So that up there is a picture that I drew in High-School. It's one of the few things from those days that I still have. This, somehow makes me want to explain it a little more to strangers on the internet. For the purposes of full disclosure, I'm making a lot of this story up as I go along, the truth is a lot more interesting, but it's embarrassing and involves events about which I have been sworn to secrecy so we'll call this fiction fact for the funsies.
That picture is a sketch I did in preparation for an art assignment. I think it was grade 10. I was 16. I don't know that baby's name. It was a picture in a book about starving kids in Africa. I was a white kid in Africa. I wasn't starving. My parents made sure of that.
My parents didn't teach me to give a shit about starving kids in Africa. And school didn't either. I had to do that on my own. Church helped. But not much. It was a mostly white Church, and the thrust of the... Message... was to ensure that "every knee will bow, and tongue confess..." you know. The schtick. Social justice was not as high on the minds of the congregation as ensuring that the teens in the youth group only fondled their Bibles. But without Church, I would have never gone into the Township.
I was so white. So were most of the other pasty teens and tweens that the Church had roped into "going to help the helpless"... Safely too, mind you. We painted a few things and I remember plugging holes in a roof with putty usually reserved for windows. For most of the group, it was a lovely "what I did on my holidays" kind of tale. Not this little Nomad. The Township followed my heart Home.
Poverty struck me then as a force beyond any one person or policy. Poverty was an ecosystem existing within a greater ecosystem called Wealth. It was a different world, with different rules. And I just didn't think that painting some things and plugging some holes was really useful to the people we were "helping". It was certainly a touching moment for many of the kids... I remember some beautifully cringy testimonies later on. But it wasn't enough for me. To me it was a matter of fury, that when the whole little community service bit was done for the day, not even 5 minutes would pass before I would hear complaints about how "difficult" the day had been.
The work was not hard. It was the kind of work that a well meaning teacher assigns to kids to keep them occupied and (importantly) fondle free for 8 hours a day. Tom Sawyer's Fence comes to mind for some reason. Beyond the inherent systemic racism that was NEVER ADDRESSED. You see, we were in the Township, putting balm on our imagined "White Guilt", making a show of "doing good" and heading back to celebrate the amount of good we had done. At no point did we have a conversation about how such ways of the world had come to be. In no way did we acknowledge the apparent fruitlessness of our tasks in light of the obvious systemic issues. But we were told to use our Testimonies to Convert the Heathen.
So why do I bring this up? Why is this story here?
Well, I'm at a bit of a crossroads here. Part of me wants to keep doing the weird, random, mostly useless shit I've been doing on this blog. Then part of me goes "That's not really worth your time." To which the first part says, "So? Who cares?"
Me. I care.
Go figure.
My country is in a weird place. The world is in a weird place. And somehow I'm supposed to find my place in it? Fuck that. I'm a goddamn Nomad, dammit. That damned Nomad. That's me. So...
I might get a bit political on this blog.
I might not.
The Uncertainty Principle.
Make it up as you go along ;)
Peace, Love and a Little Madness
Nomad