was I wrong.

We arrived at Kolkata's famous Howrah train station at around 8:30-9:00 at night for an apparently 10 or 11PM train. I'm still not entirely sure when our train ride was supposed to start, but I know we didn't start on the time initially told. This would be the theme of numerous train trips to come. Luckily, with Howrah being a larger station, we would stop for far longer than if we were boarding at one of the smaller stations - around 10 minutes versus just 2.

Another thing I was wrong about was that trains like the ones featured in The Darjeeling Limited actually exist. If they do, I never saw them.

Sure, the outside of the train resembles Wes Anderson's vision pretty well - that strangely blue color that only India gets the right shade of, the fading stenciled writing, and the ricketiness that screams to the person used to efficient London, New York and Boston subways "Oh god, I'm getting on THAT?" But that is where the similarities end.

We were told that we had two sleeper bunks (meaning sections) to our team, which was good because it meant we were all together. Being alone, however, was not about to happen.

The way that second class sleeper cars are set up on these trains is that there is one narrow aisle running down a side of the train, with "bunks" on one side. In one bunk, there are six beds - two set of three high. When all the bunks are down, it is nearly impossible to sit up, especially if you are a tall American. Across the aisle from these six bunks (which go width-wise on the train), there are two bunks going length wise, completing the entire bunk with the capacity to sleep 8 people. Our group was able to fit into 2 sections, with a couple of strangers in the aisle across.

It is certainly no Hogwart's Express.

Everything in these trains is blue. The beds are made of a blue plastic material with God-knows-what for padding. The walls are painted a strange pale blue and the frames on the windows are a chipping darker blue. I was glad the blue is my favorite color; I might have been sickened by it otherwise.

We stored the luggage under the seats, across the aisle, and some people slept with theirs as a pillow. Realizing that I had just been in the hospital that day, I figured motion sickness would not be a good thing to add, so I bummed a Dramamine off my friend Chase, and spent the next 20 minutes attempting to take it. (Side note: I have trouble swallowing pills because I never have to take them. So I broke it into little pieces and dissolved it with water, making the pill taking experiences briefly disgusting, but ensuring that I swallow the whole thing. Chase and Althea both made fun of me and tried to coach me on how to take it...).

Between taking the pill and it taking effect, some of the girls returned from their adventures to find the bathroom on the train with some bad news: They had no toilets.

Yes, you read that correctly: The bathrooms had no toilets. I was told to expect this, but I was not expecting it on a moving train. Althea, having drunk most of a Kingfisher Beer in an effort to loosen herself up before the train ride, asked me if I would, before going to sleep, agree to accompany her to the bathroom. I figured, since I'd just chugged half my water in taking my drugs, I'd probably have to go anyway. And sure enough, I was right.

I'm a little disappointed that none of my friends have posted a picture of the toilets, but they were, as literally as I can describe it, a hole. There was a grimy sink on one side, and a hole in the floor with two footstep shaped things on either side, ostensibly for women to stand on. Most ominously were the two metal bars on the wall much like you find in wheelchair stalls in the states. I'll spare you the details, but using that particular kind of bathroom was quite the balancing act. As was said numerous times throughout the trip, you just sort of had to close your eyes and trust that everything was okay...and not think about what you were stepping in.

Germaphobes would not survive well in India.

Soon after our bathroom adventures, I fell into a sleep which was broken a couple of points throughout the night by the discovery that the window at my head was broken, and thus kept creeping open. Having not brought a blanket with me, I layered my socks, curled up as best I could under my winter coat (I am so glad I didn't leave it in South Dakota like I'd been thinking!). Sometime around 3AM, I would guess, I fell into a very deep sleep, during which I dreamed about falling through the toilet hole and breaking my leg on the train tracks below us.

I woke up naturally at around 8:30 in the morning to discover several of my teammates already up and about. As I'm a very light sleeper normally, I was amazed that the sun had come up, breakfast had been served and people had walked around me, sat on the end of my bunk, and talked loudly without waking me up. Dramamine works wonders, apparently. My friend Chase commented that he'd woken up maybe an hour before and I hadn't moved. Thank God.

Now was the hard part, or so I thought. For the night, I could just take a drug and pass the time by sleeping. Now was the day long ride enclosed in yet another metal tube, having to find ways to occupy ourselves. As I had the lower bunk, I naturally sat up and took up my spot by the window for the majority of the train ride, giving it up when I wanted to engage in conversation more than stare out the window.

Staring out the window may seem like a boring way to pass the time, but for me, as someone who prefers to sit back and watch things happen a lot of the time, sitting by a window for 4 or 5 hours was the perfect way to pass the day. I could see every stop, watch the mountains and fog grow and fade, see the workers in the fields, the textile workers laying out and dying their fabrics by the river, get surprised every time a train passed on the opposite track, and feel the wind on my face as we rode along. It is not something I want to do every single day, but if I could do that once a month or so, I think it would be a solid reminder of the diversity of human life, and God's beauty in creation.

This is not to say that things inside the train weren't interesting. The aisle was an almost constant flow of people, many of them vendors (official and non-official) who would walk by like the vendors at American baseball games, only instead of yelling "Come get your hot dogs here!" they were yelling things like "Bread! Omellete! Bread! Omelet! Chai! Coffee! Chai!" in their Indian accents, often making it hard to understand precisely what was being said. When the "Bread! Omelet!" guy came by the first time, either Erica or Althea thought he was saying "Bread! I'm late! Bread! I'm late!" like the rabbit in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

The train was never quiet as a result, but after spending my previous travel time on an eerily quiet plane and being introduced to the noise of Kolkata, I couldn't help but feel that the noise of the train, the people, and the hustle and bustle was something so completely Indian that I dared not ask for anything else.

We rode on three more trains throughout the trip, but the way our group bonded, relaxed and adjusted to being in India on this first train ride was something I think none of us would trade for any other experience. It pushed us, brought us down a few notches, and helped us, eventually, to understand the way India works - it's a hustle and bustle and sometimes a loud, stressful time, but in the end, you get to where you needed to be, often as a different person than you were before.

______
Photo Credits: Bunk shot is from Becca Masterjohn, featuring our team leader, Colleen Watson. Aisle shot is from Lindley Henderson. Window shot is my own.

21.1.10

Borrowed

Jesus told him, "If you want to be perfect, go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." - Matthew 19:21
A few months back, I was talking with my friend Chase about what would be hardest to give up if we decided to take Jesus' words to the rich man (found in Matthew and Luke) completely seriously and literally.

For both of us, the answer was "my library."

I, as an English and Theology/Philosophy student, have accumulated quite the library. I could reasonably say that it - next to my roommate's and my DVD collection - is the most valuable thing I own. I have a first edition of "The Four Loves" by CS Lewis, several different editions of the same books, and, at the beginning of this semester, two sets of five-shelf bookshelves full to overflowing - the space under my nightstand was also filled with books, the area at the foot of my bed had a pile of papers and books, and the spot next to the chair I'm currently sitting in was piled with books - about five high in three stacks.

To put it mildly, I have a lot of stuff.

In fact, I documented it today.


And this was the state of my desk when I woke up this morning:



Today, I decided to do something about it.

I started taking books off the shelves in an effort to reorganize them, and then realized that I needed to take a step a bit more drastic. I needed to get rid of my stuff.

The desk was the first step. I discovered that I had piles of papers from 2008, unopened cell phone bills from 2 years ago (don't worry, I pay my bills online), and numerous notes and pieces of paper with library call numbers, old phone numbers and random bits of information written on them. Remarkably, I sorted through the piles without a single paper cut, and soon had a massive bag to throw out:

I then tackled the closet, which had been bothering me for a while. I used the 6 month rule: if you haven't worn it in six months, it goes. At the end of that, I had a considerable pile of clothes:


The next part was the shelves - the two towering five shelf bookshelves, full to overflowing with books collected over four years of high school, four years of college and two years of graduate school.

I had to ask myself a tough question: "Why do I have this book?" Or as my friend Caroline put it: "Do you have this just to be pretentious, or do you really enjoy the book?"

Out went Viriginia Woolf, James Joyce, and Shakespeare (Honestly, have I opened "Merchant of Venice" in two years? No.). Most of my fantasy literature stayed: Harry Potter, CS Lewis, Tolkien and L'Engle collections. Whether or not a book was "culturally relevant" was not a criteria - it was a simple matter of asking myself, "Why do I have this book?" and if I couldn't answer reasonably (as in, "I own it because I enjoy it, I seriously plan on reading it, or it is relevant to my field of contemporary British young adult fantasy literature."), then out it went.

Soon, I had a pile of "give away/sell" much larger than than my pile of "keep."

I have less "stuff" now than I did before. While I haven't quite given up those things that mean the most to me - I still own my first edition of "The Four Loves" that I bought from a rare books dealer a year ago - I have made a step toward removing the amount of clutter and "stuff" from my life that was clogging me up and making me lose track of what was really important.

In the village of Mypadu, an entire family's possessions were on shelves lining the walls of a room smaller than the one I sleep in. And yet, I found them happy to share, happy to give of themselves and their meagerness for their visitors.

That is the true nature of hospitality, the true nature of loving one's neighbor.

Would I be able to extend that same love? Would I be able to hand out those things I find precious, or those things that I have been finding comfort in to help out my neighbor? The call that Jesus gives - "If anyone should take your coat, give him your cloak as well" - I feel is a call to realize that everything we have is not our own.

We are living on borrowed time, in borrowed rooms, with borrowed air.

I have spent way too much time collecting, hoarding, and not letting myself breathe. Materialism - not in the Gnostic sense that our bodies are worth nothing and the soul is all that matters, but in the sense that material things could actually provide some kind of comfort - has long been a stumbling block for me, and for, I would guess, many of my fellow Americans.

We are told, "Buy this; it will make you happy!" We see smiling people on the commercials on TV, and think, "If I have that, I can be happy." And so we accumulate more and more stuff, without ever stopping to think: "Wait, do I actually enjoy this?"

I challenge you to think about what is causing clutter in your life. What "stuff" is giving you comfort? What is preventing you from breathing?
_____________

After all that work, I have an announcement to make.

One month from today (the 21st), I will be turning 24 years old, officially entering my mid-twenties. I want to start my 24th year of life off right, and I have a somewhat drastic way to do that.

I don't want any presents.

For the first time in 24 years of life, I don't want a birthday present.

Wait, let me rephrase.

I don't want you to spend your money on me. If you want to give in honor my birthday, give to someone who needs it. I am asking that my friends and family to take this step with me in de-cluttering not only my personal world, but the world around us by not giving me more stuff.

As it is my 24th birthday, I ask you to give just $24 to do some good in the world. If you choose to donate in my name, please donate to either World Vision, Blood:Water Mission, or Faceless International. Take some time to research these great organizations, each working to make a difference in the developing countries of the world.

More stuff is not what we need - giving of our time, our resources, and ourselves is what is called. I took a step toward that today by purging my excess stuff; please continue this walk with me.

18.1.10

We don't know you, but we know best.

Back in the 1920s, George Orwell (alias of Brit Eric Arthur Blair), lived and worked in Burma (what is now an area of India) as an Imperial officer and agent of the British police. A few years after his return, he wrote several essays on his experience as a white man in Burma, which are an insightful read into the times and experience of the British empire in India - if you are ever able to get your hands on a collection of them, please do. The particular collection I own is a British edition containing essays from across Orwell's career - from his early writing career to Burma to his return and purposeful life as a homeless man in Europe.

While in India, Orwell's essys kept coming to mind. During my hospital stay, flashes from Orwell's experience in a French hospital (captured in the essay "How the Poor Die") came to the forefront. While driving past slums and ramshackle houses in Kolkata, "The Spike" surfaced.

Most poignantly, however, was the morning we met an Elephant.

In the collection of Orwell essays that I own, the title essay - "Shooting an Elephant" - is the reason I bought the book. It is probably the most anthologized Orwell essay that exists as it is accessible, tells an interesting story, and has implications that reach far beyond itself. In this essay, Orwell tells about one incident that happened to him while in Burma, one that he says was "a tiny incident in itself, but it gave [him] a better glimpse ... of the real nature of imperialism - the real motives for which despotic governments act." What is that motive? We see the answer in the story: An elephant breaks free from his trainer and goes rampaging through the village. It destroys a truck, some fruit stalls, and, in an act of uncontrolled "must" (we would say that the elephant was in heat), kills a man by grinding him into the ground.

Upon realizing the elephant may be dangerous, Orwell exchanges his small Winchester rifle for one specifically designed for killing elephants. This alerts the villagers to the idea that something exciting might happen, and eventually a crowd begins following Orwell as he goes to the paddies where the elephant has settled. Orwell compares this to the way an English crowd might follow if something exciting was happening in their town. Orwell, however, knows that what he plans to do and what the crowd expects him to do are two distinct actions - and mutually exclusive ones at that. He merely has the rifle to defend himself should the elephant prove dangerous; the crowd expects that he will shoot the elephant. At this crucial moment of decision, Orwell writes, he realized that he "was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind." He has no option but to shoot the elephant, if only to hold on to his own authority in the village. "To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing - no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at."

Why in the world would this pop into my head during the trip?

At one point, one of the girls mentioned off hand to our Indian guide that seeing an elephant would be cool. Ever eager to please, he took us one morning to a circus in Vizag, to show us an elephant. We were all shocked and surprised, and happy...at first. By the end of the day, most of us cited meeting the elephant as the low point of our day, and I will do my best to clarify why, though it may tangent into several different ideas.

Walking into the circus, we wondered if we were supposed to be there. There were large crowds of Indian men - the largest amount of people composed of solely males I had seen since we'd landed. The gateway to the circus was decorated with advertisements for the circus, featuring pictures of only women, none of them smiling, which I noticed was a little odd. We ducked under a chain through a gate, and walked through the dust and sand to where two elephants were chained up. Our group greeted them with excitement and the girls started taking their turns getting pictures touching an elephant, in India! How often do you get to do that?

I stood at the edge of the group, taking pictures and talking to my friends Chase, Althea and Will, who were all rather quiet and clearly not okay with what was happening. A little dense at first, I soon realized that their annoyance at the whole thing was not the distraction from getting to breakfast, but the condition of the elephant itself and the circumstances surrounding it.

I took another look, this time actually seeing the elephant. I was shocked to discover the heavy and short chains on its feet, not allowing it to walk in a circle much larger than five feet. The elephant itself was covered in dust and looked slightly skinnier than the elephants I'd seen previously in zoos. It was then that the trainers started making the elephant do tricks and I noticed the pokers in their hands. This weren't the somewhat humanitarian cattle prods that I've seen used in the States - these were little pokers, as in fireplace pokers that you might use for stoking a fire on a cold winter night: little metal sticks with a sharp pointy end. At that point, I walked away, out of sight of the elephant, though it was a few minutes longer before we could actually leave to go back to the bus.

We were hampered on our way, however. Our group was stopped on our walk back to the bus so that the crowd of men - by now having tripled in size - could take pictures of us in front of the circus' signs. I commented to my friend that I felt like I was in a zoo as the men whipped out cell phones and small digital cameras and snapped pictures of the white people visiting.

This is the second time on the trip I remember feeling weird about being white. The first was during my hospital stay, when I realized that I was the only white person in the room and that was why every Indian who passed by the foot of my bed did a double take. These incidences were not isolated, and I soon became used to the stares that said, "Hey look, white people!" At this point, however, the cameras and zoo-like atmosphere only inspired discomfort and lack of enthusiasm to be white anymore.

It was in these few moments standing as a group being posed for pictures that Orwell's words returned to mind: the white man's whole struggle in the East is the effort not to be laughed at. This idea was hard to shake over the next few days as I felt as though we were being paraded through comunities and towns as though we were some freakishly absurd animals on display, instead of symbols, actors and reasons for both their oppression and hoping for their liberation. Many times, if we were not hailed as celebrities, we were a curiosity, something to be stared at and studied as though behind glass, and, occasionally, laughed at.

While Orwell writes from an openly imperialistic age, one that allowed him to see quite easily how the white man oppresses those in Burma/India, we live in a world where drawing the lines of oppression requires a study of the global economy, and much research. It is hard to see how what I purchase on Saturday affects the life of my Indian friend on Monday, but globalization dictates that this principle is true. The lines of production, while hidden, are there, and often include hands smaller than my own, holding no hope beyond the shoe factory where they eke out a living.

It was not until nearly our last day that things really began to click for me. In visiting Mypadu, I felt for once that I was not on display, and the reason was that I actually had time and chance to know some of the villagers. Orwell's problem was that the massive crowds behind him, urging him to shoot the elephant or be laughed at, were not people to him. They were merely, as he calls them, "two thousands wills." Because he remained separate - and, indeed, his role as a tool of the British government demanded it - he could not move beyond this idea that there was any role between white and, to use his word, "yellow" beyond tyrant and tyrannized.

When we spend time getting to know people, we cannot maintain our old roles of oppressed and oppressed. We can no longer be slave driver and slave, warden and prisoner, client and prostitute.

To risk making this shallow by making a Harry Potter reference, Voldemort's major failure as a wizard, and the thing that kept his evil so powerful, was that he separated himself from community - he never got to know even those who were his servants, and that allowed him to convince himself that he was in the right. Those most powerfully against Muggle rights and Muggle-born wizards in the books are those who do not know any Muggles or Muggle-borns themselves.

It is through intense, powerful, dynamic relationships that lives change.

It is when we become friends with one poorer than us that we understand what truly creates poverty.

It is when we befriend a child at risk for becoming a slave that we realize the true evil of slavery.

It is when we know a handicapped person that suddenly "retarded" is no longer okay.

It is when we get to know a gay person that fighting against homosexual marriage becomes pointless.

It is when we become friends with the Chinese family next door that racism loses its sting.

It is this that Orwell both realized and failed to realize. If he allowed the crowd to crystallize into being actual people rather than merely faceless wills, he might not think that he was there to be laughed at.

But then again, he might have lost his power as a tyrant, and thus, his job.

14.1.10

Resolution: An Introspective Entry

Last night, when walking back to my home from campus after office hours, I noticed something a little extra on the air. I'm still not entirely sure where the smell was coming from, but there was something in the combination of dry Texas dust, the finally above freezing air, and the exhaust of cars going by that, for a split second, took me back to that moment I first stepped off the plane in India.

I was in the country for such a short period of time, but it has made an impact on me that I can't even begin to see where I'll end up. My coworker asked me in the office yesterday, "So what's changed?"

I drew a blank. I didn't know what to tell her.

That I feel guilty and convicted now for spending an evening watching television?

That now when I only have Starbuck's hot chocolate as my option for a hot drink in the office, I picture the small kids in Mypadu running barefoot through puddles of dirty water, and struggle with handing over my money?

That I am having trouble motivating myself to work on my thesis not because of laziness, but because I now know for sure that academic writing is not where I am called?

That I am, in so many inexplicable ways, longing for the beauty, the grace, and the love of community that I found in India?

Any one of these is a blog entry in of itself, and I will cover many of them over the coming months. My friend Chase and I turned to each other at several points in the trip and said, "There's a blog entry in that." There is something to interpreting one's experiences for another person, in writing down what you see and drawing a lesson out for others to learn. This is why I was drawn to the study of literature and writing in the first place, and this is why I will never fully get away from it - and don't want to.

So I want to thank you, my dear readers, for willingly taking this journey with me, for supporting me as I raised money, and for challenging me by asking me "What's changed?" Hopefully, you will see in the coming months what has changed as I push myself ot make a difference for the brothers and sisters I found in India.

This is a far more personal entry than I normally do on this blog, but I felt it right to kind of spit out all the things I have been thinking about in this week since I've been back. There will be more entries about events that happened, the people I met, and what changes it is causing me to make in my life. Please stay tuned.

For now, it may be good to reveal in short some resolutions that I have made in my life (I was there over New Year's, after all):

-No drinks will be purchased from any major companies. This pertains mainly to my addiction to the Coca Cola Company products, but also (and I need more pressure on myself in holding to this one) coffee companies (even if it is fair trade), and bottled water. I've already broken this one several times since being back, but now that I've settled in to home again, intend to hold to it. If you see me with a Starbuck's, Snapple, or anything non-water bottle (meaning the one that I fill at home), feel free to bring it up to me. (See here as to why not Coke).

-No television except for: House, Project Runway, and the Daily Show/Colbert Report. I do believe that occasional mindless entertainment is a good thing, especially when I need a break from my thesis. An hour of "news" in the evening, and an hour of extra programming two nights a week should limit my TV consumption to a much more reasonable level. Part of me also wishes that I didn't need to be on the computer so much to do work for school, but, alas, that is the case.

-No more justifying buying questionable brands simply for expedience's sake. This means no Nestle, no Kraft, no Tyson, no GE (lightbulbs), no Tyson chicken, and as little of the Target off brand as I can, and more of the regional/local brands. This means, the next time I go shopping for clothes, I'm checking thrift stores first, and avoiding the Gap company/the mall as much as I can. This means paying attention to how the food I'm eating got to my plate even more than I was before. This means being militant about not only what I put in my body, but what I spend my dollars on. This is an extremely hard change to make here in Waco, but I am convinced it is possible, and with your support, I can do this.

I have been saying it over and over again, but what we do in America has a direct correlation to how things are run in the developing world. If we continue to create a demand for slave labor goods because the prices are cheap, we will never make progress in eradicating slavery. And that breaks my heart, knowing that I am implicit in the problem, and that it is so hard to be a part of the solution.

Do your research.

Challenge companies to transparency.

And know that the dollars you spend do make a difference.

13.1.10

Help In Haiti


It is in times of need when we are called to rush to our neighbor's side and help her through the grief of a disaster. Haiti is crying out for our help, now more than ever.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE

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Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz, January 12, 2010

11.1.10

National Human Trafficking Awareness Day

I had planned to put together a written post for you, but I found that (per usual) other people have already expressed quite eloquently what I would say, in a much more digestible form, at least for our media-saturated culture. For me, as a visual learner, these videos made a great impact, and I hope you will be encouraged to educate yourself more on the issues facing our world today, especially in the fight against the second largest illegal industry - the trade in people.







Thanks for watching. I'll continue updating this blog in the future with more information about how we can stop human trafficking, but you can read a bunch of my archived entries for more information, and check out the websites linked in the sidebar.

8.1.10

This, too, shall be made right.


When I graduated from college, my parents inherited my mini-fridge. I have no use for it in an apartment with a full-sized fridge, and they wanted to take it off my hands. They put it in the office, on a small table near the closet where their cat likes to take nap. My mom keeps it stocked regularly with bottles of Ice Mountain water because she "doesn't like the taste of our tap water."

Similarly, my roommate and I have have a (currently broken) Pur water filter on our kitchen sink because Waco water is pretty disgusting to drink. For both sets of people (my parents and my roommate and I), using filtered water is a matter of taste only - we never really have to worry about the water being unsafe or unclean, just unpleasant to the palate.

Imagine, then, if this was not the case. If, with every bottled water set before you, you had to check carefully that it was sealed because sometimes places recycle bottles with unfiltered tap water. What if my mom's daily routine upon coming home with new bottles of water was to check the seal of each one carefully, because her own tap water couldn't be trusted to brush her teeth with? What if, whenever she finished a bottle, the routine was to crumple it and toss it out the window to eventually be collected and burned by the side of the road, creating more smog in the city?

This was the daily life for the Faceless team in India on this trip. Because of the lack of fresh drinking water available, we had to carry bottled water given to us by our Indian guides each morning. Trusting the word of a waiter in a restaurant gave some members of our team a rather uncomfortable last few days and the smog, aided by a cold that quickly spread, put a few of us out of commission and made me sound like I'd been smoking since I was three. We couldn't trust the water bought at a supermarket unless we heard and felt the click of the seal breaking when we opened it.

For the sensitive Westerner, India is a dangerous place. We take great pains to ensure our own safety and well-being as we travel. We pass up milk offered in the hut of a new friend because it might make us sick. We refuse the ice at a fast food place because it was probably made with unfiltered water. This entire time, our brothers and sisters in the country are drinking this dirty water, are breathing this dirty air and are living in these poor conditions where trash gathers in the street, packs of dogs (and cows) roam about, and feces (both human and animal) litters the byways.

It is not wrong for us to seek our own health when working in foreign countries - indeed, it's a little hard to be effective in helping others when you end up being the only white girl taking up a bed in an Indian emergency room (something I know about from experience - ask me sometime). However, if I go home knowing that my new friends at the village just outside Nellore told me about their problems with getting fresh drinking water while handing me - their guest - a fresh bottle...If I do nothing for that situation, then my trip has been a waste.

I commented to my friend Chase as we arrived in the Brussels airport to catch our transfer flight to Newark: "It's going to be a while before I stop examining the seals on bottled water." And you know what? I hope I don't. I hope that every time I forget my water bottle before calss and use change from my pocket to get a Dasani (far too expensive), I remember the old Indian lady clasping her hands in front of me and asking me to pray for her village. I hope I remember turning to Prem and Vijay and asking, "Is this one safe?" before taking an offered bottle. I hope I remember how valuable water became during my time in India.

I hope I remember, however, not merely for my own gratification, not merely for my own conviction, but so that I may encourage others to act. This trip confirmed for me even more now that the actions we take in America have a major effect in India. I saw it in every advertisement, in every man on the train surprised to be surrounded by white girls, in the faces of the children of the Untouchable community we visited. I am more convinced now that the decision I make as an American consumer affect the daily lives of my new friends in the village outside Nellore.

You don't have to take the same steps I do. In future entries, I plan on detailing how I will be changing my decisions in buying products (starting with pictures of my Indian friends as a reminder of the Faceless), and hopefully (in a dream project), figuring out how I can help get a water filter and/or stable well built for my friends in that nameless village. You have joined me in this journey so far - will you follow me a bit further as I process what I have seen? Will you make changes with me to bring hope and help to those who need it?