It could have been you.

The other day I read something that made me think quite a bit.

‘What if you woke up today with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?’

Initially, I misread the question. I read it as ‘What if you woke up today without the things you thanked God for yesterday?’

And it made me think. How would I feel if I had nothing? If everything I knew was stripped away from me.

My understanding of what it means to have nothing has changed very drastically since coming to Sudan.  What you see is very different from what you hear…

What if I was one of those Syrians? What if I suddenly went from having a home, a loving family and being part of a community to becoming a displaced refugee forced out of my own country with nothing but the clothes on my back with no prospect of ever returning or succeeding… what if I were one of those girls you find outside the mosques whose families are so desperate for them to be taken care of that they allow any man coming to the mosque to marry them.

I remember very specifically before the worst part of this war conducting a meeting with a Syrian businessman where he stated that Sudan was a very ugly plant-less country…  He was of course comparing it to Syria… and just like that, 2.5 years later Syria is nothing like it used to be and 200,000 people fewer…He was very wealthy, influential and powerful … and yet he had absolutely no power to do anything to stop this.

I thought about the crisis in Darfur… the way it all began because of greed that lead to hunger… what if I were one of those women who had the unthinkable done to them. What if I had seen so many monstrosities that I no longer hoped for life, I instead worried about how it would be robbed of me.

It is impossible to answer these questions because they are too deep and profound for someone who has not experienced them. But I know I would want help. I would hope that people would remember me, help me escape, protect me and I them. It wouldn't matter what they believed in, looked like or even were like in the past. In order for me to survive, I will need to become part of a group, as being alone doesn’t get you anywhere in the real world.

The privileged often seek subtle differences in order to segregate people – yet the poor look for just one characteristic to unite.

My entire life I’ve been fed a complete lie about hard work and perseverance. In reality there are people born into this world to suffer, and others to enjoy. Yet those who suffer complain much less and give much more than those who have all the means in the world to enjoy themselves. And what separates the two?

Luck.

There is nothing you can do to prevent forces from growing stronger than you, you cannot prevent the fall of your civilization when it is no longer your turn to be the most civilized, and there is nothing any of us can do or achieve as individuals when the society breaks down. We are taught to work hard and that our paths will be paved – but how can hard work grow you back crops when desertification occurs? How do you create cows when they are all dead? How is it fair for one people to claim land so fertile and expect others to survive on dead and dry land with little resources? Why is it that we divide ourselves so that war is the only option to enjoy resources - why don't we share?

Whether I wake up with only the things or none of the things I thanked God for tomorrow – I hope I remember that at any point, the tables could turn and just as my luck has been sweet, it can also turn sour.

What I find most intriguing however is the ability of those with nothing, to give; and the resistance of those with much to even lend.

Updates and some thoughts about Game of Thrones ...

Hey blogger

I’ve been doing so much lately that I almost forgot about our special ‘Friday’ relationship. Honestly I think I’ve just been overwhelmed with life and sadly, you have often been placed at the bottom of my to-do piles.

Lets see, as a quick recap

I left my old job, and decided to peruse my own online ventures instead which are growing very slowly, but steadily.

At one point I thought about giving up because people were not responding the way I thought they would, but then by chance while I was sieving through some research to find out more about inspiring youth from impoverished backgrounds, I came across a talk by Elizabeth Gilbert. She is the author of the book ‘Eat, Pray, Love’

Her talk was definitely a life changer for me. She talked about the importance of doing what you love, because you love it. “Find what you love, and build your home on top of it.” She explained the fear of failing to outdo yourself and why this should not be the driving force in you. I will embed the talk into this post as I think many others can benefit from it.

I also decided to catch up with Game of Thrones (after my news feed was literally mourning the death of a fictional character I knew nothing about) for days on end… I won’t say his/her name just in case anyone still hasn't watched it.

I can safely say, I get ‘the hype’. I think it's the realities portrayed in the series that I like, there is good and evil in all people and it highlights that the way we act is more situational than anything else.  Human hierarchies are depicted within races in terms of class – which subject people of the same race and gender to torment by others who are like them in all ways except in birth rank, highlighting that superiority is a complex fed by invented beliefs that feed on the pseudo-existent ideologies of separatism – which essentially crave power.  In order for you to be great, someone has to be beneath you.

The program is famous for its nudity, I heard more about its nudity than any other aspect of it before I began to watch the series – but unlike other programs where nudity serves simply as a means to give the viewer a fly on the wall view of the sexual relations of others – Game of Thrones uses nudity in a much more explicit way which gives it the illusion of reality – scenes where rape is shown, where prostitutes are taught the art of faking pleasure – almost like a window into the behind the scenes of life. One of the characters who was controlled and given away by her brother in his quest for power to be raped within a marriage goes on to become a queen, with morals and standards – she is not broken by the rape and although she controversially falls in love with her rapist, she is depicted as a woman of strength – not the vulnerable withdrawn girl who can no longer live and is always looking over her shoulder we think of when we hear about rape victims. Another character who is a prostitute is also depicted as a woman of pride when she falls in love – she becomes loyal, a word hardly ever attributed to women who peruse such careers.

There is also the idea of god, the gods and the one true god whom everyone seems to think they have found. Anyway this is turning into an analysis more than an update but it’s an interesting program that is causing a major sweep in pop culture – I would recommend it.

So… What else?

Well right now I’m waiting for my video to upload onto my YouTube channel and due to the internet connection it first said it would take 9 hours (this is a 6 min clip) and then it crashed… so I have restarted the upload… it should probably take less now that we are in the hours of the AM.

The video discusses racism and sexism in technology - as in, by cameras and computer software, can technology be racist?

I have quite a lot to talk about this week, so I will be posting tomorrow too.

Apologies, again, for the inconsistency – and thank you for reading.