What you see is not always what you get?

It was time for me to go get my haircut.  Not many more years remain for this ritual, with my hair rapidly thinning out.  I can even feel that there is not much on top because it doesn't seem like it is raindrops falling on my head, but more like pebbles being thrown at me from above by some impish angels!

Being short on dollars these days, I sometimes think that maybe I should try cutting my own hair, like how Gandhi experimented in his early attempts to understand self-reliance.  Anyway, the inexpensive place that I go to was crowded; of course! There is no question of making appointments there--you go and wait your turn.  Not that I have anything pressing to do, but waiting for a haircut is something that I can't seem to tolerate a lot.

So, off to the more expensive place.

I was tempted to ask the girl at the front desk about the charge for a shave versus for a haircut.  You know, that old joke: a guy asks the barber what the rates are.  The barber says, "five dollars for a shave and fifteen for a haircut."  The guy then says, "ok, shave my head off."

But, I resisted that urge to joke.  Successfully.  Especially because there is no shave at this place and the lame joke would have fallen even flatter.

The early-thirtyish woman who led me to her corner of the business wore one of the highest heels I have ever seen, other than in movies or photos.  And hot-pink shoes at that.

"I am all slippin' and slidin' while walkin'" she exclaimed to her colleagues, and I decided to give more gap between us as we walked.

As the process got underway, I knew what was coming.  Questions about what I do, about my family, the weather, the dogs, ... that is one reason why I postpone getting a haircut as much as possible.  The service providers want to engage in chit-chat, while I feel trapped in the chair.  They might as well serve me my final meal and flip the switch on!

Polite as I am, I reply, but clearly indicating that I am not interested in a whole lot of talking.  Meanwhile, she is having a couple of parallel conversations with other colleagues who are working on their own clients' heads.  I am always amazed at this--I have enough trouble keeping track of one conversation, and these women have simultaneous conversations with a gazillion others!

"I like your shoes" one says, to which my hairdresser replies, "thanks; I want to make sure I am comfortable in this before I take it with me to Cambodia."

Now my ears get more attentive. Cambodia?  Not often does one hear about Cambodia.  The odds are pretty good that she is going there for some volunteer work, I thought to myself.  Perhaps through her church, too.  When my neighbor went to Mali a few years ago, it was through his church.  Otherwise, come on, how many people do we run into in our lives who declare they are headed to Mali for a vacation?

"I will be taking my flats too" she continued.

When it seemed like a break in that conversation, I chipped in. "So, when are you leaving for Cambodia?"

"In two weeks."

"Cool!  What's taking you to Cambodia?"

She is going there because she is committed to helping out victims of sex-trafficking.  And, yes, through her church.  She will go there to teach those girls and young women hairdressing as a vocational skill.  And also help them transition away from illegal drugs.

All that is hard work.  Emotionally tough work.  It is incredibly easy for me to write analytically about any of the global problems, and express my outrage.  Righteous indignation!  Armchair philosophizing is all I do. People like her, on the other hand, take it as their responsibility to actually do something.  Sure, there is an evangelical aspect to that work; but, if she doesn't go, it is not as if I am all set to go work there with the victims of sex-trafficking, right?

I am back home blogging about it; I do have to ask myself what good does this act of mine accomplish!

Apt for Earth Day: how the poor have to live off the garbage!

So, first it was Foreign Policy with this photo essay on the rag pickers of Dandora, in Nairobi, which is the focus of this piece where the author notes:

Dandora is a symbol of a larger problem: Even as Kenya touts continued economic growth and cultural influence -- including proudly hosting the Nairobi Securities Exchange, the financial hub of east and central Africa, and regional headquarters for the likes of General Electric, Google, Coca-Cola, the United Nations Environmental Program, and U.N.-Habitat -- its poorest citizens have been left behind by their country's rise.

A new constitution, accelerated advances in information and communications technology, East African Community integration, and the discovery of oil have many optimistic that Kenya will continue to be the regional powerhouse economy. Nearly two thirds of Nairobi's population, though, will continue to live in the city's slums.

How tough it is for the typical person working through all that trash for a livelihood? A 42-year old mother of six says:

Working here is how I am able to feed my children. Of course it is not a usual job. Dodging pigs, used condoms, eating what I find; no, it's not good for me. But it is a job and I have to persevere.

Of course, Dandora is not unique at all.  Unfortunately, there are plenty of such places all over the world, including India, which is the focus of this LA Times report:

The children didn't notice the ravens and occasional vulture circling overhead, or the stream of black ooze that flowed nearby, or the inescapable stench of decay. They were squealing over a 4-cent ride on a small, hand-powered Ferris wheel.

The kids are growing up in New Delhi's 70-acre Ghazipur landfill, a post-apocalyptic world where hundreds of pickers climb a 100-foot-high trash pile daily, dodging and occasionally dying beneath belching bulldozers that reshape the putrid landscape.

On "trash mountain," families earn $1 to $2 a day slogging through waist-deep muck. But the residents also marry, have children on their dirt floors, pray and celebrate life's other milestones.

As I noted in this blog post, I had observed similar rag-picking everywhere in the city.  It is a tough life, as the LA Times report adds:

Pickers complain that even now they can't keep pace with rising food costs.

"I manage to make enough to feed us," said Habibullah, as a small boy walked by naked except for flip-flops. "But I can never get ahead."

The more ambitious are no longer content to wait for belching garbage trucks, so they head into neighborhoods to get higher-quality waste from residents, earning more money.

Every once in a while, when such discussions come up in classes, the wide-eyed idealistic youth find such happenings intolerable.  They want to get rid of all these.  I then ask them what alternatives might exist for the poor?  Then they begin to wonder.  I then further drive home the point with the following video commentary from Nicholas Kristof:



We have no idea how phenomenal life is when we do not have to struggle for existence that way, and we rarely pause to thank for the life we have.

The poor have a right to .... garbage :(

A few days ago, the Register Guard published my opinion piece on the Third World India, which is not drawing the same level of attention as does the First World India.  The following news item from The Hindu makes the intersection of these two Indias quite surreal:

Ms. Bhadakwad had come 18,000 kilometres to the annual U.N. climate conference in Cancun on behalf of 6,000 organised landfill recyclers in her hometown Pune, to demand access to the waste now trucked instead to a new incinerator. Without their dump, they’re trying to survive by going door to door for trash in a community 20 kilometres away.

“We have a right to the waste that can be recycled,” Ms. Bhadakwad told a reporter. “We want to continue making a living without interference from such big private companies.”

Their environmentalist allies say some 50 million people worldwide depend on collecting waste materials for a meagre livelihood. And these advocates and poor recyclers have an environmental argument to make – incinerators not only produce toxic pollution, but “by burning waste they increase carbon dioxide emissions,” the biggest global warming gas, said Mariel Vilella, a campaigner with the international group GAIA, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.

By collecting and recycling plastic bags and bottles, glass, aluminium and other material, those 50 million rag-pickers “represent a huge opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Vilella told reporters

Reminded me of the following video, from Nicholas Kristof, that I sometimes use in my classes:

Pakistan "fires" at US troops. OMG!!!

Pakistani troops have fired shots into the air to stop US troops crossing into the South Waziristan region of Pakistan, local officials say.
Reports say nine US helicopters landed on the Afghan side of the border and US troops then tried to cross the border. ...
They say seven US helicopter gunships and two troop-carrying Chinook helicopters landed in the Afghan province of Paktika near the Zohba mountain range.
US troops from the Chinooks then tried to cross the border. As they did so, Pakistani paramilitary soldiers at a checkpoint opened fire into the air and the US troops decided not to continue forward, local Pakistani officials say.
Reports say the firing lasted for several hours. Local people evacuated their homes and tribesmen took up defensive positions in the mountains.

That was from the BBC. Holy &*%$!

Chris Hitchens reminds readers about the origin of the country's name, which itself is a reminder of all the related geopolitical problems:

The very name Pakistan inscribes the nature of the problem. It is not a real country or nation but an acronym devised in the 1930s by a Muslim propagandist for partition named Chaudhary Rahmat Ali. It stands for Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir,
and Indus-Sind. The stan suffix merely means "land." In the Urdu language, the resulting acronym means "land of the pure." It can be easily seen that this very name expresses expansionist tendencies and also conceals discriminatory ones. Kashmir, for example, is part of India. The Afghans are Muslim but not part of Pakistan. Most of Punjab is also in India. Interestingly, too, there is no B in this cobbled-together name, despite the fact that the country originally included the eastern part of Bengal (now Bangladesh, after fighting a war of independence against genocidal Pakistani repression) and still includes Baluchistan, a restive and neglected province that has been fighting a low-level secessionist struggle for decades. The P comes first only because Pakistan is essentially the property of the Punjabi military caste (which hated Benazir Bhutto, for example, because she came from Sind). As I once wrote, the country's name "might as easily be rendered as 'Akpistan' or Kapistan,' depending on whether the battle to take over Afghanistan or Kashmir is to the fore."

US getting entangled in Pakistan is a horrible step

The US is boldly going into Pakistan. Not a good idea. According to news reports,

General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, considered by the US as a pivotal figure in the "war on terror", said yesterday Pakistan had never agreed to allow the US to operate on Pakistani territory, and that unilateral attacks risked undermining joint efforts against insurgents.
"Falling for short-term gains while ignoring our long-term interest is not the right way forward," Kayani warned.
Kayani usually keeps a low profile so his open rebuke of the US is likely to make policymakers in Washington sit up and take notice.
Today, Pakistan's prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, said Kayani reflected government opinion and policy.

All I can do is add this to my growing list of posts on Pakistan :-(

Robert Dreyfuss, writing in The Nation, compares the US' forays into Pakistan with how we expanded the war from Vietnam into the neighboring Cambodia. Dreyfuss writes,

The Times reports today that President Bush gave an order in July allowing US Special Forces "to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government ...
... There could hardly be a worse strategy. It risks inflaming Pakistani public opinion against the United States and boost the religious parties. It will make the new Pakistani government look like pawns or puppets of the United States, which won't exactly make them popular among Pakistanis. And, of course, it won't be successful in eliminating Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Historians of the Vietnam war might compare the strategy to President Nixon's ill-fated decision to expand the war across the border into Cambodia in search of alleged Viet Cong "santuaries." That didn't work out well. ...
... Yesterday, testifying at a House committee, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs ("frankly, we are running out of time") pretty much confirmed the Times report: The nation's top military officer issued a blunt assessment yesterday of the war in Afghanistan and called for an overhaul in U.S. strategy there, warning that thousands more U.S. troops as well as greater U.S. military involvement across the border in Pakistan's tribal areas are needed to battle an intensifying insurgency.
Mullen has been the point man in US efforts to put pressure on Pakistan to allow more aggressive American attacks directly into Pakistan, meeting repeatedly with Kayani and other officials to demand that Islamabad surrender its national sovereignty.