And every stop is neatly planned

I just had the pleasure of helping out with the training of the most recent Agriculture and Agroforestry Volunteers at the Peace Corps Senegal Training Center in Thies, Senegal.  It was a little over two years ago that I landed in Dakar, Senegal, was whisked to Thies and held captive in the training center until it was feasible for our training wheels to come off.  As a guest trainer the first week, I had the opportunity to relive those moments, to see Senegal and the PC Senegal team again through their eyes and it was the most refreshing beginning to the end of my time here.  As I write this post I have just over a month left in Senegal.  I can hardly believe it.  To say it has been great would be an understatement.  And honestly to try and write down in words what these past two years has meant to me is impossible.  One of the questions that I’ve been getting a lot from other Peace Corps Volunteers, friends,  family back home, and these new Peace Corps Trainees is “ How do you feel?” 

I have no idea.  I feel great because I’ve almost completed two years of my Peace Corps service in Senegal.  I feel great because I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I feel great knowing that going home to the gr802 to see my parents and my pets is wonderful. I feel great because I am coming away from this experience with a new perspective on life, on the world, and on myself.  I feel great because cheese and beer are within shouting distance now.  I feel great because I can drive soon again and wander around the back roads of Vermont.  But more than feeling great, I feel terrible.  I feel anxious about moving back to America and an uncertain, judgmental and sad world that I used to call home.  I feel anxious about my life post-Peace Corps, readjusting to life in the States, getting used to all the American things that I’ve lived so long without.  I feel anxious about finding a job and getting a start on the next chapter of my life.  I feel anxious about leaving my family, the Fofanas have been my one constant in my service and without them I don’t know how I am going to feel.  I am anxious about leaving my village, the community that has not only welcomed me in with open arms when I knew no Bambara and still dropped food as I ate with my right hand, but also worked and encouraged others to work to help improve food security and better their daily lives.  I feel anxious about leaving my friends here, my fellow Peace Corps volunteers are my rocks, my guide posts.  They have kept me sane and have helped me get crazy when need be.  Without them I don’t know where I would be or how I would ever have made it this far.  It is with them that I write this post, knowing that so many of us are feeling these emotions and unable to accurately describe how we actually feel about all this.  I feel anxious about leaving Senegal, the land of teranga and constant peace.  Despite feeling all the above, which can only brush the most superficial surfaces of how I actually am feeling, I realized while I was at training for these new volunteers that this is how it is supposed to be.  I am leaving, to make room for the next generation of volunteers.  They have come in, the largest group to Senegal yet, bright-eyed and bushy tailed. Ready to take on the world.  I have to come to terms with leaving and letting go, but I know that I am putting Peace Corps Senegal into the hands of a wonderful group of highly motivated, passionate individuals, and that this cycle will continue to live on and forge ahead in peace only. 

Existing...

I am no scientist. I may have received my degree in political science but let's face it, a "Bachelor of Arts" is really just a degree for learning how to think and how to tell people about what you think. Ironic that I got a degree not too long ago because I feel like everything that I believed about myself and everything that I thought I valued or believed in, has been turned on various ends during my time here. Sometimes things have ended up back where they were, and some things have moved to new and exciting locations. I am still me, but there are some things that mean a lot to me that never had a huge impact on how I lived and how I interacted with the world. Interacting with the world is never easy. I feel like many of us struggle with our place in the world, navigating the various paths, but also dealing with the realities of the environment, technology, emotions etc. So here are a few thoughts from recent.

Climate change is real and I am experiencing it first hand. I've never thought that climate change wasn't "real" or that it wasn't a big deal but I also never really thought about my impact on the climate and the impact climate has on me. I live in a part of the world where climate change is having a devastating effect on the livelihoods and the possibilities of the people and the land here. I come from a place where we are environmentally conscious; we compost, we think about where our food comes from, and we are outdoors as much as possible. But I never thought about how climate change would become a part of my life, my everyday, I never had to. In my upper middle class upbringing the most I thought, selfishly, was how our house could become beach front property in 50 years (causing the value of the house to increase three-fold). But living in Botou, being a farmer here, spending more time in the dirt and with the outside than I thought was possible, I can see now that climate change is wrecking the land here and as a byproduct the livelihoods. Rainy season is upon us (it's been about two months) and we have received 230mm of rain as of this post. We are only behind last year by 16mm so far but it has been weeks since we had a good rain. It hasn't been evenly spread out, which it seemed to have been last year, and the ground is dry. Crops are wilting, yellowing, literally dying for thirst. When we lived in Braintree, we placed the sprinkler in the garden when we needed more "rain" but water is too expensive, to precious a commodity here to do that. We wait. We complain about the heat and the humidity when the winds come, teasing us with some cool air but instead bring more stickiness and mosquitos. I can make endless jokes in Bambara about dancing and praying and singing for rain, but it's not funny. It's our life here, it's how we eat. Our work here is how we pay for the water we drink. And if there comes a time when desertification continues to worsen and the Sahel reaches further and further south, there will be even more serious problems with food security then we can even predict. So what am I doing here to help mitigate the situation? Can I even help at this point? Is it too late? Shouldn't people like Peace Corps Volunteers be working with farmers to improve the conditions they find themselves in and hope that they can escape the worst of what climate change brings? Yes. Yes we should, but it's much easier said than done, as is true of most things. I talk with farmers daily about soil conditions, rainfall, what it was like years back when the river flowed behind my village in the bush 6km and the lions roamed about. We talk about improving the soil, planting in certain areas so as to get the most nutritious soil. But it's slow. Planting trees they say, will help to increase rainfall, but this will likely only work when planting trees happens on a large scale across a large swath of land. We can plant thorny species in Banjugu's garden for his "living" fence, but those 300 trees will not bring the rains. Living, working, and talking with other volunteers, Peace Corps staff, and even some locals, we know that there are two environmental revolutions. The green one and the brown one. The green one is about crops, seeds, and plants. Changing what we grow in hope to bring about a more food secure world. Thinking more consciously about what we are putting into the ground and into our mouths. The brown revolution is about the make up of the earth. What the ground is that we are putting these seeds into. What the ground that we stand upon is made up of. Some areas are blessed with rich soils, full of micronutrients and all the potential energy one plant might wish. But so much soil here, throughout Senegal and many other parts of the world, is degraded to the point of unusable. It's simply will not help things grow. This revolution involves a great deal of knowledge and effort into putting the soil back to something that's worth growing in. And that, is certainly not easy. I never thought that climate change would bother me, make my skin crawl when it doesn't rain for 10+ days. I never knew or never thought about what it really meant for climate change to effect my life and those around me that I love. I also still don't quite know what my role is at this point. I have done the best I can as a PCV here in regards to talking with people about climate change and the soil and seeds. But I'm coming to a juncture in my life soon. I'll be returning home to a world where our gardens have their own personal sprinkler in case the rains don't fall down in Montpelier. But I sure as hell know, and believe with all my might, that ignoring climate change, being passive while it is occurring all around us, is not the way to live. Ignorance is not bliss, it is a miserable excuse to be uninvolved and dispassionate. We need to do something about our way of life, whether it be decreasing fuel emissions or planting trees. I need to believe that something good can still grow outside my hut. I need to believe that people like me are invested in the environmental future of the earth. If not, there won't be much left of the ground in a few decades.

So I wrote a post about how I was going to think during Ramadan about how I've changed. The hope here was to be able to identify these things, whether they be personality traits or values and beliefs.  And the goal was that if I felt like they were good additions, (or transitions) I could bring them back home with me. Ramadan was wonderful and all around exhausting. I think I will always think of my time fasting and being with my family here whenever Ramadan comes around in the years to come. However it was not as fruitful for figuring myself out. Maybe because of the lack of nutrients and therefore brain stimuli. Or maybe because setting myself up for figuring this out wasn't a task that could be completed with the snap of my fingers. I've had a lot of time in my head these past 22 months and counting, but more importantly than spending time in my head. I've also had the chance to meet some amazing people in Botou, and in Peace Corps (some even halfway around the world) that have challenged who I am and who I thought I was. Here are a few things that I've taken away and the kind of person I hope to be when I return.

I believe in honesty. When people trust you and you trust them, there is no reason for anything but honesty to pass between you. I don't believe in passive aggressive bullshit, life's too short and time is too precious to tiptoe around issues and avoid problems. Be honest. Be open with people you trust and people that you value and whose opinion you value. Be honest with people about yourself and most importantly be honest with yourself. I have come to understand that regret never follows with honesty.

Friends. This is a tough one, but it comes from many friendships and many friendship breakups. You can't be friends with everyone. It isn't possible and if you're being honest (see above) with yourself you don't want to be. You can be civil and polite with everyone (even Donald Trump) but you don't have to like everybody. You don't have to want everyone to like you either. It just isn't going to happen, so don't force it. But those people that give you as much as you give them in a friendship. Those are keepers. Keep them close. Accept that you won't always be living next door to them and that there won't be free calling from your phone to theirs. But keep in touch. Update them on your life (even when they don't ask) and ask them about how they are doing. Be present and be involved. If they truly are friends that matter, keep them in your life, and don't ever take them for granted.

Family. I never had a big family. Just me, mom and dad, the occasional dog and cats and chickens. I have cousins and some aunts and uncles and some grandparents for awhile. But a big family was never in the cards for me...until I came to Senegal that is. My world opened up when I became a member of the Fofana clan. I still don't have older siblings, but I have a whole parade of younger ones. I value family and what it means to have family more than anything now. But my notion of family has never been traditional.  Some of my friends are my family. Some friends have been with me when my parents could not be. Some people have stepped into my life as mother and father figures as I have moved throughout my life. My Senegalese sisters and brothers are my family. My beautiful dog back home is my family. Family is something that I always assumed was there, but never really understood what my place was in it. I was the youngest cousin, reading the four questions at Passover, and going to adult dinner parties (adult ie. 30+). I was the only child, spoiled perhaps, but loved by my parents. Now I will be moving back to my family. My biological one, yes, but also the family of people that I grew up with. My parents' friends who have known me since day one, their kids who have become my friends, the friends I made in school, and all the other people who make up my family. These people always held a special and significant place in my life, but I never knew how much their presence and effect had on me and who I have become. In Senegal family is paramount. Family is how work, fun, food, and general livelihood is organized. While this notion can't exactly be transported and used back in Vermont, I do believe that we can place a higher value on the connections we make and the people we love. I hope that i can be instrumental in bringing these values back into my life at home.  In the end, the people you knew and the people who had an effect on you (and vice versa) are the things that truly matter.

Minds at Peace: Sun Karo 2016

I've had a number of people ask me why I bother to fast.  I'm not Muslim, I don't pray, and I don't abstain from everything that Islam asks you to give up during the month of Ramadan.  I live in a village that is 100% Muslim.  Members of my family pray five times a day, women cover their heads, and we continuously give alms throughout the year even though we have little to give.  I fast because I am a member of this community and when Botou fasts, I fast.  Fasting takes a certain strength inside each of us.  Not eating and drinking forces your body to adjust and realize what it has inside.  I fasted last year, every day that I was in village, and I will do the same this year.  I love the solidarity that I feel when someone asks me, I be sunna? Of course I can fast.  But it's more than being able to.  If everyone else in my village is fasting and prepping their fields and washing laundry and cooking, and going about their lives, the least I can do is fast too.

Luckily nobody gives me a hard time for not praying.  They understand that I am not Muslim and that I don't pray, but they don't seem bothered by the fact that I fast, in fact, they celebrate it.  One thing I am going to focus on this Ramadan, a month when I spend even more time inside my head, is to reflect on my reality.  Sometimes I feel like I have escaped reality by being in Peace Corps.  I can avoid many realities in the US because I'm not physically there.  I can avoid the relationships in my life because I live in Senegal.  Being here is the best excuse. That is, until you spend hours upon hours in your head because otherwise your head will focus on your stomach.

I've changed a lot here, but if you asked me what changed I could only list off a handful of things. In reality, almost everything about me has changed in some way.  Mostly for the good, but I haven't really had a chance to understand those changes and focus on how I can best bring them back home with me in November.

On the off hours of being in my own head, I'll likely be in the heads of others, reading copiously, listening to podcasts, music, or talking with my work partners and my family.  It really is a great time to enjoy the company of minds at peace.

Talking about minds at peace (others on my site)

3 marabouts and a skeptic.

As many of you know I am not a religious person.  I have little spiritual faith, I don't believe in god, and I can be quite the cynic.  These things all still hold true.  I was raised Jew-ish which coming from a small, rural, white farmstead town in Vermont meant the world to me. As I grew older what it meant to me to be Jewish changed as did my perspective on judaism.  As of this post I'm still trying to figure out what I am and how I want to identify myself.  I'm an atheist and I identify as culturally Jewish, beyond that it is a huge abyss.  But this post isn't really about religiosity in Vermont, but rather my experiences in Senegal. I have been in Senegal for 18 months.  Upon arriving we were taught a bit about the Muslim culture that encompasses life in Senegal.  I began to truly understand a bit of the Muslim religion, daily prayers, giving alms, etc. I lived it. I didn't participate directly, not being a Muslim myself, but I did observe, watch, and admire the devotion my family and friends give in the name of their religion. Islam is one of the most generous, beautiful, and conscientious religions I have encountered.  The more interesting encounters I have had with Islam involve marabouts.  Marabout (or mori-ce as we say in Bambara) is a religious leader and teacher in West Africa. They often wander throughout the lands, surviving on alms and helping people with sicknesses, creating amulets, and telling the future. They are often also scholars of the Quran. I have had three separate and distinct encounters with marabouts.  They all occurred in my village, one I sought out, the others came to me.

The first time I saw a marabout I was sick.  I had a some gastrointestinal issues, not uncommon in Peace Corps, but I wasn't getting better and instead worse.  I had tried pepto bismal and had called my Peace Corps doctors but had not heard back.  I thought, why not just go and see the marabout. Everyone else in my villages does, maybe his stuff actually does work. The marabout in my village is one of the wealthier men in my village. I know this because he doesn't farm, he travels to Tamba almost every day on a motorcycle, and his compound does not have any huts, only large buildings with zinc (metal) roofs.  I told him I was sick and he brought me into a room, filled with old soda bottles filled with random liquids. On the floor lay piles of papers, all written in arabic, a wooden tablet, and some random shells and prayer beads. I described to him my symptoms and he searched for a specific prayer in his pile of papers until he found the one he was looking for that would take care of my problem. Once he found the prayer he took some black water/ink and a wooden pen and copied the prayer onto the wooden tablet.  He then said a prayer in arabic with his prayer beads and then washed the prayer off into a bowl so that the black ink filled the bowl.  He then took a sip of the black water and passed the bowl to me.  I took the tiniest sip ever, skeptical about the whole situation and set the bowl down.  He filled the empty water bottle I brought with the black water and told me to rub it on my stomach and drink some every day.  He also said to make meat soup and eat that and that would cure my stomach issues.

The second time I visited a marabout, it was more a situation of, the marabout visited me.  There was a visiting marabout from the Gambia who came to my village during the day. He spoke some english, pretty good actually.  Every day my dad would go pick him up from Tamba on his moto and bring him back to Botou.  One day we were sitting together and he asked me if I had ever had my future told my numbers.  Of course I said no and he brought out these wooden pieces that looked much like scrabble pieces and laid them out.  He put them in two columns and told me to pick a number and remember the number but not tell him. He then moved the wooden pieces between the two columns and kept asking me which column my number was in  Eventually he asked me to pick a second number, which I did and he did the same thing with the two numbers.  Then he asked me if my grandmothers name was Anna.  Stunned I said indeed it was, my maternal grandmother.  I was impressed.  He then went on to tell me to buy a string of beads to string around my waist, three kola nuts for old women, 6 oranges for young women, and some bananas for the young kids.  The impression he had made of getting my grandmother's name shortly wore off, but nonetheless, and experience worth having.

The last marabout I saw was a visiting marabout from Mali, staying across the road from my compound.  He called me into to his room one afternoon and told my fortune with cowry shells.  He told me I would have many projects and other accolades that I take down to the simple generalities you can make about that one white person living in a small village in Senegal.

The three visits to the marabouts were intriguing to say the least, but what they provided me with most was an inside look into traditional medicine, belief, and faith characteristics that I have very little experience with.

Peace Corps Service: Sine or Cosine?

When your life is a sine curve. Or is it cosine? They showed us this graphic during our training for Peace Corps that lays out our 27 months of service on the y-axis and our emotions going above and below the x axis. It was entertaining to imagine how I would be feeling at X-month mark but I never thought about how I would feel if the graph was shrunk to fit within a 24 hour period.




Monday morning around noon there was a major car accident by the Botou school. One of the mini cars (buses, almost) had a loose tire.  The apprentices who hang off the back, alerted the driver who refused to stop and fix it until they reached Tamba. The tire fell off and rolled into my village (50m). The car stop, flipped over and killed one woman immediately when she fell out the window and was squashed by the car. My village came running out. The men rushed to the scene helping anyone they could and directing traffic around the accident. Some people thought there was a fire so buckets of water were brought. When they realized there was no fire, but that people were injured and some even dead, the women began wailing. This is the wailing that begins deep in the lungs and comes out almost like a screech. It's terrifying and brings sadness immediately. I stood with the women who kept a 20 feet distance or so from the accident. The voyeur aspect of the accident was incredible. The women watched for hours as we waited for the ambulance and gendarme to come and then waited for the ambulance to come back to remove the deceased. The woman who died on the scene was left in the road, under the sun, for at least an hour and a half. People were sitting alongside the road, bleeding and in shock. I watched as every other mini car full of passengers stopped, got out and walked to the accident to see what happened, if they knew anyone and then pile back into the car to continue on their journey. Six cars of people, maybe a hundred total, plus the hundred or so from my village were watching everything unfold. It took half an hour for the ambulance to arrive. Then the gendarme arrived with our village chief. They put the driver of the car in the gendarme car and the proceeded to get the injured in cars to be taken to the hospital. Luckily no one from Botou was in the car, but some people from my village did apparently know the one woman who died. It wasn't until the next morning that we learned that three more people died in the hospital. It was terrible and terrifying.

Tuesday morning after spending some time at my uncle's place he came back from Tamba with pieces to fix water spigots in other villages and said he was going to go into some bush villages to fix things. I asked to join him. I've wanted to visit all the villages in the bush but I have been reluctant to go alone. So together we headed out on our bikes. The first village we went to is called Koro Maji, another Bambara village about 4km up the road. From there we went to Ira Koto, a Mandinka village, which is another 4km and across the train tracks. There we met with a guy who is a member of the water association that manages the water tower. He was at the school which has recently been built, complete with a beautiful cement wall surrounding the grounds. From there we crossed the highway and road to Diayabugu, a Soninke and Bambara village. It sits up on a hill and apparently during the rainy season there are times when nobody can leave because erosion has created a moat around the village. Biking into this village you can see the minarets of the mosque. Upon seeing the mosque in person I was completely awestruck by its beauty. It was pristine, turquoise blue, and magnificent, soaring above the village. We rode through, greeting the elderly men who had just exited the mosque. From there we biked to Kouthia, another Soninke and Bambara village. There we fixed the robinet at the village chief's house. The man we found there had worked in Boulogne, France for 40+ years and was now back in Senegal for his retirement.  A sweet man who offered us lunch and even paid my uncle for his time (which doesn't usually happen). Upon leaving Kouthia I was stopped by a Pulaar woman who turned out to be one of the host moms of a volunteer friend of mine. She is pretty deaf and doesn't speak Bambara (and I don't speak Pulaar) but we were both thrilled to see each other (and that we recognized one another). We had a brief conversation in two languages and then parted ways. The last village we biked through was Nema, which is the tiniest village I've seen so far. Three compounds. Some of my Fofanas live there and I've been wanting to see them for awhile now. We sat and greeted them and then took our leave and biked back through our fields to Botou. It was great fun to bike with Mahdu and see the bush and the villages that I've been hearing about for a year now. Mahdu is so patient with me and all my questions and even indulges me when I tell people that I am his plumbing apprentice. Quite the contrast from the day before, but I guess that's life. Unexpected tragedies and treasured travels in the bush.

Garden of Botou

It's been awhile since I last posted and for that I apologize. For anyone worried that I was lost in Europe, working too hard, or coming home, you are sadly wrong on all accounts. I am grateful to have gone on vacation (it was much overdue) but I couldn't wait to come home. I am not working too hard but rather just enough as you shall see. And I am not coming home. About ten more months are left in this tour of service and I couldn't be more rejuvenated.

Vacation was great! I didn't speak a word of any language except English and the basic Spanish I had to pick up like "dos cervezas por favor." I wandered around the Portuguese coastline taking in warm winds and cool waters. I ate good pork and drank delicious beer and wanted most of the time to be back in Botou.

Before I left, I had given vegetable seeds to my school director who has been taking charge of the garden. I told them to seed them in lines in a nursery and that I would be back in January around the time that we should transplant. None of the making of the beds had been done and I wasn't convinced they would be nor would the seeds be in the ground when I got back.

I was wary to visit the garden when I got back. In fact I waited a day and a half. But low and behold there was greenery inside! The nursery was beautiful; full of lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, onions, and eggplant, and the beds to transplant had been traced out. Apparently the director had told Bouna to have all the dads of the school kids come out that Saturday to dig the beds. And so they did. Saturday I spent the morning watching men whack some of the most difficult ground I've seen. I had done my share of pick-axing this space earlier so it was their turn. We have 10 rows and 20 beds and slowly slowly they were dug, amended and dug again by some of the teachers. One in particular has been a garden superstar and his level, symmetrical beds make for quite a nice space to look at. Slowly slowly the kids and teachers began transplanting the vegetables and things were looking terrific. Then I had a visit from one of my bosses, he visited the garden and gave the teachers a pep talk about the uses of the garden, the benefits of Moringa, etc. they were jazzed and in fact, that afternoon the women of Botou decided to come to the garden and see for themselves what all the hubbub was about. Turns out they had some (correct) opinions on the spacing of tomatoes and eggplant. They also had ways to improve the garden beds which I welcomed and watched from the periphery thinking "this is what sustainable development is supposed to look like." Then these women, who I have worked with on a few other things decided that all the women would come out Sunday afternoon to help transplant. And so they did. It has been amazing to see the community effort in this space. It isn't perfect. But I have heard so many stories of other PCVs with school gardens where the PCV does most of the work and once they leave, it no longer is a working garden because no one takes the initiative to keep the work up. I decided to approach the Botou school garden differently. I trained the director and the teachers a bit adding on to what they already knew on spacing, amendments, etc. and then I backed off. So far off that I left the continent. I figured if they were determined to actually have a garden they would seed and water. If they weren't, I would have just installed an expensive fence for no particular reason. Luckily the former occurred, and full speed ahead the garden is thriving all thanks to the hard work of Botou and not as a result of all the work I did. This is what sustainable development is. This is what it can be. Yes I bought the fencing, but the teachers are keen on planting thorny species to build a live fence to live on after the chain link disintegrates. The community is motivated and helping to pay the robinet water bill. And soon the vegetables will be in the kids lunches helping to increase nutrition in their diets. It's great to be a volunteer in Botou these days.

In this world

For those of you interested, I have not posted anything previously regarding the attacks in Beirut, Paris, Kenya, or Mali. I don't usually use social media to try and work out what's going on in the wider world. That's just too hard. But with the Mali attacks, I have had a few people write to me and others post statuses angry that more people aren't posting more about it. This one hit close to home, literally. I live about 890 kilometers from Bamako. We were a bit worried, mainly for our Malian PCV friends but also for the future of Mali. I was worried because of the proximity to Senegal but was reminded by myself, my friends and Raki and Bouna that it is extremely unlikely that kind of attack would happen here. Nonetheless I am still worried and I'm still sadden by the death of the American who had once been a Peace Corps Senegal volunteer and I'm worried about the state of our world. That being said, I have always felt safe, at home, loved and supported living with my Bambara Muslim family. What I heard  of the attacks in Bamako was that the terrorists ran into the Radisson screaming Allah Akbar, which means God is great in Arabic, a phrase that I hear probably 40 times throughout the day for prayer calls. And while I personally don't believe in God, here in Botou I do believe that God is great. I believe that prayer brings peace to many people and that religion can be used to help unite and welcome people into this world just as much as it can destroy and take people out of this world. The world is messy. It seems to be getting messier; in America with oil pipelines, xenophobia, racial violence, sexual violence, and ignorance; in Europe with xenophobia; Asia with natural disasters; and Africa with war, militant extremists, poverty, and environmental degradation. It isn't a world I am proud to live in at this moment, but I am proud to live in Botou.  I cannot live in fear but I am fearful. I have no hate in my heart for those that committed crimes because that won't do anyone any good but I'm confused at how religion is affecting my life so positively in Senegal and so negatively around the world. I believe the world is scared, unsure of what to do, and vulnerable. There seem to be so many tipping points, so many bridges broken and lives lost that I am not sure how we will recover. But all of this, what's going on in the world, is not new to humanity, despicable, but not uncommon. For such a supposedly intelligent species, we are not doing very well for ourselves and things need to change. I want to be proud to live in this world, much like I am proud to live in Botou but for now, being here is all I can manage.