When Did Dusty Feet Become Primitive?

Today I watched as the sun tucked itself slowly behind the Rift Valley.

Today I watched the overwhelming mountains beckon to the colours of the sunset.

Today I watched as a Village Woman tugged at her Sheep, pulling it as a City Woman would her Dog on a Leash.

I wondered, when did having feet that walked closer to the earth, and a smell that mimicked nature, and red dirt on one’s clothes become primitive?  Here I was, at the heart of where Nature had tried to pull Africa apart, an amazingly daunting view of how vulnerable the World could be.  Here I sat, with a Tusker beer, my cell phone beside me, with my eyes entranced by the realization that everything was destructible, vulnerable and … strong.  How resilient Africa was, so stubborn, so majestic that it had refused to be ripped in two.  Instead it rebelliously gazed back and became what is now the Rift Valley.  Here I breathed in the beauty of a defiant Africa.

I stared at my cell phone, and almost picked it up, before I realized that it would only pull me further away from the true knowledge of humanity.  When did having dust on our feet become primitive?  When did the knowledge of technology become the highest form of capital?  The real form of intellectual capital lay right here before my eyes – closest to the pulsing heart of Africa’s Rift.  I did not want to be separated from this knowledge for soon I would re-enter the Industrialized.  I was afraid I would forget.

I would go back to the land where synthetic geometric shapes heightened people away from Nature, where concrete would be considered clean and the green grass and dirt awful to tread on, where bugs became enemies, and where technology – not the messiness of human interactions – would govern communication.  Every part of my Western world wanted to take me out and distract me from the origins of our existence.  Incredible that the human mind had conceived all that I lived in.  But here, in the Rift, was what Nature herself had given birth to.

Did You Know?

According to the Population Reference Bureau, the world’s current population is 6.8 billion.  This number is projected to increase to 8.1 billion by 2025.

When Did Poverty Become a Crime?

Introduction: A Light Fouetté into Poverty

Poverty porn.  The average Canadian suffers from watching too much of it.  It sounds a bit like a disease doesn’t it?  There is an addiction to the mental images of naked children, usually from Africa, with flies swarming the distended skin of their bellies.  There is an overexposure to Western celebrities walking through villages, speaking scripted dialogue with wavering voices about the unfairness of helpless Third World children.  The Canadian sits on the other side of the tube, undulated, writhing, aroused by the emotion of their own guilt.  There is a reason that World Vision has one of the largest sponsorship followings in Canada.

Most of you know this.  I am not proclaiming an outlandishly original idea.  Some NGOs have begun to use different marketing and global education tactics such as celebrating strength and resilience to challenge the traditional images of poverty.  If there is an increasing backlash to the starving African child, especially in the NGO sector, then why are we still using these images?  Because poverty porn works.

Social structures play a large role into the type of media projected to us.   It analyzes its target audience intelligently and feeds the beast what it wants.

In Toronto one of the largest youth organizations in Canada unabashedly uses images of poor people as victims.  I do want to pay it some respects because its global education program reaches over 1 000 schools in North America.  It imbues young people with the will to care and a will to remain out of the clutches of apathy.  When I attended one of their annual conferences for students in the Greater Toronto Area, the thousands of cheering youth floored me.  What can be wrong with making people care?

I used to think if someone cared then that’s all that mattered.  Well the Catholic Church cared about our Aboriginal Peoples and look what happened there.  Yes, please care.  We need our youth to be active in the community, to want to change the world.  But is it at the cost of another person’s dignity?

Colonizing Babies: Adopting Practices of Oppression?

Madonna.  Angelina Jolie.  Malawi.  Cambodia.  Ethopia.  Vietnam.  All these words hold one thing in common: adoption.  It’s not news that international adoptions have become the latest Hollywood trend.  In fact, adoptions by celebrities have come under praise and criticism.  The media relentlessly picks apart the motivations, processes and trials and tribulations of Stars with Power who manage to jump hoops and combat governments, battle poverty, and fight injustice for orphans in developing countries.

On one side of the adoption argument, these famous folks are praised for their well meaning and charitable aspirations to save babies abroad.  Surprisingly, there is not yet an adoption agency called ‘Saving Babies Abroad’.  It has a nice ring to it.

The other side of the adoption debate, which our Aboriginal People in Canada are familiar with, is that taking these infants, children and youth out of their cultural context robs them of the opportunity to become familiar with their language, identity and way of life.  In other words, could it be that adoptions are another way of exercising colonial powers derived from developed, rich, European value driven societies?

Recently, the US government temporarily closed the big, brass doors to adoptions in Vietnam.  The corruption and bribery that runs wild around Vietnamese adoptions include agencies paying mothers to become impregnated so there are newborns for hopeful, unsuspecting Canadian families.  So much for rescuing little orphan Annie.  Instead it seems that these impoverished families and local agencies have intelligently caught on.  Indeed, a baby factory does have the ability to generate income!  For the true orphans out there, fend for yourselves – you’re not as cute, young or able bodied.

In 1989 the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) came into being; it made history with 190 countries signing on.  Among those signatures?  Canada.  The government even had the courage to ratify the convention in 1991.  The implications of ‘ratification’ means that Canadians are accountable to the convention and it becomes interweaved and imbedded into the policies we lay out.  Child and youth rights have become a mantra among the NGO community.

In the concept of adoption, article 21 in the UNCRC refers to domestic and inter-country adoption.  More specifically, to avoid corruption it requires that adoptions be authorized by competent authorities and accord itself with the law.

There are exceptions to the rules as authorities have been known to slip up when it comes to a child’s right to culture.  Article 30 of the CRC states “…a child belonging to such a minority or persons of indigenous origin exist, a child belonging to such a minority or who is indigenous shall not be denied the right, in community with other members of his or her group, to enjoy his or her own culture, to profess and practice his or her own religion, or to use his or her own language”.

Why does the right to protect and maintain his/her heritage have to be different for children depending on their ethnicity?  How many times does oppression have to occur before one can finally have an article in a convention dedicated to them?

The resounding truth is that families who contemplate adoption overseas need to know a few facts: 76 000 youth are in care in provincial, territorial and First Nations agencies.  22 000 of these children and youth await adoption.  Canadians adopt 1 700 children nationally per year; 2 000 children are adopted internationally.

In a recent interview on CBC which concerned the infamous closure of an international adoption agency in Canada, one mother-to-be (who certainly should be sympathized with) tearfully said that she was worried about her baby in Africa – and she was there to give a voice to these babies who could not speak for themselves (the author will mercifully overlook the fact that babies cannot talk)

What is the motivation to adopt internationally?  Perhaps the further we pull these infants away from their cultures, the less likely they are able to get in touch with their biological roots.  In domestic adoptions, they tend to be older and perhaps more likely to have the ability to be connected with their origins.

Whatever the case may be, the argument is not against adopting abroad.  Instead it is simply to put forth a suggestion that Canadians must critically analyse their actions when it comes to taking on cute little colourful babies.  Though they may be imbued with Madonna like intentions, these actions may actually contribute to the cycle of poverty and oppression.  People of colour, the Westerners want to give you a voice.  As a woman of colour, my response to that is ‘thank you for your voice, but what we really want is a pair of ears’.