Good evening and almost Happy Easter!
Can you believe I'm beginning ISP already? Tomorrow morning I'm off to the coast of Tanzania, to a small town called Ushongo to study Samaki (fish). I do sincerely apologize for not posting about the Serengeti in the past couple days, but I promise when I return from Ushongo, I will have the longest post you won't even want to read it.
As for this week, I just completed finals week, in which I had to write a ten page paper about something that has impacted me while in Tanzania. The paper topic was called "does it work" and we had to take our "it", and write about whether it works for Tanzania or not. I chose to write about hope and its effect within Tanzania. Here is a brief glimpse at my paper for those of you who are interested in the idea of whether "hope works" or not:
Re-reading one of my favorite books My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult during this three month period in Tanzania, I came across a passage about Greek mythology that made me consider why it is a customary human trait to hope. “Zeus created the first woman-Pandora-and gave her a gift, a box she was forbidden to open. Pandora's curiosity got the best of her, and one day she opened that box. Out came plagues and misery and mischief. She managed to shut the lid tight before hope escaped. It's the only weapon we have left to fight the others." Reading this passage, I instantly asked myself the question what is hope? What is hope to me, and how does it compare to others definitions? Even in a small computer dictionary, the word hope is defined in five different ways. Definitions for hope range from “a confident feeling that something desirable is likely to happen” to “something someone thinks will bring success or relief”. Hope is even defined sometimes as a “feeling of trust“. Notice however that all of these definitions of hope rely on a single word: probable. Hope is not something that you wish for, that you know may never be obtainable. Hopes are framed around ideas that people believe likely to come to fruition.
In their lifetime everyone has hopes. Different hopes though, as some may hope their children will grow up successfully, others hope they will earn copious amounts of money. Whether a child hopes for her dad to bring home cookies from work, or even a young man having high hopes that he will play in the NBA someday, everyone experiences this desire or serious yearning for something that may or may not ever happen. My experience in Tanzania has taught me that hope is both a tangible and yet unquantifiable and vague notion. Talking with both young and old Tanzanians, dala-dala drivers, street vendors, mama’s, school children, and even American students, I have finally discovered that hope is an idea so commonplace and so universal, that it is a point of unity for almost all humans on this Earth. People of all different ages, poor and wealthy, educated and uneducated all have the commonality that they have hope for something. Whether they wear this hope on their sleeves or bury it in the deepest chambers of their heart, I believe all humans have the unrestricted fundamental capacity to dream, expect, wish, aspire, anticipate, and overall, hope. So does hoping work? With the millions of people on this planet running around with their hopes and dreams, vying for what they somewhat desperately want to happen, the question begs to be asked. does it work? When you hope for something so strongly, how does it effect how you live? And what happens when hope is lost, when all desire and drive has deserted someone?
You know, I had this idea because Baba Jack told a rather shocking story about a woman who knocked on his door one evening. He calmly told us about how she pointed to her children and asked in the only way she could, if he, a well-to-do white man would feed her children for the evening. After making sure her children were properly fed, and not touching a bit of food herself, we were told that she stripped of her clothes and laid on the floor as an thank you for helping her children. This is an moment in which I believe you see the hopes of a desperate woman slowly sliding away. Her last thread of hope lying in her desire to save her children in the only way she sees possible. And as we were told, even when covered up by Baba Jack, the set of her eyes did not change, as she put her clothes on, took her children and left the house. It is even reasonable to believe that she had lost all hope in humanity as well, not caring whether she had been used for sex or not, as all she cared for was keeping her children alive. This story really made me question whether or not I knew what hopelessness truly felt like, and made me realize truly how lucky I am to be blessed with such an amazing group of family and friends.
Sorry to get sappy on you, but I thought I'd make my last post for a while make you think.
What are your hopes? and I'd love to know your thoughts on the question "does hope work?"
until then,
Gone Swimming,
Emma
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