No Matter Where You Are, You're With The BBC.

Got some lice. Apparently they’re not the kind that live in your hair (I don’t have any in my hair), but the kind that live in your clothes (I have some in my clothes) and bedding (I have a lice refugee camp in my blanket). When I find one, I squeeze it until it pops and my own blood oozes out. I go, “Give me that back you little turd.” He goes “. . .” I wipe off my fingers on my pant leg.

Apparently I’ve got to boil my clothes and Raid the crap out of my house. A tiny part of me was hoping that all of the itching was some kind of witch doctor hex that would require some formation of rocks, hair and teeth around my house, coupled with some kind of lizard tea, for eradication. But no, just lice.

I was on my way into the hospital to ask them why I was scratching my skin off uncontrollably, when fortunately I was accosted by some friends. They told me, “Hospital? What for? You’ve got lice, dude!” I laughed and did a little dance. See, my insurance doesn’t cover skin diseases, and I was petrified that I had some kind of weird skin disease that would require special care and big doctor bills. So lice were a welcome relief. Even though the whole thing is pretty gross.

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Lately I’ve been learning about agriculture. Soil degradation, fertilizer, that kind of stuff. I’m trying to get people in the village to try some sustainable methods of farming. It’s pretty awful to see a village in Africa where one of the few products of technology that have become ubiquitous—chemical fertilizer—is also one that hurts the land. I mean, of all of the advances of modern science that could have come along, of course the one that is more harmful than helpful is the one that everyone’s using. See, you can grow more maize (pretty much the only thing anyone grows around here) with the chemical fertilizer, which means more money to feed your family. Problem is, next year the soil’s going to be worse, and a lot of the land is now at the point where it can’t produce anything without the fertilizer. This sucks, because the land in Malawi that’s been left alone is incredibly rich and fertile. There are a number of people working against this trend, but another problem with third world development is that it’s like pulling teeth to get the average person to try anything other than what they were taught to do. It’s painfully ironic that people are at the point where they’ve actually been taught to use chemical fertilizer, that it’s now part of indigenous village life, but there you are. I’ve only got a month and a half left here, but in that time I’m going to at least try to get a few of the people I know out in the village to try a few new strategies with a field or two. With a lot of luck, it’ll work in the “test field” and they’ll want to do it all over their land. Then the rest of the village will see it and put it into practice themselves.

Right. Well, there’s always a chance. Just have to plant the seed.

I’ve also been working on building a good stove out of bricks and clay that will efficiently burn wood and produce less smoke. Unfortunately, that project suffers from the same problem. The women say, “We’ve been using a couple of bricks around a campfire-style oven all our lives. Why should we use this weird-lookin’ thing?” I usually reach for a chicken and bite its head off, to show my disgruntlement. They go, “Hey, we’re running out of chickens. You’ve got to curb that shit.” I go, “Sorry. It was either the chicken or my own elbow. The chicken was lookin’ at me weird too.” “He was not.” “Yes he was.” “No he wasn’t.” “Well, he did the other day.” “No he didn’t.” “He did too.” “No, no he didn’t.” “Okay fine he didn’t. Leave me alone.”

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Latest illusion of which I have been disabused: That going overseas and working in development does more relevant good for the planet. It doesn’t. In fact, this little trip has made me much more sensitive to my duties back in the states, and made me realize the interconnectedness of “development” in the first world and the third world. While there are a billion reasons why cultural engagement is just as important at home as abroad, I present three:

1) Systems affect systems. The more just the U.S. is, the more justly it will treat other nations. Maybe if we were nicer/smarter/humbler as a nation, our aid programs would kick ass, our economic policies would be compassionate, and we wouldn’t drop so many bombs and deny/overthrow so many democratically-elected governments. Educating our fellow countrymen (where we have knowledge and expertise to do so) and getting involved in local governance, as boring as it may seem to us youngsters bent on world-changing, is of course what grownups do.

2) It’s easier to affect what you know. While it’s sexy and adventurous to go to Africa, the fact is that I’m not African and the myriad cultural differences mean that it takes a long time to understand the culture enough to be able to effect change that’s sustainable and correctly principled. Anyone who tells you otherwise is stupid. If I’d put in the time and energy doing what I’m doing here to doing similar things in the States (and, of course, been able to convince people to give me money to do it), I’d probably have been able to do things at least as good if not better.

3) The environment is the environment. Since we pretty much spit out a quarter of the world’s pollution, and that actually produces ill effects in places like Bangladesh and East Africa (see: Typhoon(s), Record Flooding/Drought), seems pretty logical that fighting against pollution in the U.S. must be pretty important. Feel disillusioned about making a difference in the States? It’s just as hard and frustrating anywhere. See my previous rant about disillusionment.

Yeah. Them’s my two cents. Again. Aaaaand scene.

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Yes I know I blog about my opinions and my diseases and little else. I am aware of that.