Fall 2008 OneWorld WashU

ONEWORLD Washington University ● Issue 3 ● Fall 2008

CONTRIBUTORS EDITORS-IN-CHIEF Zoe Madigan Christine Wei SENIOR EDITORS Alina Kutsenko Olga Lozovskaya Jessica Spraos ASSOCIATE EDITORS John Drollinger Rachel Sacks DESIGNERS Lyndsey Glaze Danielle Hayes Tiffany Wang

Dear Readers, This past August, Beijing hosted the 2008 Olympic Games. “One world, one dream,” the slogan developed by China, reflects the questions that lie at the heart of this publication. We are OneWorld, but what does that mean? What are the common bonds that unite all people, despite the world’s many nations, cultures, religions, and struggles? How can we work together to make our world a better place?

A wise professor once said, “K is P — knowledge is power.” OneWorld puts all of its faith into this mantra. Our magazine is the vehicle through which we pass knowledge of local, national, and international events and experiences to our readers. Through a collection of student work, we hope to address the questions concerning what it means to be one world and inspire you to action. We hope to address these issues and reflect upon what give us meaning in our own lives. We can give you the “K”; how will you use your “P”?

- Zoe and Christine

table of

20

Conservation and Change in Madagascar

CONTENTS

26

Adventures in China

On the Border: Trouble & Transformation

2

Cuba: Como el Payaso

4

Aid, Trade, and the World’s Poor

11

Kinloch: Cut Up Poetry

14

Education

16

Art submission

19

China Impressions

36

The Politics of Division

40

St. Louis Public Schools

43

Meaning in a Moment

47

Growing n Ghana

48

Photo submission

50

Book Review: Deep Economy

51

On the Border Trouble & Transformation

by Olga Lozovskaya Drug traffickers were the first to see potential in the oddly-shaped house on the corner of La Calle Chapo Márquez. They dug a tunnel from the Tijuana basement to smuggle millions of dollars worth of marijuana and cocaine into to the United States. When border patrol agents inflitrated the tunnel on July 8, 2004, they found a complex system of pulley cables that channeled the drugs from Tijuana to a San Diego parking lot. While there have been over sixty similar tunnels discovered, this one has taken on great significance through its unprecedented and symbolic transformation into Tijuana’s newest cultural center, La Casa del Tunel.

Artists have reclaimed the house and have taken an entirely new approach to connecting the two sides of the border. Luis Ituarte, a Tijuana resident who proposed the La Casa del Tunel project as part of the Border Council of Arts and Culture (COFAC) programs, says “Transformation is the key word…Something that characterized the city in a negative way is being transformed into something good”. COFAC seeks to stimulate and support artistic activities and cross-cultural interaction along Southern California’s border. By providing educational seminars for youth through seniors and exhibition space, La Casa gives agency to artists by offering courses and showcasing their work.

La Casa del Tunel opened this past September and is a shining example of hope for the city’s future — a hope that has deteriorated as drug-related violence in Tijuana has accelerated in the past decade.

Brutally murdered victims of drug violence flood the pages of Tijuana’s newspapers

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In Tijuana alone, revenues in tourism are down 80-90% since 2001. daily; since January of this year, the body count from drug-related deaths is at six hundred people and rising. Tijuana’s tourism has dropped over ninety percent in the past several years due to the increasingly dangerous perception of the border city, causing many residents to turn to illegal and dangerous sources of income. President Felipe Calderón admits that the additional troops and police forces deployed to the region are plagued by corruption and seduced by the bribes of drug lordsii.

The new cultural center is emblematic of Tijuana’s battle to overcome its dark history, and the exhibits aim to excite further progress. Current works on display in La Casa del Tunel depict the oil contamination in the Rio de la Plata and the demise of the Salton Sea of Southern California, calling for environmental restoration of the area.

A painting of the drug tunnel, along with court documents on the court cases on the property and those convicted, will be displayed in an upcoming exhibit. The calendar of events offers everything from music performances and poetry readings to presentations on economic development.

If a drug tunnel can be transformed into an art gallery, then there is hope that Tijuana can be transformed from a drug-ridden city to a thriving community. While La Casa del Tunel does not provide immediate relief from drug violence or poverty, it is an inspirational step in the right direction. If every drug tunnel that was discovered was converted into a community center or school, think of how many drug traffickers could be replaced by painters, musicians, poets, and authors.

i “Tijuana streets flow with the blood of rival drug cartels.” The Guardian: Nov. 2, 2008. ii “Mexico’s top federal police chief quits amid probe.” Washington Post: Nov. 1, 2008.

There have already been 600 drug war related deaths in Tijuana this year.

Casualties in the rest of Mexico total 4,000.

cuba:

COMO EL PAYASO

reflections on a recent trip

by Gordon Sommers

4

Cuba

was a beautiful nightmare: a shadowy dystopia yanked from the pages of Orwell or Huxley, sucked into the homogenizing syringe of Marxism and injected into the innocent soil of a tropical paradise. Cuba was a dichotomy: a bitter cake formed from the moldy dough of a moribund economy glazed over with the sweet icings of tourist attractions and Caribbean beauty. Cuba was logarithmic anachronism: forts from the 16th century, cars and houses from the early 20th, and a society just barely keeping hold of the 21st. However, the best way to describe Cuba is in the words of a Cuban man we met on the street our first night there: “Somos como el payaso, alegre por fuera y triste por dentro.� We are like the clown, happy on the outside, yet sad on the inside.

At first glance, Cuba is a gorgeous island like any other, the perfect vacation destination. The warm sun shines over glorious palm trees, streams of happy faces flow down the ancient streets, and buildings exhale the majesty of centuries-old architecture. Taking a walk down the road, shopkeepers rush out of their stores to offer you discounts and restaurateurs beckon you inside with offerings of their finest selections. As night begins to fall, delicious cigar smoke can be tasted in the air and the lights of the city come to life.

5

“ The government has made it illegal for Cubans no

ENGAGE IN CONVERSATION WITH FOREIGNERS. NEVERTHELESS...AS EX AMPLES OF

But like the dream it is, this lovely aesthetic is no more than a fragile façade protected by the ironclad fist of dictatorship, a fiction quickly incinerated by the truths that emerge in conversation with common Cubans. That’s probably one reason why the government has made it illegal for Cubans not employed in the tourist industry to even engage in conversation with foreigners. Nevertheless, many Cubans find ways to dodge the government and talk to tourists despite the law; as examples of a different life, we are a source of hope they cannot afford to lose.

The conversations we shared also gave the Cubans we met a rare opportunity to recount their stories to people not yet desensitized to the hardships of Cuban life, affording them a reaffirmation of their pain. A man by the beach told us stories of the early years of the Castro revolution, a time when the mere suspicion that one was anti-revolutionary could lead to his fingernails being viciously yanked from the skin, his eyes being vengefully gouged, or even the simple punishment of death. Another man we found drunk on the street, muttering something along the lines of “La vida de los cubanos es muy difícil” (the lives of Cubans are difficult took), us to a bar and spent an hour telling us about his life as a perpetual-student and disseminating on the failures of communism.

Everyone we met was incredibly friendly, due in part to a hope that we might give them some money but mostly, I believe, due to the warm culture of the island. Very few panhandled or tried to con us in the way we’ve grown accustomed to from dealing with America’s street-dwellers.

One man, after we shared thirty minutes of genial conversation with him and some of his friends came over and whispered in my ear if I could maybe buy him some food. I gave him a ten-peso note and he disappeared. Thirty minutes later he came back smiling, gave me a giant hug and thanked me effusively. For the remainder of the night he would check back with my friends and me every ten or fifteen minutes to make sure everyone was treating us well and ensure that we were happy. Another man, who we went to a bar with one night, asked if we could come to a market with

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ot employed in the tourist industr y to as much as

F A DIFFERENT LIFE, WE ARE A SOURCE OF HOPE THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO LOSE.”

him and buy him some meat, something he hadn’t had for over a month he said (which given the price of meat in Cuba is entirely believable). He tried to avoid taking our money though, preferring that we just buy him the food. To many of the Cubans we met, it appeared to be of the highest importance to maintain one’s sense of self-sufficiency and honor. They clearly did not want to fall into the category of beggars, subtly asking for help with the necessary and facing the rest supplied only with their own wits and selfrespect. We ended up spending a fair amount of money on tips and solicited gifts to Cubans we talked to, but given the amicability and kind treatment we received, as well as the information we garnered, it was worth every cent; these people provided a far more valuable service than anyone in the tourist industry.

Later on, the man from the bar took us to the house of a friend of his to buy a box of cigars; he explained that it was better we buy from his friend so that the money would go to a Cuban family rather than the government.

He told us that Fidel Castro was the richest man in Cuba, which given the brand of communism we witnessed is a reasonable hypothesis. Every soda bottled or beer canned, every toilet seat manufactured, and every books printed in Cuba is a production of the Cuban government. The government is also owner of the companies in charge of the construction work being done to restore the run down buildings of the cities, the companies that provide electricity and water, and so on. The principle holds for most of the businesses on the island.

Communism in Cuba keeps everyone equal, except when the government sees a need for inequality. The prosperous are such only as allowedbythegovernmenttokeepthemfaithfultothefatherland.Athletes,

for example, are given nice cars, free meals at the nicest restaurants, and so forth. but receive very little actual money so that they can’t quit or emigrate. Artists, on the other hand, are allowed to make money because they have to deal in international sales and it would be too easy for them to make money external to the Cuban economy or escape the country while presenting their work on foreign soil. It’s essential for the few Cubans permitted to leave the country to be examples of content citizens, which of course entails raising them far above the discontent of the majority.

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The Cuban economy is no more than an additional measure of control exercised by the government. Tourists can exchange money for what is called the Cuban Convertible Peso, given the acronym CUC by its initials in Spanish, which is worth approximately the same as the US dollar. Most prices are more or less what one would expect when using the CUC; meat is ten to twenty pesos, a shirt is about the same, a bottle of rum is six, paper and pencils are a bit less. The problem, however, is that the natives are not paid in CUC, but in the local peso, worth 1/24th as much. The government fixes the wages as well, so even Cubans working for foreign companies on Cuban soil are paid small amounts and in local pesos. The average wage values fifteen to twenty CUC a month — far too little to buy anything beyond the minimum necessities.

Yet more terrifying, however, is that the current state of Cuba is actually a relative improvement as compared to in the 1950s, before Castro.

The merits of the current Cuban government are vast in comparison to that which preceded it (one that the United States backed). Healthcare, some food, and housing are guaranteed now, and no taxes are asked by

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More terrifying is that the current state of Cuba is actually a relative improvement. the government: an excellent deal for the Cuban people, at first glance.

This leads some Cubans to be faithful to the government still, despite the difficulties of quotidian life. This is especially true of the older generations who were around before the Castro government, when Batista and the mafia were still in power. But the housing now provided is generally of very low quality, often very cramped — especially in the cities, except for employees of the government, and food is still very limited. Cars are only owned by those whose families possessed them before 1959 or by those to whom the government gives vehicles, for a charge. And unless you work for the government, having the amount of money required to buy a car on your own raises suspicions where they aren’t wanted. Additionally, the current government has made improvements in education, boasting of a 100% literacy rate on the island, yet university education is still very rare given that its more profitable to sell cheap souvenirs to tourists than to be a doctor. With the conversion rate between the CUC and the local peso, a Cuban can make a month’s pay in a day selling pieces of painted wood to curious Europeans.

Nevertheless, the government exercises tremendous tenacity in reminding the Cuban people of its accomplishments and attempting to foment nationalism. Enormous billboards lined the roads with messages like “Hasta la victoria siempre,” Che’s motto, or “Volverán,” a tribute to the so-called five heroes (a group of Cuban spies detained in the United States after thwarting a propaganda attack by a Miami-based anti-Fidel group). Graffiti paints similar messages on the walls of the cities’ edifices, and monuments can be found in every town. One, an angry-faced statue of José Martí holding a small boy (an effigy of Elian Gonzales) and pointing angrily at the United States’ unofficial Embassy in Havana, lead to the following joke by one of the Cubans we met:

Question: What is Jose Martí telling Elian?

Answer: Go there my son, and get a visa!

“Direct action (for change) would be a mistake;

THE CUBAN PEOPLE NEED TO FIND A NEW DIRECTION ON THEIR OWN.”

That wasn’t the only joke we heard, either. The Cuban people’s ability to jest in the face of the terrible adversity that they face on a daily basis is truly a testament to the strength of their character. Their friendliness and openness with us was superlative, especially given the political tensions between our two countries. Most Cubans quickly made it clear that they loved America and, in many cases, wished that they could live there.

The Cuban people are strong, despite the abysmal state of the country in which they live. Hopefully, with time, things will improve, but many of the people we talked to did not expect much. Even with a change in leadership, the communist government has little reason to change a system that serves it so well. Thus, despite the anachronistic state of our country’s current policy on Cuba, I’ve begun to agree with those who say that a significant change in government is necessary. At the same time, I would caution that direct action would be a mistake; the Cuban people need to find a new direction on their own. The culture is very distinct from ours and forcibly imprinting our own ideas onto the island could only end badly. Lowering the embargo might be a good first step, as a means of stimulating their economy to improve the conditions of the people and open up the island to foreign ideas. Even so, there are many obstacles to face and this would not be a panacea. As long as the dual currency system exists, for instance, the Cuban economy will be oppressive to the majority.

The daily existence that the Cuban people are faced with is a torture few deserve, and I truly hope that things will change for them, ideally with the well-guided yet distant support of our next president. Incredible and commendable are the Cuban people’s stoicism in facing the purgatory into which they’ve been thrust. Meanwhile, our lack of thought and action in regard to this injustice can only be described as despicable and lamentable.

At present, humankind’s

ability to produce food and water, communicate ideas, and develop technology is superior to that at any other point throughout history. Simultaneously, over a billion people lack access to potable drinking water...

A& T orld’ s oor W P id,

rade,

the

11

...a quarter

of the planet’s population is without electricity, and half of the world’s children live in poverty. These startling situations are not ultimately caused by resource shortages, unbeatable diseases, or even intentional human cruelty. Rather, they come after decades and decades of misdirected and unfortunate aid policy. The channels for global aid developed by wealthy countries have often led to funds concentrated in the hands of those who spend to stay in power rather than help the needy. Additionally, heavily subsidized agricultural products have flooded developing markets, making local farmers unable to compete. However, the limitations of direct aid do not imply that nothing can be done to help the world’s impoverished. Mounting economic evidence supports the thesis that the best way to lift an impoverished nation’s population out of poverty is to increase how much it trades with developed nations, rather than to supply it with aid.

The successes and failures humanity has experienced in attempting to better the standard of living of its poorest members should point us to one conclusion: in alleviating global poverty, trade is more effective than aid. Understanding this concept will be instrumental in striving to eliminate preventable suffering through this new century.

According to the academics studying international development, including Kenyan economist James Shikwati, outlays of financial aid do more harm than good in developing economies. This can occur in several ways. The first is related to the specific individuals and agencies that are responsible for distributing aid within a developing nation. They are most often people in power, whether through political influence or otherwise. When placed in the hands of actors such as these, aid can be used to buffer the government’s dominance over a country, or a politician’s control over a local voting constituency.

As such, instead of going towards basic needs, funds are at times devoted to investments contrary to the interests of typical people. Corrupt governments might buy expensive weapons systems or other military investments to control an unhappy populace. Giving the small empowered minority — one presumably satisfied with the political status quo in their nations — the responsibility of allocating reserves of aid can often be the least efficient choice. This is not to suggest that all aid is misallocated in this way, or that all impoverished nations have their own governments to blame. Rather, this is an empirical observation based on the impacts of unconditional aid given in the world today.

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The effects of aid can also be detrimental depending on the form in which it is given. Many now suspect that giving mass quantities of food to impoverished nations often has the effect of stunting development of agriculture, instead of feeding people. Wealthy nations, due to powerful farmer’s lobbies and agribusinesses, often provide massive subsidies to growers, guaranteeing a

specific price for a commodity. In the United States, over $11 billion is given in corn subsidies each year, artificially driving down the cost of growing and selling corn. As a result, when America’s excess grain is delivered to the markets of Africa, native farmers are unable to compete.

In the short run, though individuals are able to buy grain for a lower price, the prices translate into competition for the

oor

many who traditionally have depended upon farming as a livelihood, and they are consequently left without work. In the long run, agricultural infrastructure is unable to develop, as investment is without merit.

Local farmers cannot conceivably compete with the cheap foreign commodities, and must resign themselves to buying foreign products when possible, instead of producing those products themselves.

When viewed in a comprehensive way, massive agricultural aid from wealthy nations prohibits the poor from feeding themselves. In situations of imminent and crippling food shortages, this does not imply that such aid should not be given — even if it threatens the long scale of development, we need not let people starve. However, when the circumstances do not dictate such a drastic measure,

aid should not be donated in the form of agricultural commodities.

Though evidence indicates that direct aid is not necessarily the most efficient choice for helping those living in poverty and, in fact, may do more harm than good — it does not indicate that nothing can be done to lift poor nations up to a better standard of living. Statistical analysis is accumulating that suggests the best correlate for those countries that are able to make economic progress is the amount of trade they do with wealthier nations. The study of international development is littered with countless success stories, nations that were able to improve their economic status through trade relationships, supplying other countries with goods or services that they can produce more efficiently or cheaply.

Trade encourages investment in internal economic systems, enabling a developing nation to advance down the path towards economic stability, rather than blunting infrastructural growth, as aid does. As the impoverished begin to produce goods that reach world markets, they are able to reap the benefits needed to advance to a higher standard of living. Unfortunately, many corporations and other trade agencies swallow an enormous percentage of revenues, and leave growers or producers little to live on. However, trends such as the Fair-Trade Movement display that wealthy consumers desire increasing transparency and ethical practices from multinational conglomerates, and want the proceeds from their purchases to reach the hands of those who need it most. As such ethical trade practices become more prevalent, they will only increase the effectiveness of trade as a lever for humanitarian progress.

It may seem insensitive to suggest that giving the world’s impoverished money or food commodities will do more harm than good. However, when coupled with the idea that progress can indeed be made, through the mechanism of trade, this shift in view does not rebel violently against our common intuitions and traditional values of compassion. The oft-cited quotation of Lao Tzu, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime,” holds true for nations as well as individuals. Only through intensive building of reciprocal economic relationships, rather than the dumping of misallocated funds or marketdeflating grain, will we be able to lift the world’s population out of unnecessary suffering and hardship. While aid can, and often does harm, carefully executed trade can act as the most effective means of helping those who need it most.

- Joey Stromberg

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{

A CUT UP TEXT compiled by danielle hayes from: ST. LOUIS-LAMBERT AVIATION WEBSITE Interviews with Kinloch residents, spring 2008 Rimbaud, Mauvais Sang

}

Welcome to Kinloch, Missouri.

It was the first black community out here in the county, basically in St. Louis ST. LOUIS SITS IN THE HEARTLAND OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST ECONOMIC ENGINE, THE UNITED STATES This is the heart of America.

Saint Louis is in the heart of America And Kinloch is in the heart of Saint Louis.

LIKE MANY EXISTING AIRPORTS, THE ST. LOUIS-LAMBERT AIRPORT WAS LANDLOCKED. I can’t even imagine the hour when the white men land.

FOR ST. LOUIS TO ACHIEVE ITS FULL POTENTIAL AND RIGHTFUL PLACE AMONG THE NATION’S LEADING METROPOLITAN AREAS, IT REQUIRES AN AVIATION HUB SECOND TO NONE. It’s just…he tore that building down right there.

I don’t know why… No way I’d have torn that building down.

HE AREA IN WHICH THE AIRPORT WAS TO EXPAND WAS PREDOMINATELY OWNED BY OTHERS. They mean black people.

THE 1500 ACRES LAMBERT BOUGHT INCLUDED MORE THAN 1900 RESIDENCES. As long as they’re living lavishly, as long as their kids are being provided for, they don’t care what’s going on in the hood, in the neighborhoods of America.

A TEAM OF PROFESSIONALS FOLLOWED STRICT FEDERAL GUIDELINES TO PURCHASE PROPERTIES, APPRECIATING THE PROGRAM’S IMPACT ON RESIDENCIES. I do not understand your laws.

I have no moral sense. I am a brute.

THE LAND ACQUISITION TEAM WORKED COMPASSIONATELY WITH RESIDENTS DURING THE PROCESS. Oh [their] marvelous Charity! [Their] Selfless love!

They promised they was gonna build our hood back.

But instead, nothing.

RUNWAY 11-29 KNOCKS DOWN A MAJOR HURDLE TO EFFICIENT ST. LOUIS AVIATION. You are making a mistake.

NO LONGER WILL AIRCRAFT PASSENGERS CIRCLE THE HEAVENS AND WAIT ON THE TARMAC AS WEATHER CONDITIONS PASS. THE AIRPORT WILL BE AN EFFICIENT TRANSPORTATION PORTAL TO THE NATION AND BEYOND. Good luck, I cried, and I saw a sea of flames and smoke rise to heaven; and left and right, all wealth exploded like a billion thunderbolts.

THE PLAYING FIELD IS NOW LEVEL. They redirected the runway, taking out another African-American community.

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WITH AN EXPANDED LAMBERT AIRPORT, ST. LOUIS ENTERS A NEW ERA IN ITS RICH AVIATION HISTORY. Progress. The world moves!...

And why shouldn’t it?

I have been of an inferior race forever.

ST. LOUIS HAS CAUGHT UP THE REGION AND THE LAMBERT AIRPORT IS AT THE THRESHOLD OF GREATNESS. I understand, and since I cannot express myself except in pagan terms, I would rather keep quiet.

Let us set out once more on our native roads.

THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS AND THE SURROUNDING REGION ARE ON THE MOVE. As far as I’m concerned ain’t nothin’ for ‘em to come back too.

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out of the blue

by Lauren Weiss

“8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1”

“7-6-5-4-3-2-1”

So begins the warm-up and my Friday afternoon, the best and the most frustrating part of my week. For two hours each week, I go to St. Louis’ Mark Twain Elementary School with Out of the Blue (OOTB), a literacy mentoring group I help run, and try to teach young students how to read.

First, the basics of the situation: the mostly white, highly educated college students that make up OOTB travel from the Wash U bubble to one of the city’s most impoverished neighborhoods. We pass at the huge, beautiful houses lining Forest Park and arrive in North St. Louis, where the blocks are filled with boarded up homes, sidewalks are littered, and cars look as if they have spent several decades in the area.

Twenty minutes after leaving campus, we get to Mark Twain, where 40 or so kindergarten through third-grade students are playing outdoors on a blacktop with jump ropes and kickballs. They are enrolled in an independent afterschool program called Family Prep, which is run by the non-profit Discovering Options. For the next hour and a half, OOTB members distribute books, help develop the kids’ reading skills, and engage them in exciting activities.

It turns out that getting the kids enthusiastic about books is not a problem at all. Getting them to sit still, however, is another story.

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Every week when we arrive, the kids crowd around us, asking if we’ve brought books for them and reaching for the precious paperbacks occasionally piled in our arms. They get to keep all books that we bring through a grant from First Book, a national literacy organization, and they love writing their names in the inside covers to claim the books as their own. The social worker with whom we work even tells stories of kids buying extra copies of books they’ve already received (with good behavior tickets) just to own another book.

This remarkable situation is due to, of course, the fact that they have access to almost no books at home and because reading an entire book, even a picture book like Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day or The Paper Bag Princess, is still a major challenge for most of these students. Some of the third graders still can’t make it through a simple sentence without struggling over three- and four-letter words. We buy books that are at a first-grade reading level and hope that the third graders can get through them, with varying degrees of success. Although it is immensely challenging to watch a child struggle through an activity that comes so easily to me, it is equally rewarding to see the same child break out in a huge smile when he or she has successfully finished a page.

The extreme difficulty that these kids face in reading is just one reminder of the dire state of the St. Louis Public School District and of the city more generally. The school has a six percent literacy proficiency rate (ability to read at grade level) and a zero percent math proficiency rate. For example, when I asked one of my third

graders what her favorite subject was at the beginning of the last school year, she talked about how much she liked math. Great, I thought, a young girl interested in math. Then I asked her what she was studying in subject. The answer: simple subtraction, a far cry form my own educational experience. By late September of third grade in my affluent suburban school district, I had learned basic multiplication, not to mention multiple-digit subtraction.

Mark Twain clearly reflects the financial problems that plague St. Louis city in general. There is rarely toilet paper in the bathrooms, doors on the stalls, or soap in the soap dispensers. The students spend their good behavior tickets at a small store stocked with paper, pencils, and toiletries like shampoo, the basics that they can’t get at home or in class. It’s amazing to me that these kids have managed to succeed to the extent that they have, and it is a testament to the work of their teachers and parents that they are still genuinely excited about learning despite all the ways in which the educational system has failed them.

I am no education expert; the point of this article is not to unload statistic after statistic about the school system, the parents, the teachers, and the kids. Instead, my views reflect what I see as a politically-minded liberal college student who can’t figure out why the kids are so happy when the system is so broken. I love that they love to learn, and I want to be there to help them achieve their goals.

I like to think that our amazing OOTB volunteers not only help the kids learn to read but also encourage them to work for a future in

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which college is a viable possibility. Every chance I get, I tell the kids about all the cool stuff that college students get to do. Even massive homework loads can be rephrased as, “We get to read tons of cool books,” if you have the right motivation. It always worries me when the girls ask me if I’m a mom. While being parents can certainly be part of their futures, I hope they see that 20-year-old college students aren’t generally ready for that part of life.

At 5:oo p.m., we head out the doors, back to the Wash U bubble and our exciting Friday nights. We swap stories in the car of the drama of the day or of some kid’s random question or major accomplishment, trying to figure out the best methods to help these students. Everyone is always relaxed on the ride home, elated after another day with the animated children. Though exhausting, these rewarding struggles never fail to remind me of how lucky I am to be able to help these kids get one step closer to the life that I have been handed.

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“Arab and Jew”

is my interpretation of relations between Palestinians and Jews after I read Arab and Jew by David Shipler. I intend to show unfathomable hatred between the two ethnic groups.

- Joome Lee

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Approaching Conservation & Change in MADAGASCAR { text and images by Jesse Goldfarb }

The rainy season has arrived.

Dirt has turned to mud and streams of water flow calmly downhill where they merge and majestically flow together over large rocks, creating both pools and rapids under skies of leaves and branches. The streams merge again until the river widens, at which point small wooden canoes, strong men, and mountains of bananas join the flow East toward the Indian Ocean. We are going the other way, and soon the sounds of our muddy footsteps are drowned by singing voices, clapping hands, and smiling faces that create two lines through which we pass. Then, with an entire village behind us, we hike on to our destination: Tonga Soa Madagascar.

I would never have expected that a Washington University class curriculum would allow me the chance to travel to a remote area of Madagascar. But for two weeks this past spring, fifteen students from the schools of Arts and Sciences, Social Work, Law, and Business were given the incredible opportunity to travel there in collaboration with the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG). This garden that you may have thought existed only a few miles east of Wash U is actually involved in a few different parts of Africa where biodiversity is unparalleled. MBG mostly conducts research on plant species in such places but has expanded to include a number of community conservation projects in Madagascar, the African island country in which they are most active.

MBG’s community conservation projects are remarkably well managed, overwhelmingly well accepted, comprehensive, and inspiring. These community conservation projects were largely started

by Armand Randrianasolo, a Malagasy man who worked his way up in the field of Botany, beginning as a student in St. Louis in 1991 and now working as an associate curator. The community conservation projects in Madagascar extend beyond botanical research to include environmental and agricultural education, forest regeneration and patrol, community nurseries, school gardens, and learning centers that become focal points for villagers and their children. MBG is also a force in attracting different NGOs with expertise in microfinance, agricultural techniques, and education. It now operates five community conservation programs across Madagascar, all at different stages of development, but all equally situated in regions of great biodiversity, where larger conservation agencies are absent. And best of all, MBG hires all locals to do this.

During our stay on the island, we split into two groups. The Mahabo team, comprised of the majority of students and faculty, travelled to an MBG site in southern Madagascar where they split further into groups that concentrated on socioeconomic factors, technology, public goods, and law and community rule. Mahabo is one of MBG’s most successful sites and also part of the reason why Washington University got involved in the first place. It was Armand who asked for the Business School’s guidance in looking to improve the livelihood of the people from an economic standpoint, eventually leading to a collaboration between Mahabo and the Blessing Basket Project (BBP), a not-for-profit organization that exports beautifully hand-crafted baskets from developing countries and prides itself on paying “prosperity wages,” wages dramatically higher than those paid even by fair traders.

The “New Site Team” team, of which I was proud to be a part, consisted of only three students and one faculty member, although we, like the Mahabo team, were accompanied by our local experts, the MBG staff and Armand. Our team would head east for a five-hour drive to Vatomandry, a coastal town with rolling waves, big sky, and fresh fish caught by strong armed men in wooden canoes. After checking out the local markets and meeting with government, NGO, and microfinance officials, we would set out for Ambalabe the next day, only a seven-hour boat ride upstream with two hours of hiking to follow. We were told we were the first Americans to ever visit these areas, although not the first “vaza” (foreigners), because a few French botanists had come before. As the new site team we, were given the goal of trying to identify a possible economic development activity these villages could begin, something that was tailored to their region and skills as BBP was in Mahabo. But this lofty goal may have been a bit too

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85% of Madagascars forests are already gone. specific for a group of students traveling to a region where no outsider had ever really been to ask questions. While we still kept it in our minds, most of our attention was spent gaining an overall understanding of the community and the problems they voiced to us, which mostly fell under the categories of education, healthcare, and agriculture, although we did not forget about their lack of soccer balls and pumps, other concerns mentioned in each community meeting.

At each meeting we went through a range of questions to uncover as much as we could about their lives, beliefs, problems, and futures. One question that I found most interesting was why they cared about the forest, or whether they did at all. The responses and the degrees of respect and worth placed on the forest varied in each village. A local member of the forest patrol said, “Our life depends on the forest. Maybe there would be no water, no wood to make a house, no special wood for certain ceremonies, and no medicinal plants.” Members of the Sahanionaka village expressed that the small remaining forest they preserved on a hillside overlooking their village was important because, they said, “Our ancestors gave it to us and we want to give it to the next generation.” A member of another village stressed, “The lemurs play and plant seeds for us.” While these were a few of the responses given, we also discovered that a village politician ran on the premise of getting rid of MBG, although he was defeated. It also became obvious that many people did not feel as strongly about preserving the forest, as they had more immediate daily concerns.

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Equally interesting were the questions they laughed at, immediately indicating strong cultural differences in our worldviews.

“Does anyone use fertilizer to put nutrients back into the soil?” The crowd that was usually quiet in the dark, but beautifully window-lit room erupts. “Does anybody use compost?” The same roar of laughter. “Are people open to catching rain water?” You get the point. What is it that evokes such laughter? Is it the thought of putting manure or food waste back into the ground that’s crazy in a community that’s hardly heard of the idea and has no concept of its affects?

Could it even be the translation of the word manure into something like “doodoo” that might evoke a similar response in the United States? How possible is catching rainwater when nobody has the tanks to do so? Changing sanitation, water consumption habits, and slash and burn agricultural practices is a slow and painful process, something we also learned from talking to a Peace Corps volunteer in Vatomandry. But these villagers seem open to anything and everything so it’s difficult to know what can and cannot be accepted by the community as a whole.

In a broad sense, many of their problems were in some way related to being so far removed from any sort of infrastructure.

There was no road and therefore no way of getting crops to market or of making money, which these villages of subsistence farmers greatly desired. Their remoteness also meant that they were hardly served by an already overstretched Malagasy government. They were less likely to attract nurses and teachers as well as supplies to build formal schools

and hospitals. We visited three different villages in the commune, most of which only had schools up to grade three, and only in Ambalabe could kids attend grades four and five. After this, it was only the select few that continued to Vatomandry for further schooling. Currently only two families in a village of over 100 could afford such further education. What then is the incentive to send your kids to school if it won’t take them anywhere but away from the field for a few years? How can healthcare be effective without even electricity to store vaccines?

How do people pay for medicines without any income? How can people produce enough rice to feed their families without sufficient irrigation and an abundance of hilly lands prone to erosion and soil depletion?

These difficult questions don’t have easy answers, but what became easily apparent from all these concerns was the fact that conserving the forest would only be long term, successful, and sustainable if it included responses to all these issues.

Conservation cannot really be important when you have eight to ten kids to feed on land that is decreasing in productivity.

Conservation is dependent on the livelihood of the people, and the people want health care, education, new agricultural techniques and money for starters.

A strong presence of lemurs in any Malagasy forest means that it is a particularly productive forest. Certainly it is rich in biodiversity because lemurs depend on all kinds of different fruits, leaves, flowers, insects, herbs, and trees for survival. In this same way, the presence of any rich Malagasy forest in the future will be a symbol of the healthcare, family planning, education, agricultural techniques, economic incentives, and community conservation programs cultivated by the Malagasy people. MBG’s approach to community conservation is very appropriate because it lends itself to the people. The last thing MBG wants is for the forest to be untouchable. They want people to use the forest, but they want them to

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...for future generations understand what can be taken, where it can be taken from, and what must be replanted so that the forest can remain a resource for future generations.

Watching lemurs as they nearly fly through the forest and thinking about how the island split off from Mozambique to become its own experiment in evolution for the next 150 million years is a humbling experience. The primates I first learned about in Human Evolution move like graceful acrobats, but probably ten times as fast. They hug the forest’s trees with both arms and legs, stare down at you then back into the forest, then back at you again before they’re out of sight within a few seconds. 85% of Madagascar’s forests are already gone — and these aren’t just any forests. These are forests in which the overwhelming majority of land animals, reptiles, birds, and plants exist nowhere else on earth.

So what can we do? Here are some preliminary ideas that our group came up with. We are aware that many interventions could have potentially positive and negative effects.

Ecotourism, if executed correctly, could bring capital to locals and the community while also placing greater importance on the forest. The villagers themselves are very open to foreigners coming in, and the area has many attractions, although tourists would need to be pretty adventurous. But that is also what could make this trip exciting and unique for the right person, along with the high waterfalls, excellent hiking, cultural experience, and natural beauty and biodiversity. If pursued, such a project could collaborate with a University in Antananarivo, which specializes in ecotourism.

Another idea that came from the villagers was establishing a village market in hopes of catalyzing innovation and creativity. However, this project would need a concrete building to accommodate government security, which is a prerequisite to market establishment.

While the people in Ambalabe can grow almost anything, including bananas, pineapples, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, avocado, ginger, peanuts, coffee, onion, and rice, the problem is getting those crops to market. Anything sent to market would need to be small, valuable, and probably non-perishable. Peanut butter or small-scale honey production were

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some ideas that seemed viable.

The Mahabo team brought fuelefficient stoves to its project sites. These stoves use drastically smaller amounts of wood to cook the same amount of rice and became a big hit with villagers.

On another note, students and faculty from the law school began looking into protection of intellectual property rights for local healers and their communities, which could potentially have very positive outcomes.

It is important to remember that two weeks in a foreign country is just a brief visit. The change will come from the MBG staff and the community on the ground. But one thing we can do as people from this side of the world is to make connections with different organizations, be it the Peace Corps or a small public health NGO. There’s a long list of organizations that may work well in Ambalabe. There is also an increasing demand for carbon credits in our warming world, and avoiding deforestation in Ambalabe could be worth a significant amount if such a trading system is set up.

What remains in my mind is what we can actually do to help these people and this process, now that we have gathered this information. Can anything we propose have positives that outweigh their negatives? The welcomes, the hospitality, and the gifts we received were more than one could ever ask for. The question then becomes if this relationship ever could really be reciprocal. Can we ever give these people as much as they have given us? That is one fear we are left with.

THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE of AMERICA

by Danielle Hayes

images courtesy of US Library of Congress & Lindsey King

Prior to 1492 there were approximately 100 million Indigenous People living in North and South America. In less than 300 years the population was reduced to 10 million.

How did this happen? It’s actually quite simple. European settlers considered Indigenous people savages, and believed savages were soulless. It wasn’t a sin to kill something without a soul. It was heroic. There was an official policy of extermination: bullets, blankets soaked in small pox, trail after trail of tears.

Buffalo populations were destroyed, Christian boarding schools created — where the motto was “Kill the Indian, Save the Child” — and over two hundred treaties, written, signed and broken by the Government of the United States of America.

There is a histor y here that we must relearn. Living conditions on some of today’s reser vations are comparable to those of the third world.

IN SOUTH DAKOTA, ON THE PINE RIDGE NATIVE AMERICAN RESERVATION: The Reser vation is the second largest in the United States at a size roughly equal to the state of Connecticut.

There is one grocer y store on the Reser vation.

There is no garbage pick up or mail deliver y.

Man has Responsibility, not Power.

TUSCARORA PROVERB

39% of the homes do not have electricity.

60% of Reser vation families do not have a telephone.

60% of housing is infected with potentially fatal black molds.

Unemployment is often around 85%.

The school dropout rate is over 70% 80% of families are affected by alcoholism.

Diabetes, cer vical cancer, tuberculosis, suicide and fetal alcohol sydrome are all substantially more prevalent on the Reser vation than in the rest of the United States.

97% of Lakota people live below the poverty line.

SOURCES: The Republic of the Lakotah (www.republicoflakotah.com) “The Arrogance of Ignorance: Hidden Away, Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” October 2006. (www.nativevillage.org) Re-Member Newsletter : A Non-Profit Organization

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中國 C H I NA - Zoe Madigan

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the adventure begins “Qing, xianzai chou zhou lu. Please prepare for landing.” The sound of the bilingual announcement woke me from a dazed, surreal fifteen-hour transpacific flight. This was the first time I was traveling by myself, and I was leaving the “West” for China. As I looked out the window to see the spectacular Pudong skyline, flanked by the East China Sea and the Huang Pu River, I felt excitement and butterflies coalesce into a thrilling cocktail that fed my building anticipation. My dream to visit China was coming to life, and I was minutes away from touching down on Chinese soil.

As a child, I used to jokingly say, “I am leaving for China by train,” when I wanted to dismiss someone’s question, but I never imagined that my piffling commentary would evolve into a milestone (minus the train, append plane) in my life. I was going to Shanghai to learn Chinese, but I craved the opportunity to explore a new place on my own. In addition to Chinese language study, I wanted to immerse myself in Chinese culture, learn about Special Economic Zones, visit the countryside, and go to Beijing. I had one month to reach these goals, and so my journey began.

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first impression --

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---

Clearing customs at the airport was nothing out of the ordinary. I walked to the taxi stand and explained where I was headed: a flat, just a few blocks from People’s Square and the pedestrian street Nanjing Lu. As we left the airport, I began to notice that the differences between Shanghai and my hometown, Chicago, were astounding. I always thought Chicago traffic was bad, but this traffic was absurd--on Sunday afternoon, the cars crowded this ten-lane super-highway like it was a construction zone on the Edens at 4:30 p.m. on a Friday. As dusk approached, I saw the luminescence of the neon lights materialize. Billboards for both Chinese and foreign products were ubiquitous. Apartments were built one on top of the other to accommodate the population of twenty million. As we approached the downtown area on land, it was even more spectacular than when I had seen it from the air. Downtown, the buildings are magnificent, tall, and modern. Bridges, like the Lupu, are feats of modern engineering genius designed with art and aesthetic

in mind. The city was glowing. As we left Pudong, the financial center, and drove into the older part of Shanghai, Puxi, where I would live, I began to realize the depth of the city. The balance between the opposing forces of yin and yang were commonplace. Puxi was a combination of new and old, extravagant and austere, opulent and destitute.

---- YING AND YANG Arriving sleep deprived and hungry, on a Sunday evening, I set out for some caffeine and my first real Chinese food. The caffeine was easy—the cooling, astringent flavor of China’s national drink was readily available. I had some traditionally styled, loose-leaf green tea at a local café, which, ironically, served the same Latin American coffee as a café that I frequent in Chicago. I didn’t know it then, but this first experience would serve as a metaphor for much of what I would find in China: a marble cake of new and old. After fueling up at the café, I set out down Nanjing Lu to find some jiaozi, dumplings. The pedestrian street was filled with neon signs, advertisements, shops, and people; the number of people strolling the city at 7:00 p.m. on a Sunday shocked me. As I looked for a restaurant to have dumplings, I passed new buildings decorated with neon lighting designed to mimic traditional Chinese architecture.

In just a few minutes, I stumbled upon a dumpling stall, and for just 元10, approximately $1.50, I could eat the most incredible dumplings. Through this dumpling stall, however, I also found meaning. In China, there is very little, if any, barrier to entry in most markets.

This little dumplings stall, one that I would visit often, was owned by a family who started with nothing more than some steam baskets and a small griddle. They built up their business as they generated more revenue and expanded to an entire stall, complete with a small grill. This little business, however, was the lifeline for this family. This is how they earned money, how they afforded a modest shelter, how they paid for their basic needs. The business was honest and didn’t require expensive legal fees, incorporation costs, or municipal licensing. And as I would see more and more, in many ways China’s economy seemed more capitalistic than our own. Despite China’s “command” economic system, little businesses are everywhere. They are not shut down and easy to start. It is as if firms enter the market until the marginal return actually does equal the marginal cost—meaning that little businesses open until there is no economic profit to be made. China was not a place I expected to find the vision of Adam Smith coming to fruition.

OBSERVATION IN DAILY LIFE ---Each day in China was as exciting as the last. On weekdays, I attended class from 9:00 a.m. until 2:00 pm, with a one-hour break for lunch. After class, however, I had the afternoon to explore. I visited cultural repositories like the Shanghai Museum, the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall, or the Shanghai Art Museum. I also went to different districts in the city to explore. One of my favorites was Yuyuan, the Old Town.

Old town was dominated by traditional architecture.

Rectangular shaped, pitched roof, ornately detailed

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buildings topped with baoding, or treasure tops, marked the area. Each building was beautiful and ornate. This area was famous for the Hu Xin Teahouse and bazaar in the center. The bazaar was once filled with the vendors of traditional Chinese goods and foods. Today, however, this area has been overhauled as multi-national corporations like Starbucks fill shop space. What’s even more interesting was that both the Starbucks and Hu Xin Ting Teahouse had milelong lines. Neither had trouble with business because there are multitudes of people everywhere, ready to consume. In Shanghai, I could feel the blistering rate at which the middle class was emerging in this burgeoning city.

The cultural hot spots were full of rich history and beauty, with so many things to see, to study, to learn, and to photograph. Poverty, however, was omnipresent. In these hot spots there were beggars, who knew they could find tourists, businessmen and women, and people who sympathized and perhaps even empathized with their suffering. I always felt so much inner conflict when I saw them—people who seemed to be forgotten among the glitz and glamour of this world-class city. Between the subway stop and school, I passed a walled off region filled with “slums” and “shacks.” Just over the top of the wall, I could see buildings without windows, electricity, or running water.

In such a progressive city, there is still work to be done, and I believe that it is important that China recognizes this issue and works to improve this situation with education.

EXCURSIONS ---Outside of Shanghai: Because I didn’t have class on the weekends, the weekends were a time for excursions to other Chinese cities. One weekend, I went to Hangzhou and Suzhou. I thought that this trip would be my opportunity to see the countryside, given that each was nearly two-hours outside of Shanghai, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

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Between Shanghai and each of these cities is a continuous stream of people, factories, apartments, and traffic. In fact it wasn’t until we drove another forty-five minutes to a tea farm outside of Hangzhou that I even saw agricultural land. It is also interesting to note that the population of Shanghai is considered roughly the same as New York City. However, the population of New York City is counted according to metropolitan area, which according to the U.S. Census includes much of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. If we were to count China’s metropolitan areas in the same way, the population of Shanghai would far exceed that of New York, given that there is a nearcontinuous stream of people between Hangzhou and Suzhou and that each city has a population of more than six million.

These cities make up the greater Yangtze River Delta Region, which has a population of 88,000,000. Chinese demographic data is from the National Bureau of Statistics of China.

36 Hours in Beijing: After riding on an overnight train, I arrived in Beijing late morning the Saturday before the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The train was packed. Every seat and every bed were filled. The train slowed as we pulled into Beijing Zhan, the Beijing Railway Station. I sensed the

passengers’ mounting anticipation grow as both foreign and Chinese tourists pushed toward the exit door. As I left the train station and entered the city’s center, I immediately noticed many differences between Beijing and Shanghai. Beijing has wider, more industrial streets, the architecture was much more traditionally styled, there were not as many skyscrapers, and there were fewer foreigners.

In Beijing, I had a wonderful time exploring Wangfujing Pedestrian Street, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, and most of all, the Olympic Green. I had the chance to see the Bird’s Nest, the Water Cube, and the Fan, and all were spectacularly modern and elegant. Even the names themselves sound modern, and in many ways, I felt that they were symbolic of the new image that Beijing aimed to portray: the image of Beijing as a modern, international city.

---- POLITICAL COMMENTARY Construction of the Olympic Green began shortly after the Olympic committee selected Beijing to host the summer

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games in July 2001. The government spent tens of billions of dollars building the lavish venue and completing the world’s largest airport terminal.

The government called upon hundreds of thousands of volunteers, construction workers, police, and soldiers to work together to put on the event. I see the seven-year transformation of China’s capital city as a symbol of China’s emerging power.

On September 11, 2001, just two months after Beijing won the bid for the 2008 Olympics, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked. This event marked a fundamental change in both the U.S.’s domestic and foreign policy. At home, we began to spend our money on the development of anti-terrorist technology and homeland security. Abroad, we invested our resources in war against terror and a war to build democracy in Iraq—a war that has yet to show signs of producing returns anywhere near its hefty price tag.

These seven years, juxtaposed with the last seven years of modernization and infrastructure development in China, and I can’t help but think that U.S. needs to reanalyze its priorities. Likewise, China has domestic issues that need to be addressed before it can truly emerge as a world power.

The controversy surrounding the One China policy and the associated political struggles is likely to continue until all parties can reach agreements over power, autonomy, and nationality. In Beijing, the government put up tarps to hide the tenement and “slum” housing, and as the China Daily, an Associated Press affiliate, reported on April 26, 2008, Beijing mayor Wang Xishan referred to “demolishing the dilapidated neighborhoods an essential task this year and that the work must be accelerated.”

CONCLUSIONS ---My adventure in China opened my eyes to a culture and civilization that is so distinct and yet so similar to my own.

Each day in China was exciting and action-packed. I was captivated by the bright lights and modern designs of the cities and enchanted by the rich history. I found the remnants of the past scattered throughout the urban areas and across the countryside intriguing and beautiful. I remember my experience with a smile, but I remember the poverty and political issues that still affect this emerging giant.

Economist Thomas Friedman wrote in an op-ed piece for the New York Times, “Olympics don’t change history.

They are mere snapshots—a country posing in its Sunday bests for all the world too see.” I saw China at its best.

The structures were so new; the streets were so clean; the people were so excited, dawning red and yellow to express their nationalistic pride. I am planning to study abroad at the Capital University of Economics and Business in Beijing next fall, and I look forward to seeing the post-Olympic developments and changes. In the future, I would love to return to Shanghai. I want to return to the little dumpling stall, visit my old haunts, and find new spots to explore. I wonder, what is life like outside of the Special Economic Zones? I hope to journey from the cities and explore this question. I long to see my world through new eyes. As French Novelist Marcel Proust commented, “The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” In my next adventure, I am determined to

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ONE WORLD WHose Dream

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In an effort to appear clean and shiny entire blocks of Beijing were boarded up and covered in colorful tarps - a strip of flowers and sunshine surrounded by cement and steel and the grime of any city street..

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by Danielle Hayes

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“I’d rather die for speaking out, than to live and be silent.”

Fan Zhongyan, 988-1052 3 39

politics of division the

John Drollinger

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Imijondolo,

or squatter camps, are common in Soweto Township, an area located on the edge of Johannesburg, South Africa. These predominantly black communities are home to nine different ethnic groups, sharing the unfortunate bond of poverty. In order to survive, squatter camp residents make routine trips to communal water taps and rely on a scattering of unsanitary community toilets. Families in squatter camps have only a few square meters to call their own. a table, a bed, a hotplate, and a television running on a car battery are just some of the rare luxuries that are crammed into one of these small dwellings. A tall electric fence separates the diseaseridden imijondolo from the affluent white suburbs on the other side, which are filled with spacious homes, manicured lawns, swimming pools, and plasma televisions. Like most cities in South Africa, Johannesburg’s extreme economic divide is clearly visible, and the gap between the rich and the poor is growing.

More and more people are moving into Johannesburg in search of jobs and better lives. After meeting much disappointment in the job market, however, thousands are forced to reside in the imigondolo. In the past decade, the number of people living in severe poverty is believed to have doubled across the country. South Africa’s Institute of Race Relations found that the number of people living on less than US$1 a day rose from 1.9 million in 1996 to 4.2 million in 2005. Children laughing and playing in the dirt roads of the imijondolo cannot mask what Desmond Tutu, former archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner, refers to as “grueling, demeaning, dehumanizing poverty” that surrounds every aspect of their lives. Tutu warned his nation, “We’re sitting on a powder keg.

We really must work like mad to eradicate poverty.” But people have lost faith

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in the government. One impoverished woman’s belief is echoed by thousands: “The government doesn’t look after the poor, it just looks after itself.”

Fourteen years after the end of apartheid, and still very few black citizens are able to share in the country’s wealth. Despite the black African National Congress’ (ANC) control of the government, racism still exists, and is most evident in the economic divide. In South Africa, four out of five people are black, and one out of four is unemployed. Compared to the United State’s unemployment rate of 6.5%, currently 24.3% of the labor force is without jobs in South Africa. In spite of the nation’s immense economic growth in the post-apartheid era, unemployment has become dramatically more prevalent, mostly among blacks. While blacks may now control the government, the country’s wealth still remains concentrated mainly in white hands.

The unequal wealth distribution has evoked much anger aimed at the government, especially from poor black communities. One frustrated citizen stated, “The people we voted for are living in mansions, while we are living in shacks.”

After the 1994 governmental rebirth, the ANC was expected to usher in a new era of hope for the blacks across the country. Instead, the majority of blacks remain mired in poverty as a legacy of apartheid. The ANC focused on the enrichment of only a select minority of blacks, the emerging black middle class. These so-called “Black Diamonds” are small in number but growing rapidly. They are reaping the benefits of the current steady economic growth, and are now able to concentrate their incomes on buying durable consumer goods. The government, however, is still criticized for its “excessive reliance on holding up the black business community rather than on a more generalized attack on poverty and inequality,” as Tutu said.

He attacked the ANC’s black economic empowerment program for downplaying the severity of black poverty and focusing on enriching the already wealthy blacks.

While the government has made great strides in economic development and on the growth of the black middle class in the post-apartheid era, poverty is still a racial divider. The vast majority of blacks are still suffering, and as a result the “Rainbow Nation” is facing one of its biggest challenges of the time.

Current political turmoil is leaving the nation restless. In late September, President Thabo Mbeki was forced to resign from office by his own party, the ANC, after accusations that he interfered in the prosecution of Mr. Jacob Zuma. But the forced resignation of Mbeki has led to mixed reactions from the public. He is praised for the era of economic progress that he ushered into the country after the end of apartheid. During his presidency, the nation enjoyed its longest period of steady economic growth, reaching 5% a year in recent years. But this growth was jobless growth, little comfort to the millions dreaming of a better life. Despite his “successful” stewardship of the South African economy, he is criticized for marginalizing the poor and letting unemployment remain high. The Sunday Times, a best-selling newspaper in South Africa, accused President Thabo Mbeki of allowing the gap between the rich and the poor, especially the gap between the rich and poor blacks, to widen. The newspaper stated, Mbeki “was a bad president. He divided our country.” However, Mr. Jacob Zuma, the new party leader and favorite to win the 2009 elections, seems to be a positive replacement. He attempts to quell both sides of the current political dispute. Even though he doesn’t plan to dramatically change the country’s economic policy given the current turbulence of the world economy, he is seen as a champion of the poor.

At the very least the future of the impoverished in South Africa looks more promising. ANC deputy leader Kgalema Motlanthe will assume the role of president until the 2009 elections. Mr. Motlanthe is said to be one of the few voices of reason in the ANC who will put the lives of ordinary South Africans ahead of political agendas. With Jacob Zuma as the probable president in 2009, a new initiative on poverty is likely to be undertaken. In the imijondolo, hope is struggling to find a foothold. The impoverished are reluctant to look to the government for support after years of government inattention. Nonetheless, their needs may finally have a chance to be addressed. Unfortunate legacies of apartheid are still alive within South Africa, but the government is currently experiencing a small-scale rebirth, with optimistic results.

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st. louis

PUBLIC SCHOOLS reported by Christine Wei with photos by Chelsea Davis

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&

facts

controversies 2. superintendents & principals

THE SITUATION: At the end of this September, the SAB hired the Kelvin Adams as the 8th superintendent of the St. Louis public schools, clearly demonstrating the very high turnover rate for the position. Likewise, school principals are transferred frequently. It isn’t unheard of for a principal to move on after a week at a new school.

This used to be a strategy aimed at balancing racial proportions of school leaders at the peak of the Voluntary Transfer Program, but the reasons behind such decisions made by the Assistant Superintent now remain unclear. CONCERNS: The city’s education system desperately needs change, but such high turnover rates and short terms barely leave administrators time to develop and implement new ideas, much less sustain change over time. Controversy also surrounds the new superintendent appointment, who some claim claim has no experience in the position.

summative timeline

1. the school boards THE SITUATION: When the state took over in 2007, the stateappointed school board (SAB) was given authority previously belonging to the city-elected school board.

Since then, the city-elected board essentially has held no power, however vocal its members are.

Needless to say, there has been no love lost between the two boards, which more often than not disagree on any given issue. CONCERNS: The city’s chosen representatives have no true agency. The city-elected board is also said to often second-guess the SAB’s moves, which suggests there isn’t much communication to work out differing opinions.

- mid-19th century till mid-20th century: St. Louis public school system one of most highly respected - later half of 20th century: trouble begins brewing in St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) district - 1983: Voluntary Transfer Program (bus city students to county schools and vice versa) aimed at desegregation - 2003: City hires Alvarez & Marsal consulting firm on US$4.7 million contract to figure out what to do - 9 months after hire: City shuts 16 schools and fires 1,100+ employees on Alvarez&Marsal recommendation - 03/2007: St. Louis public schools lose accreditation after meeting only 4 out of 14 criterias, state intervenes - 06/2007: 3-person school board appointed by governor (SAB) assumes all authority - 2008: SAB hires consulting firm MGT of America on US$800,000 contract to research student achievement

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3. charter schools THE SITUATION: Charter schools are freed from some regulations, statues, and other contraints imposed on regular public schools in exchange for accountability in producing positive outcomes like improved achievement. During the 2007-2008 school year, 10 charters operated 15 schools, all of which opened in the past eight years. CONCERNS: Because charter schools are less constrained, they have the opportunity to explore alternatives and approach education more innovatively. However, people fear charter schools are skimming the cream of the crop off the other public schools. Because charter schools are also publicly funded, some feel charter schools are siphoning off of public school funds.

4. voluntary transfer program THE SITUATION: The Voluntary Transfer Program, which began in 1983, was a response to the social upheaval in St. Louis in the 20th Century. A mass decline in population — from 850,000 in 1950 to 350,000 today — meant a great loss of tax base and funds for public schools. Though initially aimed at desegregation, current goals rest on greater student achievement for city children (particularly African Americans) in suburban schools, while also providing county students an opportunity to attend city magnet schools.

The program included 15,034 students at its peak, but has declined in number and will continue to do so until it ends in 2014. CONCERNS: Statistics show significant improvement in black achievement through the VTP, but many fear the program takes the best and the brightest away from the city, though some data suggests otherwise. Others believe the US$1.5 billion spent on the program should have gone towards improving city schools. In addition, VTP communites can take hours, requiring students to wake early and limiting after school activities and community involvement.

SOURCES: Columbia Missourian, St. Louis Beacon, L.A. Times, and MyFox St. Louis news sites;

City of Saint Louis Community Network documents; St. Louis Renaissance blog. Details on p53.

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“

choose

To live is to .

But to choose well, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go and why you want to get there.

- former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan

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�

Meaning in Rachel Sacks

Many of us do community service hoping to accomplish something big — save 10,000 orphans, perhaps, or eradicate world hunger.

We think every action will make a difference and that if it isn’t grand, it isn’t worth our time and energy.

But the truth is that community service, most of the time, isn’t so glamorous or grand.

Usually, it is comprised of little activities, like painting fences, making bulletin boards, or picking up garbage. Through the little things we do, we grow as people, and find the moments that make a difference — a small one, granted, but a difference nonetheless.

When I signed up for the Leadership Through Service (LTS) pre-orientation program, I anticipated an exciting and potentially life-changing experience, a romantic idea many of us have of social action.

What I encountered, however, was a series of community service projects that seemed mundane and tedious. Cleaning food bins and organizing holiday decorations — was this what I signed up for?

Yet, just like the grand social action efforts that we dream of, the little gestures are important too. The act of helping out itself, more than what the tasks are, matters.

I learned during LTS that while community service can sometimes be a bit tiresome (and quite different from my romantic notions of fixing the wrongs of the world), the most rewarding experiences can evolve out of small, seemingly insignificant actions.

During pre-orientation, LTS participants volunteered at Hamilton Elementary, a school in an impoverished area of St. Louis. I had envisioned myself helping out by means of interacting and playing with the children. What I did, however, was enrich the students’ learning environment by sitting in a quiet hallway, and coloring, cutting, arranging, and glueing bulletin boards

to educate them about science.

As I worked on the bulletins that described various scientific processes, like the butterfly’s life cycle and the physical states of matter, a girl ran past me. Though the building was mostly empty, Tanya*, whose aunt worked at the school, was still there. As she ran by I called to Tanya and asked her where she was going. She walked over to me, said hi, and, seemingly disinterested, scampered away. As the afternoon continued, however, she continued to walk past me, glancing at what I was making. Our group and my friendly “hello” had piqued her curiosity. I asked Tanya why she was there, what grade she was in, and what her interests were. By the end of the afternoon, she surprised me by crossing the distance, tapping my shoulder and being playful. She even showed me how to break dance. The girl’s aunt asked, “Is she distracting you?” I lied, “She isn’t.” What would I rather be doing, cutting out pictures of the sun or playing with a sassy little kid?

I played peek-a-boo with Tanya and showed her how to draw a butterfly.

We put it on the wall, as a part of our bulletin board. This interaction, one that easily could have flown past me as Tanya had at first, colored my LTS experience. What began as a small, insipid service project became a meaningful experience and reinforced my desire to work with children and help out in the local community. This “distraction” ended up being the best part of my LTS days. *name changed

a Moment

Growing in Ghana three portraits

There was no blackboard in the roofless, unfinished and abandoned structure, which housed the Lord’s Hand Orphanage. The teacher wrote all twentysix English language letters on a cement wall with the pink chalk I donated.

The teacher called Mary and Solomon up to the wall. She pointed to “G” and asked Mary to say the name of the letter.

Mary’s malnourished, eleven-year-old brain struggled. She knew the alphabet.

All sixteen children in the kindergarten class, who ranged from six to eleven years old, Mary being the outlier, could recite the alphabet. But the children had no idea what letters belonged to which sounds.

Mary stared at the letter “G” for several minutes, apprehensive of the painful consequences of guessing the wrong letter. She said “L.” My heart sank, but the other students had trouble reacting, as they did not know the correct answer, either.

It was Solomon’s turn, next. Solomon was the class bully. He wore a torn, denim

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jacket, which the other children were always trying to steal. His misshapen, Frankenstein-like head, a result of abuse when he was younger, intimidated his peers. Solomon pointed to each letter while saying the memorized letters out loud. He knew that the letters were in an order and could therefore count to the correct answer. He correctly answered “G.” Without showing any emotion, the teacher handed Solomon her cane and made Mary turn around. All the little bodies in the class tightened. With all of his force and might, Solomon struck little Mary across her back. The teacher rewarded Solomon’s correct answer with the authority to dispense corporal punishment.

Mary shrieked. I screamed. The teacher laughed.

Mary broke into hysterics. I ran to the lone wall in the makeshift classroom, picked up the crying child, and brought her to another section of the dilapidated

structure she called home.

Mary sobbed uncontrollably. I rubbed the child’s back and gave her some biscuits that I had in my backpack. She wolfed down the biscuits and continued to cry. I held her for about thirty minutes, staring at the wisps of orange hair growing on her head, a clear sign of malnutrition. I found a new hole in her torn, hand-me-down dress. The raggedy dress was the only item she owned. Her continual beatings resulted in more and more tears.

Mary liked my proffered affection and love. I could not rescue Mary from her hellish life; all I could do was hold her until she calmed down.

When I eventually took Mary back to class, I told the inadequately trained sixteen-year-old teacher that I did not want her to hurt the children -- especially, in front of me. She looked back in complete disgust and said, “This is how we do things in Ghana. Go back to America, Princess.” ****

I had a similar experience at the Osu Children’s Home, which is a governmentinstitutionalized orphanage near the center of Accra. The orphanage warehouses hundreds of children until they are eighteen.

Osu Children’s Home has a reputation for child abuse and neglect that trumps that of The Lord’s Hand orphanage.

The home is understaffed and overcrowded with three babies to a crib, two children to a mattress, and usually one diaper for every several infants.

The children share food (when there is enough food for everyone), germs, cuts, and scrapes and diseases. Those who are not born HIV positive tend to acquire the illness at some point during their childhood at Osu. At night, when volunteers are not around to spy, children are beaten and abused both physically and sexually. If this home were in the United States, it would be closed immediately and major lawsuits would ensue. The Ghanaian government, however, ignores the schools of mistreated, HIV positive orphans. The children are not worth the government’s time.

I will never forget the time that Mariana was whipped. She was whipped because she did not wear shoes in class.

Her feet were too big for the hand-medown shoes that the home provided.

Like Mary, Mariana’s classmates became instruments of brutality when they were instructed to cane and whip her feet until they bled profusely for her punishment.

The classmates’ hands were covered in Mariana’s HIV positive blood. Mariana was then forced to wear the tight shoes on her aching feet all day. I tried to stop the classmates from caning her feet. I yelled at the teacher and tried calming the girl. Again, I was told to “go back to America,” and to “stop disrespecting Ghanaian culture.”

Such comments became a reoccurring trend during my time in Ghana. **** Colby was the child that nobody noticed. While most children would fight for attention from the “obroni” (white) volunteer, Colby would sleep at his seat.

I assumed Colby was tired because he did not get enough food to strengthen his growing body.

I finally got to know Colby on my last day working at the Children’s Home.

I arranged to take my class to Labadi Beach as a farewell celebration. The children splashed in the water and felt the sand between their toes. No one had bathing suits. They swam in their panties and underwear. It was the best day of their lives. I will always remember the sound of the girls’ laughter as the waves

crashed on the sand and chased them up the beach.

Colby went waist deep into the water and exhaled as the water cleaned his skinny legs. I remember telling him how brave he was, as most children would not go in past their knees. He responded by looking in my eyes and sharing a large, honestly content smile.

I took the children to the beach on a Friday. That following Monday, I returned to the children’s home to drop off some donations that I had collected over the weekend. When I signed in at the office, there was a picture of a familiar looking boy sitting on the desk.

Next to the picture, there was a note reading, “What a shock.” As I stared at the picture of the skinny boy with the hollow, egg yolk eyes, I realized that it was a picture of Colby.

Upon his return from the beach, Colby could not stop sweating and shaking. The headmistress caned him several times because he would not sit still. He could not get out of bed the next morning. Colby had a terrible fever and was unable to move his limbs. They left Colby on his mattress for almost six hours until he died. They do not know if his death was the result of pneumonia, malaria or AIDS since he suffered from all three. Those running the orphanage said that they did not take him to the health clinic because they knew he was going to die, and they did not want to waste money. **** Although I could not terminate the abominable cultural practice of child abuse that I witnessed during my time in Ghana, I know that I still improved the lives of the children I befriended. I gave them a hand to hold and love that they will cherish for the remainder of their short lives. In return, they taught me how to appreciate the little blessings that life has to offer. The greatest of these blessings is the friendship that we developed; one that crosses ethnic, cultural and continental divides. Such friendships motivate my dream to advocate against corporal punishment, so that in the future, children never have to experience the pain of a whip and the trauma of neglect.

Meredith Ashley Rettner is a junior in Arts and Sciences. She is double majoring in African Studies and American Culture Studies.

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artist’s statement

- Priya Sury

Atop an ancient Mexican pyramid stands a lone tree, in front of the pyramid’s final set of stairs. It is a part of the earth below, firmly rooted high in the sky, a reminder of nature’s knack for creating beautiful symmetry, even in the midst of monumental human creation. The tree physically blocks the path, and those encountering it are forced to stop, look around, and take a breath before continuing the final ascent, reconnecting with the journey. The symmetry and balance, as well as the unexpectedness of seeing such a prominent living being during the dry and dusty climb up ancient remains, drove me to take this photograph. For me, the photo invokes a feeling of timeless stillness, and the tranquility of balance and firm grounding.

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Deep Economy

by Bill McKibben

by Joey Stromberg

As an Environmental Studies major, I’m quite used to reading texts and articles that challenge or criticize one specific effect of our practices on the earth, but that leave intact underlying economic principles and premises. Most of them assume that we should continue pursuing economic growth, for example, but that it should be powered by wind, rather than oil. For this reason, I found Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future startling, compelling, and refreshing — so much so that I was motivated to try sharing its ideas and arguments with the student body at large.

Instead of basing his arguments on the same flawed concepts that have led our society to the environmental and social problems we face today, he takes on and rejects the fundamentals of economic thought and social progress that few popular writers dare touch: We should evaluate public goods in terms of their contribution to human welfare, not by their contribution to economic growth.

Financial wealth is a sometimes useful means to happiness, not the absolute end of it. At the core of the powerful bestseller are a number of resounding rejections of mainstream economic orthodoxy and startling conclusions about the culture and nation we’ve created such as the above. He then provides a prescription for a better one: a society that can satisfy its citizens in a meaningful and lasting sense, while continuing into the future without crippling the planet.

A score of unpleasant statistical facts form the backbone for McKibben’s argument. America’s enormous economic growth of the past fifty years has mostly benefitted just the richest few, while the majority have worked more hours for the

same or lower inflation-adjusted income.

The assumption that this growth can continue infinitely is a blatant fantasy — earth, after all, is a closed system with limited amounts of oil, water, and other resources. Moreover, and most importantly, the phenomenal amount of products and resources we buy and consume have made us no more satisfied with life than our 1950s American or contemporary European counterparts,

“

Financial wealth is a sometimes useful means to happiness, not the absolute end of it.

”

both of whom live in half the space, buy half as much, and use half the amount of energy. Past a certain point (statistics indicate US$10,000), more money and consumption cannot and does not make us happier.

The book’s scope is not limited to the comfortable lives of its readers in developed nations, however. Clearly, more material wealth does improve the welfare of a hungry peasant in Somalia, or a slum-dweller in China. For this, McKibben recognizes the difficulty of pulling nations out of poverty without committing the same errors that we’ve made in doing so ourselves. The method currently espoused by global financial institutions and the U.S. government — to abandon subsistence farming in favor of industrialization and export — is unfeasible for a few reasons, the least of which is that a world full of

cheap manufacturers lacks enough willing markets for sale or enough grain to eat, and that exporting our pattern of massive environmental degradation will certainly compromise the planet.

We’ve set our society’s compass bearing to the destination of economic growth and efficiency, and the resulting overconsumption has pushed the earth’s systems to the edge of collapse without making us any happier. What do we do now? If progress has given us socially isolated McMansions filled with useless SkyMall products, a clinically depressed nation, and a destroyed environment, then perhaps our philosophy of progress needs to be turned upside-down.

Currently, economic orthodoxy sets as its goal maximum productivity and a swelling Gross National Product. We are cogs in this machine: we live to work. What if, instead, our policy makers made the assumption that we merely worked to live?

The solution for both the wealthy and impoverished world forms McKibben’s thesis: a commitment to local community and local commercial exchange, spiked with 21st-century innovation and knowhow. He believes that this attitude will allow us to live fully without destroying our future and re-introduce the social networks of necessity, now largely missing from America, that once gave meaning to our lives. As is currently happening in pockets around the country, neighbors will administer communally-owned lots of timber over suppers of local meat and veggies, with performances by local musicians to follow. Organizing our economic system around intimate relationships between neighbors, instead of massive multi-nationals, will replace exploitative dependencies with sustainable

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Other Great Reads:

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

by Michael Pollan

mutual benefit. This is not wistful desire for 50s nostalgia: McKibben argues that “given the trend lines for phenomena like global warming and oil supply, what’s nostalgic and sentimental is to insist that we keep doing what we’re doing now simply because it’s familiar. The good life of the high-end American suburb is precisely what’s doing us in.”

How can we, as Wash. U. students, attempt to follow these guidelines and pursue the sort of social and environmental progress McKibben describes? The good news is that the movement occurring around the country — communitysupported agriculture, artistic co-ops, and a wholesale rejection of corporatemediated relationships — is blossoming on and around campus as well. The Burning Kumquat, an organic farm on the South 40, has been organized to give students the opportunity to learn about and rebuild a sustainable food chain.

Countless independent businesses exist in the University City area, with restaurants like Riddle’s Penultimate serving local foods and venues such as the eccentric Joe’s Café hosting area musicians. Nearby service opportunities such as City Faces

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The Ecology of Commerce

by Paul Hawken

and housing options like the Co-op allow us to reconnect with local communities and build social capital. As McKibben writes, citizens around the country and world are expressing their disappointment with the American paradigm of work and consumption, and the St. Louis area is no exception. If these ideas speak to you, there is a movement afoot: people are finding ways to experience happiness by building relationships and protecting the earth’s future, rather than passively buying and consuming ad infinitum.

Ultimately, no crisis can be marginalized once it fully arrives. When our planet-sized ship hits the iceberg — or, actually, when climate change ensures there is no ice left to be hit — we will be forced to face our mistakes full-on. We will stop measuring action in terms of economic cost and instead realize the enormous price in human welfare of our previous inaction. One can only hope that we swallow hard and begin to change sooner, rather than later, and that we reset our society’s compass bearing to happiness and community while avoiding catastrophe, rather than doggedly pursuing economic growth and plowing through whatever stands in our path.

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

by William McDonough & Michael Braungart

Author and environmentalist Bill McKibben

Resources ( www.oneworldwashu.org ) OUT OF THE BLUE

FAIR TRADE

If you’re interested in joining Out of the Blue, email ootb@su.wustl.edu or visit the Community Service Office’s website. Meetings are every Friday afternoon from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Transportation is provided (though volunteers with cars are always needed.)

For more information visit the following sites:

LA CASA DEL TUNEL

Articles on ST. LOUIS PUBLIC SCHOOLS

For more information go to: http://cofac101.org/casa.htm

http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/ Facts.asp http://www.independent.org/students/essay/ essay.asp?id=2042

Urban superintendents prove hard to hold on to Grading St. Louis’ deseg program St. Louis school district asks for input, critiques question costs St. Louis roiled by school turnaround GambitS Dr. Kelvin Adams, our new superintendent &layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=1.1.1

Support fair trade: As You Wish Imports is coming to Wash U again on September 21st- 26th, 2009