Returning to old friends; witnessing change; comfort in Kayanga

As the Arizona State-Amizade Community Development course begins, the red-dirt streets of Kayanga are familiar. I’ve spent more summertime here over the past five years than any other place except Pittsburgh. It’s been a joy to return and reconnect. Peter Lazaro has a wife and baby. Juma Massisi is doing very well. Joseph Sekiku’s son Simeon has grown into a young man and his young daughter Anna is now away at boarding school in Uganda. The originally-imagined Amizade-ELCT orphanage project has morphed into a much-needed nurses training center (as reviews of orphanages have steadily grown more critical). This year’s students are rapidly meeting and connecting with Amizade’s network of friends in the area. We’ve noticed that more people seem to know how to say uh-ma-za-gee correctly in Kayanga than in most cities in the United States. 

Amizade’s presence and partnership here has contributed to the development of at least one small business, one nonprofit organization, seven family water harvesting systems and tanks (supporting some 40 people), one USAID grant supporting WOMEDA and renewable through later years, further dialogue and awareness about women’s rights, English tutoring in schools, the expansion of FADECO radio, the creation of a tree and plant nursery at Mavuno, the completion of a village-scale water harvesting system in Chonyonyo, the completion of one-going-on-two water tanks at Mavuno for a girls boarding school that is currently under construction, and the development of water access and wind-generated electricity at the Eden Center, where computer training classes for women currently take place. We are here now with fourteen students; yesterday was the first day of service.

One group is supporting WOMEDA’s most recent data-gathering project, working to provide data for a future grant application that will help address teen pregnancy. Another group is supporting English language learning in the schools, and the third group is advancing the construction of a water harvesting tank that will support the Mavuno girls’ boarding school. The groups will spend several days on each project, cycling through with steady leadership at each location. Along the way, the students are wrestling with development issues, learning a great deal about the reality of regular electricity service, steady and sometimes hot water, travel, and dust. They’re experiencing international borders in East Africa and getting a glimpse of what education systems often look like in rural communities. Most of all, they’re eating an awful lot of matoke (mashed banana).

I find myself at comfort here; the systems of support for the program continue to improve and I’m increasingly familiar with each bend in the road and trail through the banana trees that cover the valley. My main concern as always is how we could do more as an organization and group of service-learners. Organizations like Amizade serve many missions, providing students with educationally challenging and personally rewarding study abroad programs that encourage global ethics while also taking seriously the substantial challenges involved in community-driven development across cultures. I think Amizade does a good job of balancing the pressures at play here: neither focusing too much on students at the expense of community concerns nor jeopardizing students’ experiences, learning, and safety in order to give more attention and resources to the community. How this is achieved will be the subject of future posts. For now: we are all healthy, happy, and pleased to be serving and learning in Kayanga.          

#4: Why I Hate John Mayer's Social Justice Attempt

Apparently some people find Mayer’s song inspiring, and it has even made it on to some otherwise great political / social justice song sites. But “Waiting, waiting on the world to change,” as the song goes is about as anathema to good work, democracy, progress, rights, hope, and the improvement of the human condition as one can get. This blog title – Journey toward Justice – is no joke. It’s a journey: improving rights and lengthening life expectancies is the product of human cooperation, collaboration, and effort (not waiting, fool). 

That effort takes many forms, and musicians have a role. Mayer could take cues from Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, the bizillion artists who have given voice to We Shall Overcome, or currently from Angelique Kidjo and Wil.i.am (immediately below), as well as from scores and legions of others. But instead Mayer is waiting – and beyond that he’s whining: “We see everything that's going wrong / with the world and those who lead it / We just feel like we don't have the means / To rise above and beat it.”

What? You can’t make a difference? You’re famous, fool. You can move mountains. My friends can manage to make the world change for whole villages. And we’re just average Joes. It’s true that sometimes celebrities’ attempts at good works are un- or under-informed -- but study-up. Often enough celebrities behave as serious and smart people with clear commitment to specific issues that they learn a great deal about. Excellent examples include George Clooney, Bono, Mariska Hargitay, and Matt Damon, who has been a driving force on water issues through the nonprofit organization Water.org.      

Interestingly, in Mayer’s video the waiting involves spray-painting as consciousness-raising (and at the end, just to be sure you know neither Mayer nor his boys are radicals, there’s a message indicating that all spray painting was completed on private property with permission). Now I’m waiting for Mayer to do something interesting. Here’s the thing: I deeply respect, value, and appreciate the role of musicians and other artists in consciousness-raising. Mayer sings (and then even paints!) so close to this idea, but the message we get is just wait. Just wait is blasphemy to the good citizens of the world who fancy themselves as working in the tradition of fundamental human freedoms, democracy, and universal rights.

At least other artists dreaming after an as-yet-unimagined tomorrow paint us some kind of picture, like Cat Stevens’ (now Yusuf) Peace Train (which he did a sweet rendition of for Muhammed Yunis’ Nobel Peace Prize Award) and Billy Bragg’s Waiting for a New World Order. (By the way all of you out there who think “social justice” or “activist musician” is precisely equal to “totalitarian commie,” listen to the equal abuse Bragg hands out to the far ends of the political spectrum).

Of course it’s not surprising that Mayer’s song suggests what it does. We seem to have been struck (in the United States and many other places around the world) with an irrational and unfounded assumption that somehow the miracles we see all around us (basic human security, individual rights and respect for diversity across cultures and genders, 300 million people getting along pretty well across a whole continent, water when you turn on the faucet, public education) are not the product of cooperation, collaboration, and individual sacrifice for purposes that are bigger than ourselves: purposes like improving the human condition.

To bring this closer to home(s), Pennsylvania and Arizona are advancing massive cuts in education budgets. I know there are strong contingents emerging and organizing in Pennsylvania to put pressure on the state government to continue its investment in our shared futures by better funding education. Some students, for example, recently put together this video:

That’s what strong democratic (small d) states do: invest in their citizens’ human capital and tax them at reasonable rates later to continue to pay for the ongoing investment in the future. In Arizona I have students telling me that they’re going to have to pay more for college  and that their four-years of funding doesn’t match the five-years of schooling they’ll need with the planned schedule cuts and lack of class availability, but there’s no strong organizing. Perhaps they’re waiting, waiting for the market to take over their lives more completely.

Wherever you are, speak up for education. It’s something many generations of Americans have taken for granted. And it only exists if Americans work together to make it happen.

Beyond the explicit political sphere is the strong nonprofit and volunteerism sector – and the place I was really referencing above when I asserted what my friends could do. This is why the water walk is so phenomenally important. We’re not waiting for the world to change. We’re making it happen, in clear and considered cooperation with community organizations half-way around the world. These small efforts: organizing, cooperating across cultures, people donating, people walking – extend lives and give women and children a chance to get an education or work rather than constantly returning to the daily drudgery of gathering water.

Register and walk this weekend. If you can’t, donate. Don’t wait. Change the world for families in rural Tanzania, right now.    

Really. Donate. Just $25. It’s a world-changer.  

OK, thank you for reading. Now I must admit: I’m flummoxed, flabbergasted, confused and maybe just a little bit maligned – I keep hearing from people via individual emails, etc., about the blog but I have no comments and few followers and I would absolutely love more of either. I’d love to hear your song suggestions that have yet to make the list. (Tomorrow we will have the Best Social Justice Song Ever, in celebration of Amizade’s Water Walk, but in the days that follow I’ll continue to post enough to follow the due course of this fun little exercise in social justice song). I also remain generally curious about your thoughts, feedback, etc. OR, OR, OR – tell me how much you really love John Mayer and why he’s amazing, or re-post, re-tweet, and share how your share my considerable consternation with the whole unacceptable notion of “Waiting, waiting on the world to change…”