Hannah Kelley: Student

It’s 4:11 a.m.

I have a midterm to do for another class, intro to nonprofits. There is no way that I can finish it decently and also sleep, not die, shower and get dressed and on time to the airport tomorrow while also remembering to: eat, not forget my toothbrush which is lying out on the desk so that I don’t forget it, pay a last-minute parking violation ( I know :/) and also get some coffee in my veins before the plane takes off.

Oh, I was saying, so I’ll have to do that midterm on the plane. Which means carrying a heavy book to Mozambique – something I didn’t want to do.

But I’ll do it. I don’t want to send in bad work.

I got the parking violation because of another midterm I had this morning. I fed the meter twice but it still wasn’t good enough. Hopefully my performance will have made the ticket worth while.

I was walking out of Manoogian today with my freshly visa-ed passport, eating a sandwich from Avalon, while thinking, “thank god for 24-hour Meijers”.

And then the meaning of that thought came to the fore and I was disturbed by my life, the way I am viewing things — why am I walking briskly, holding hundreds of dollars worth of documents (my passport) and thinking about 24 hour convenience shopping centers with relish? Is this my life?

The only reason that I needed a 24-hour store in the first place is because I still wanted to pack a few things for my trip. My trip is on an airplane, that requires specialized air-travel items and Mozambique is a place that requires special measures (deet lotion, money belts, immunizations) from me.

But why does it require special measures?

Because I don’t belong there.

Then why am I going to Mozambique if I don’t belong there?

Good question.

Another:

How can we respect other cultures in an age of globalization that requires wifi, english skills…

I mean, speaking of this midterm again, I needed to look up the website for our first hotel to see if I would have wifi access to e-mail it to my professor. And if it weren’t on the website I was going to call the hotel directly in South Africa and talk to them in English to see if they did have it or not.

Demands.

The U.S. is young but has such a horizontal amalgamation of history attached to it now that it’s personality is big, so big that it’s hard to remember why the midwest is the midwest instead of the mideast. But if that weren’t the case, if we weren’t so loud, didn’t have so much political history and making a name for ourselves in these past years since the 1700’s, then maybe we would be like Mozambique too.

Mozambique is a country of multiple languages, dialects, cultures and folkways. It should be all of those things without the politically carved territory – but the Portuguese would have had it otherwise, and they did – Mozambique is now a country of many nations.

I could go on typing and thinking about these things, and I am doing so largely to show that this is the stuff of my head right now. I’m thinking about origins, history, relations, technological advancement, poverty, linguistic legitimacy, cultural hegemony, and other things that pop up when you’re considering such complex things as the intersection of humans and life. The ongoing now. Eckhart Tolle.

I listened to an NPR interview with Eckhart Tolle a week or so ago.
To consult the might wiki:

Tolle writes that “the most significant thing that can happen to a human being” is “the separation process of thinking and awareness” and that awareness “is the space in which thoughts exist”.[13] He claims “the primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it”.[14] He defines the “ego” as an “illusory sense of self”[15], which is the source of inner and outer conflict, and that only by becoming aware of the ego may people begin to see beyond it and experience themselves as unconditioned consciousness, which is their true nature.

Oh I have my individual goals for this trip. I have goals, hopes, desires.

I want to understand what it does to a persons psyche when the language that they speak doesn’t have a place in their liberated country.

I want to understand the difficulties of being stuck in a geographical area that doesn’t represent you because you are not Portuguese, but you can’t change things because the boundary was created a long time ago and it would be difficult to adjust.

I want to understand bases of power – is it in electoral policies? State planning? Media control?

I want to understand how people feel about their daily lives constantly being analyzed by foreigners who have brought questionable change to them and their ancestors.

On paper, I want to know about the educational and legal system in Mozambique – it’s trials (npi) and triumphs.

And on paper, too, I want to know how changes to life in Mozambique in recent decades compares to that of Bolivia, another multi-lingual, multi-cultural country with many societies, carved up and trying to find the best path to good governance.

But most of all,

I want to sleep.