Siempre es interesante volver al paisito después de haber pasado un tiempo afuera. Las cosas se ven con nuevos ojos. O mejor, dicho, las cosas se ven. Punto. Lo que se te pasa desaparcibido del lugar donde vivís cuando estás en las corridas del día a día, salta a la vista cuando volvés después de un año o dos.
En esta última vuelta a Uruguay algo me llamó la atención: Uruguay había encontrado un nuevo heróe nacional. En carteles de publicidad, paradas de ómnibus, murales en edificios, por todas partes, aparecía Forlán. En un país donde el fútbol sólo compite con el asado y el mate en popularidad, que un jugador de la selección uruguaya que logró un cuarto lugar en la copa mundial después de 40 años sea el nuevo héroe nacional, bueno, no es de extrañar.
Si no fuera por un pequeño detalle ...
¿Soy sólo yo que veo similitudes? ¿Coincidencia o ...?
Another neat use for a plastic bottle I came across in FB: this time including the cap plus a couple of other items you can find around the house. A ladle with a broken handle or burnt? Some extra seeds? Feed a bird!
You get to enjoy the birds, birds get to enjoy the food, and more stuff keeps out of the garbage pile.
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In Mexico there are also talks about how to re-think our relationship with what we use so that less of our discarded materials end up in the landfill. The first distinction: organic and inorganic. Compost the organic, recycle (or upcycle!) the inorganic.
More on what’s been done in Mexico at a business level to green our lives? Click here.
The net-fence we had build to protect our garden from voracious rabbits worked well for a while. Our compost-fed plants were growing just fine when, one morning, we found this:
Just finished posting about the danger of a single story and I run into a perfect example of how a story, very effectively told, even if with the best intentions can reinforce that single story of Africa the helpless, Africa the dangerous.
These last days a very well crafted documentary, part of a campaign against warlord Joseph Kony, went viral in Facebook, twitter and other social media:
A quick video response appeared, this time from Rosebell Kagumire, a blogger from Uganda, clarifying a few points that provide a more rounded picture of what has been going on in her country. [I'll be summarizing part of what she says in Spanish soon]
I had already seen the same concerns raised by my friend Corinne Segura on a FB comment: “It's pure hubris when 3 white college students think they know how to stop a conflict in Africa. By Sending 100 US troops? Oh yeah, that has always worked. We don’t know the situation over there and the best solution. There are African scholars and governments working on this, there is an African Union and a United Nations - Where are their voices? [...] We need more humility and better information on how to support this fight. It’s great to raise awareness but an American NGO that supports a foreign military and builds schools, and acts condescending like they are the saviors??? .... Um, no thanks”.
Many other voices have been either to criticize or defend the video. If anything, the whole issue served to really drive the point home: a single story, not Africa, is dangerous.
That’s about the most common first question I receive when telling people I’m going to live in Mozambique for a couple of years. A close second: And aren’t you afraid of getting sick?
Danger. Violence. Disease.
One has to wonder why are these the first thoughts people have when hearing “Africa.”
In this video, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie does a wonderful job of exposing the process that take us to believe in a single story, and why it is so important to look beyond it.
We just completed the SKWID (Skills for Working in Development) pre-departure workshop -developed and facilitated by the Center for Intercultural Learning. There, we watched that TED Talk video again.
Not only is the consideration of multiple stories very relevant to prepare us for our upcoming journey, it also is the underlying link of the postings in this blog. During the next two years, I’ll be looking to tell the other stories of Africa: the stories of success, creativity, entrepreneurship, resourcefulness, care, richness, empowerment.
Esta foto es en honor de todos los uruguayos que ponen "peros" a la idea de usar la bici como transporte. Pero si llueve, pero si es en subida, pero si voy cargado, pero si estoy apurado, pero si tengo que ir con los nenes, pero si es muy lejos, pero si hace frío...
Esto es lo que te pasa cuando andás en bici en Ottawa y entrás 15 minutos a tomar un café. Y sin embargo andan.
