Author: Matt Whiteman

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Lighting up a community in Tanzania

By Heather Amos, UBC Reports | Vol. 56 | No. 11 | Nov. 4, 2010

Naeem Mawji knew that many of his fellow Tanzanians did not have access to electricity. But, it wasn’t until he got to UBC and investigated the matter that he realized the extent of the problem.

Fourth-year chemical engineering student Naeem Mawji did some research and discovered that 80 per cent of his fellow Tanzanians don’t have access to electricity, and the figure jumps to 97 per cent in rural areas.  He also learned that families without electricity depend on kerosene-fueled lamps for lighting and that 75 Tanzanians die every day from respiratory issues and burns caused by these lamps.

Naeem Mawji grasps the value of electricity in his home country of Tanzania. Picture courtesy of UBC Reports

“It’s not just a health problem,” says Mawji.  “Electricity allows people to store food, work longer hours and process grains into flour which can be sold for more money.”

Mawji was intent on making power accessible but it has taken him more than two years to turn his intentions into reality.  He worked with Dr. Shafik Dharamsi, an assistant professor in the Department of Family Practice in the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty Lead of the Global Health Network at the Liu Institute for Global Issues. They also worked with the Ethics of International Engagement and Service Learning (EIESL) to develop a plan.

UBC’s EIESL project explores the ethical dilemmas of international engagement projects, and aims to make UBC’s international outreach sustainable as well as collaborative with local people.

“Naeem’s project is a model for EIESL,” says Dr. Dharamsi, the principal investigator at EIESL.  “It’s not about charity; it’s about social justice through community partnership, sustainable engagement, and solidarity.”

Mawji, with the help of his father, who works in road construction, found it simple to connect with a community.

The village of Masurura, just outside the city of Musoma where Mawji grew up, had no access to power and does not use generators.  In Masurura, people walk long distances to get water, and the medical centre has to close when the sun goes down.  To charge the cell phones that most villagers own, one woman would travel 20 kilometers to a nearby town, charge a car battery and bring it back to Masurura.

Mawji worked with the community to develop a plan.  The priority was to provide electricity for the community centre, the school and the medical centre.

“The objective of this project was to first introduce the technology to villagers by illuminating communal spaces and using those spaces as a platform to educate, interact and collaborate with the community,” said Mawji.

In July 2009, Mawji installed solar lighting systems in the community centre, the school and the medical centre. All three systems are also equipped to charge cell phones. The fees from this service are collected and reinvested by the village council to maintain and repair the systems.

After this initial project was complete, Mawji decided to expand.  He started a social enterprise, Carbon X Energy, and recently won a grant of $100,000 from the World Bank through the Lighting Rural Tanzania Competition 2010. The funds from this award are now being used to build a solar-powered mini-grid to provide power to some of the homes in Masurura.

Last May, Mawji returned to Tanzania with two other UBC students and began preliminary work to build a solar powered mini-grid that will provide power to some of the homes in Masurura.  During this trip, UBC student Dan Kahn was approached by a man living in the village.

“He came up to me,” says Kahn, “and said, ‘Don’t say you’re going to do something and not do it. So many people come and say they will do something and then they leave.’”

This is one of many recurring issues that EIESL has identified; it’s the type of problem the project hopes to prevent.

“When I heard Naeem talk, it came through loud and clear that he was genuinely interested in working and learning with the community where he’s from, and improving the quality of life in a sustainable and enduring way” says Dr. Dharamsi.

Source: UBC Reports

Find out more about Carbon X Energy here: www.carbonxenergy.com

Categories
Contributions Personal Experience

We Have Much to be Thankful For

By Sambriddhi Nepal

Walking into Shree JanaUdaya Lower Secondary School in Kathmandu having spent the year abroad at one of the best universities in the world, I was immediately struck by how lucky I am. The building wasn’t painted, there was mud surrounding the gates of the school, and the classrooms’ windows had no glass or screens on them. I could only imagine the itchy mosquito bites the children must have, and the inescapable cold they faced in the winter.

There was a rush of commotion as the students, who knew of our arrival as volunteers, came running out of their classes to wave and say “hello,” something any Nepali – from the innocent vendor on a street to the creepy men staring at you – will say to a foreigner.

The second thought that came to mind was how these children were smiling more than most people I meet abroad. This is amazing considering the burdens they face, being from poor working class families. They waved and the brave ones came up to us to practice their English, something they rarely get to do. When they found out I was Nepali, the first thing they asked me was my last name, so that they could know which caste I was from. I wasn’t surprised. Our country is secular only by name. The stigmas of the caste system still remain.

We went inside the Principal’s office to talk to him about what we had planned for the coming week. I asked him about the school’s library and again wasn’t surprised to hear him say that they were ‘planning on organizing the library.’ Typical. All talk. We asked to see the library. I was again not surprised to see that it was a big mess. The school had been donated literally thousands of books from other schools and organizations such as Room to Read. However, they weren’t being put to use. I couldn’t help but think of the hundreds of other schools in Kathmandu whose ‘libraries’ looked exactly the same.

The two other volunteers and I told him our plan: we could clean up the library, organize the books, and would come back later to make sure that the library was being used properly. The principal mentioned that he had ‘planned’ on putting carpets in the room, and that the carpeting would be done by tomorrow.

We returned the next day and were surprised to see the carpets in place in both the library and the reading room (which was right next to the library). We set to work immediately. For the next two days, we worked on organizing the books, getting rid of ones that were not suitable for low-level English speakers, and we bought some more books for the library so that we could have more colorful, exciting books for the children.

All this while, the children, curious as they are, would come up to the windows of the reading room and watch us working. Smiling occasionally and some would bravely come up and talk to us about what we were doing. I asked one girl her name, and when she said it was Kaavya, I remembered with a jolt that she was a student who had been receiving a scholarship from the NGO I had been working for. I had read about her parents, who were from a low caste and did not have good jobs, and about her 4 siblings and how her eldest brother was working as a laborer to provide for the family. To see this girl in person and have a face to the student profile I had written in the comfort of my office brought tears to my eyes.

The last day of our volunteering, I walked into the school and a smiling young girl in the 7th grade gave me a flower, which I immediately put in my hair. Later, that girl came into the library, which was now open for the students and smiled brightly when she saw that I was still wearing the flower in my hair. She found so much joy in so little a thing.

The library had been set up, as had the reading room. The bravest 10 students walked in and immediately picked out books and began to read. They shared stories and talked about the pictures in the books. As we took pictures of them, they barely seemed to notice. They were so wrapped up in their books and sharing stories with the students.

My happiness at being there was tainted a bit by one of the other two volunteers I was working with, who insisted that we have one of the students pose with a book so we could have ‘a good PR photo.’ I said nothing, but would have much preferred to not be taking pictures at all rather than having a posed picture.

I sat with that little girl, who turned out to be a 2nd grader and read a Nepali book with her for a little bit, and when we walked down to the courtyard hand in hand, her friends joined me. The other little girls insisted that I return another day and read more books with them. When I promised I would, one of the girls said “that’s what you say now, but you probably won’t even come back.” This made me want to cry again – yes, I did that a lot throughout this week – as I wondered what kind of promises had been made to them before that hadn’t been kept. I showed them a pinky promise, and promised I’d be back.

I’ll mentally prepare myself better next time, and go back to the school aiming only for smiles this time.

Categories
Contributions Debatables Personal Experience

Negotiating for an Ethical Middle Ground

By Yan Xu

A week ago, I sat in on a meeting where one of the topics of discussion was an organization (student-driven, new organization, grassroots, etc) that works with communities in Kenya, promoting HIV/AIDS awareness that wanted to collaborate with a club that I am part of.

What went through in my mind was the following: Come on, can they or do they plan to teach their communities anything other than using safe contraceptives? Do these people need to fund-raise, fly all the way over to Kenya and tell people there to abstain from high-risk behaviours for HIV transmission?

Of course, I, intending to tell the members of the executive committee to consider the capacity of science undergrad students to inform Kenyans half a world away, said something to the effect of “what can a bunch of Microbiology students do in a community like that?”  All heads in the room turned to me with shock and dismay, and I immediately stopped, not because I was in complete disagreement from the rest of the group, but because I realized I had crossed a personal boundary.  There I was, effectively denigrating a well-intentioned student group.

For the rest of the day, 3 questions circled my mind:

  1. Have I taken “ethicizing” too far?
  2. Did I belittle the capacity of the student group (almost an unequivocal yes)?
  3. Would a more fruitful approach have been consulting with this group regarding what type of community outreach they were going to do (then if they told me that they were only going to teach the locals how to use contraceptives, would that then justify my reaction, because I went through the process of consultation?)

A good friend astutely mentioned that being involved in ethical dialogue runs the risk of assuming the position of embarrassing superiority, where we consider our moral stance to be somehow higher because we are examining issues that hadn’t been considered by say, the group that sought to collaborate with my club.  Good intentions and careful scrutiny of unintended effects need not oppose each other, but to achieve partnership between the two, we need to first commit to recognizing and validating the good intentions, before we take our theoretical lenses and place one’s well-intended project under the microscope, and recommend how potential barriers to the meaningful change they seek can be overcome.

UBC’s New Safety Abroad Policy for Students

In case you didn’t get the email, UBC has a new policy of relevance to those wishing to engage abroad…

Dear Student:

Earlier this month, the Senate and Board of Governors passed a policy to
support and better prepare students for safe travel abroad. It requires
undergraduate and graduate students to register travel plans and, in some
cases, seek authorization.  Please familiarize yourself with the policy
which can be found at:
http://www.universitycounsel.ubc.ca/policies/policy69.pdf.

If you anticipate traveling abroad as a UBC student, visit the Safety Abroad
website for details:

Vancouver – http://www.students.ubc.ca/global/safety-abroad
Okanagan – http://www.okanagan.ubc.ca/global

University activities do not include activities sponsored or organized by
student clubs or the AMS, the Students’ Union or the Graduate Society unless
the activity is funded, coordinated or sponsored by UBC.  Students engaged
in these activities are welcome, and encouraged, to use the Student Safety
Abroad resources and registry.

Information sessions about the policy will be held in March.  View the event
schedule:

Vancouver – http://www.students.ubc.ca/global/events
Okanagan – http://okanagan.students.ubc.ca/global/outgoing/events.cfm

David Farrar
Provost and Vice President Academic

Brian Sullivan
Vice President, Students

Categories
Contributions Debatables

Role Call to Corporate Social Responsibility

By Paul Bain

I have been reading various articles on the debate around Canada’s foreign CSR. It is a tough issue and I am still unsure where I stand on the matter.  I do not want to try to lay out specific laws that should govern corporations because I feel that CSR is still evolving and CSR standards will be constantly changing over the next decade.  Therefore, I want to focus this blog on answering this question: What role does party have with ensuring CSR?

The Shareholders of the Corporation: The shareholders have an important role in upholding CSR.  Ideally, prospective investors should be responsible to consciously invest in companies which respect CSR.  I believe that shareholders should demand for public disclosure of information corresponding with CSR issues.  A third party CSR audit system should be implemented to establish legitimate transparency.   These initiatives will enable the Government of Canada and the clients of the corporation, to better understand the initiatives taken by the corporation to uphold its social responsibility.

The Customer of the Corporation: Customer’s have the duty of researching and learning about the corporation’s CSR policies.  The customer then has the power to choose which corporation they will support and buy from.  Customer’s can pressure corporation’s (with their wallet’s and voices) to incorporate CSR into their business mandate.

NGOs: The role of NGOs is to help share information with the public about a corporations CSR practices.  NGOs can act as a ‘watchdog’ by spreading awareness about CSR abuses.  NGO’s that are active in a foreign state (where corporations are involved) have the opportunity to provide insight into the corporation’s effects on the local community.

The Government of Canada: The GOC should apply pressure on Canadian corporations to uphold their domestic CSR regulations when they are working in foreign countries. The GOC should be taxing corporations who are not conducting foreign CSR.  The GOC should also provide positive incentives for a corporation’s compliance with CSR, such as tax breaks or a governmental stamp of CSR approval rating (something like certified Dolphin free tuna) to attract more conscience customers.

The Foreign Country’s Government: While this role may be the most important to ensure foreign CSR, it is possibly the least accountable.  In developing countries it may be difficult to enforce strict CSR regulations when there is a dire need for foreign investment.  There is also the issue of wealthy corporations ‘paying off’ foreign governments to avoid their domestic legislation on CSR.

Categories
Debatables

Ethics Boy

By Matt Whiteman

This morning, the internet asked me “If you could have one superpower, what would it be?”  I had to be able to answer in 100 words or less.

A few friends and colleagues have jokingly started to refer to me as “ethics boy” for working at this job and spending my whole day thinking and talking about ethics. I also haven’t written a post in a while, so I thought the timing on this one was rather appropriate, if not mocking. Thanks, universe.

Some may see this as a naïve or perhaps pointless question. But Sir Ken Robinson, a world-famous British-American educator, points out that it is our capacity for imagination that truly distinguishes us from the other creatures on this planet, and it’s a muscle we need to exercise regularly. His initial definition of imagination is “the power to bring to mind things that are not present to our senses.” Duh, you say.

“We are free”, he continues, “to revisit the past, free to reframe the present, and free to anticipate a whole range of possible futures” [1]. Better futures, says I.

Anyway, after briefly considering all of the sweet (yet definitely more selfish and hedonistic) superpowers I could choose from, I settled on the following; 100 words exactly:

I would like to grant the ability to photosynthesize to anybody who wished it so.

We. Could. Eat. Light.

This way, we could tap into a nearly infinite energy source, consume fewer natural resources, shrink our carbon footprint and use it to alleviate pressure on global food systems. We could also use it as a tool to advocate for more responsible food production; less high-fructose corn syrup = fewer cases of Type II diabetes.

I would have a sidekick who could purify water without producing any negative externalities, all but eliminating several of the most deadly diseases in the world.

Naïve? Maybe. Corny? A bit (no pun intended). Pointless? I don’t think so. We ask questions like this all the time: “If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and you could only bring one ________, what would it be?”

We ask absurd questions like this all the time – I think – as a way of  searching for something deep within. Perhaps we invoke the notion of superpowers as an allegory for interventions we don’t have the ability or perhaps especially the will to conduct ourselves, as individuals or as a society. Perhaps we also ask ourselves these questions as a way of pointing to the things we value, though I think Sir Ken would add: or merely the things we value the idea of. If a genie popped out of a lamp and gave whoever was standing there one superpower, I’m sure some people would no doubt say they would turn invisible and sneak into places they didn’t belong. In greener years, I probably said the same thing.

We say to our disgustingly talented friends: “I would love to be able to play the piano the way you do”. No, Robinson says, you only love the idea of it. If you actually loved it, you’d be doing it. Important distinction.

We can state the things we value the idea of without actually taking responsibility for acting on them, because questions like the one above are framed as being purely hypothetical. I feel what follows too often from these allegories, however, is  a rationalization of apathy or inaction, since some issues seem so hopeless that we imagine they would need supernatural intervention to remediate.

Anyway, I feel like my posts always turn out this way… This was supposed to be optimistic. Maybe a better name for me would be “Rant Boy”…

To me, this comes back to something my mentor, Dr. Shafik Dharamsi, says all the time: Learning something implies responsibility for it.  Knowledge allows you not only to see the world differently, but also to be in the world differently.

I feel that internalizing an identity of critical consciousness means being more intentional when I think about questions like this, even if they are just meant for fun. If you change the way you conceptualize something, you will naturally start talking about it differently and then naturally by extension, usually your actions will follow. My degree helped to change the way I view my role in this world, and so I think I got my money’s worth – no need to have the power to create wads of cash at a snap of the fingers.

***

[1] Robinson, Ken (2009). The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. New York: Penguin, p. 58.

Categories
Debatables Personal Experience

In Which a Striking Apparition is Witnessed

By Matt Whiteman

Last night, the UBC Chapter of Engineers Without Borders held a screening of Dr. James Orbinski’s harrowing documentary “Triage“. If you haven’t already seen it, do. To my disappointment, only six or seven people showed up to watch, four of which were members of EWB. Quel dommage.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMPCjy_Arbo[/youtube]

There were indeed many insightful moments, but one in particular stuck out for me that will likely never happen again in quite the same way, so I feel the need to record it here. The film began with Dr. Orbinski explaining the awful process of triage he went through – deciding who lives or dies – during the genocide in Rwanda. This is a process which can only be described as “the ultimate humanitarian nightmare”:

“So we labeled them 1, 2, or 3… put a little piece of tape on their forehead

and ‘1’ meant that they should be treated right away…

a ‘2’ meant that they needed to be treated within 24 hours.

And a ‘3’ meant that even though they were alive, they were irretrievable.”

Imagine this was your decision.

As he spoke, someone in front of me was fiddling with the remote control, trying to bring up subtitles. Immediately after Orbinski said “and a ‘3’”, the picture froze and the words “Cannot Operate” appeared in the centre of the screen.

It was just the DVD player’s way of telling us it didn’t like button-mashing, but there was something hauntingly poetic about this small, perfectly-timed apparition. It wasn’t quite irony; just a simple coincidence with a lump of double entendre. Maybe it’s not even all that interesting. But for me, it set the mood for the rest of the film, which – believe me – was not easy to watch. Even for someone who has never themselves glimpsed the complexity of the things witnessed by Dr. Orbinski, the mood is unmistakably one of pathos.

Among other things, Triage sparks an interesting debate about the role of doctor as political actor. My room mate poignantly noted this morning on the bus that doctors are among the only professionals who are essentially “licensed to be apolitical”. The rest of us aren’t allowed to be, ethically speaking anyway. We have a choice to be apathetic or ignorant, but as human beings, should we be allowed to be?

If you work for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) as a physician, you can’t get involved in the politics of the region. Your job is to treat the sick. Although I am not a doctor, the modern hippocratic oath, along with the spirit of MSF, seem to imply that all human life is equal, and that – like the law – a physician’s compassion should be blind.

Triage examines just how difficult it can be to remain apolitical when the people you are treating are victims of (often infuriating) political circumstance. “Famines,” one man comments “are never simply natural occurrences.” The same truth is reflected in the staggering number of casualties of the recent earthquake in Haiti.

After the genocide in Rwanda ended and 2 million Hutus fled to Uganda and Zaire, the refugee camps were run by the very genocidaires who killed close to a million people.  They appropriated emergency food aid and sold it with a tax markup, allowing them to sustain themselves during a conflict that is ongoing to this day. Humanitarian workers operating in these camps had a choice: work with the genocidaires, or let people starve. But not for Orbinski. MSF had to remain politically neutral, and Orbinski decided that it could not do that while supporting murderers. It left Rwanda in 1997 and has not returned since. The flak that you risk facing in a circumstance like that is that what gets televised is the doctors leaving the camp – not the complex reasons for doing so.

You can just as easily not get involved out of sheer political ignorance too. But the difference between political neutrality and political ignorance is that the former requires a conscious understanding of the politics involved in such a situation so that you can make the right decision. But many physicians, as Ernest Boyer would say, experience a “divorce of conscience from competence” – they retreat into their technical training when they don’t understand a socio-political situation well enough.

This same schism is often characteristic of anyone who wants to help – which is where many of the ethical problems with international engagement begin. I’ve said it so many times I feel almost self-conscious saying it again here, but reliance on good intentions – even with a certain competence – is not enough. Some people have neither conscience nor competence, and yet somehow still show up to “help”.An Imperfect Offering

Sometimes you have to ask tough questions: Are there people who don’t deserve to be helped? It is dilemmas like this that are the subject of Orbinski’s book “An Imperfect Offering”, which Triage documents him writing. The role of doctor as health advocate suggests that physicians must be political creatures, that they must include social and political circumstances in their calculus.

Orbinski understands this and is himself torn by it – he knows that you have to understand the politics before you can step outside them, and that’s why he (representing MSF) was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1999.

Categories
Debatables

Our Torch to Bear

By Matt Whiteman

On the evening of February 11th, just before the Olympic torch arrived on UBC campus, I met with our university’s president, Stephen J. Toope, along with about twenty other students representing globally-engaged groups at UBC. Together, these groups form the founding members of the Global Lounge, a new space housed at Marine Drive residence, which is used:

  • To facilitate interdisciplinary, collaborative connections between and among globally-focused students, faculty, staff, alumni, student groups and organizations, and university programs and services.
  • To provide a physical meeting, lounge, and resource centre space to support the programmatic efforts of globally focused student groups and organizations, and university programs and services.
  • To stimulate responsive and engaging discourse about the pressing global issues of our time.

The purpose of the meeting was to outline UBC’s international identity as we saw it, and our collective vision of what it should look like in the future.

Many issues were raised – UBC’s role in the relief efforts in Haiti, our roles and responsibilities regarding climate change, and what we could do if every student at UBC agreed to give one dollar to a common cause.

Though we each had only a short time to speak, the result was undoubtedly greater than the sum of its parts. To have the representatives of these groups all in one room with the undivided attention of our head policy-maker is an unmistakably valuable opportunity, one that until this year had never happened before at UBC. The Global Lounge founding members have been meeting since October 2009, but this was the first time we had the President’s undivided attention as a group, and I was pleased to hear that this meeting was only the first of many.

Dr. Toope listened quietly to each of us, making notes as we spoke.

I took my single minute to reflect on UBC’s vision as stated in our new Strategic Plan entitled Place and Promise.

That vision is to “creat[e] an exceptional learning environment towards Global Citizenship and a civil and sustainable society”.

For some students, these words can seem thrilling. Yet they can also seem daunting.

I mentioned that the concept of the global citizen is omnipresent – and not just at UBC; university students everywhere are hurried out the door into this world and all its wonder and strife almost as soon as they arrive.  I told him that I anticipate that this proclivity will only grow stronger.

We need to be bold, I said, certainly.  But we need also to maintain a strong consciousness of the effects of our actions on those with whom we engage abroad. Even with the best of intentions, it is easy to do more harm than good.

I ended with my vision for the global lounge, which is to host a collection of student groups committed to ensuring that generations of UBC students bear this torch of global citizenship responsibly.

I think we will all need to collaborate to decide what that might look like.

When it was the President’s turn to speak, he was humble and sincere. I have heard him speak several times before, though never in such an intimate setting, and this affirmed for me that indeed, you don’t get that job unless you deserve it.

He acknowledged the incredible way in which in almost no time at all, students came together to raise several thousand dollars over an event lasting a few hours for the relief efforts in Haiti. He acknowledged that – even though it sounds corny – the only way sustainability will happen is because of the coordinated efforts of our generation. He told us we had more power than we realized.

I really appreciated his response to me, in which he commented on the subtle change made to the university’s vision with the birth of the new strategic plan. Under the old plan, global citizenship was framed as something which was done to students, rather than an identity which was allowed to evolve out of a supportive environment.

The most important moment of the evening however, was when he said that in order for this university to serve its purpose as an exceptional teaching and learning environment, it will have to have at its core a culture of ethics, integrity and sustainability.

President Toope said it himself; now it’s our responsibility as students to hold the university accountable! He’s behind us, so it’s all-hands-on-deck time.

Categories
Debatables Personal Experience

Case Study: Chang’aa

By Matt Whiteman

Here is a case study based on an experience I had:

You have been working in a rural community for a few months, and today you are coordinating a basic nutritional survey of the area with the help of a few colleagues. Upon approaching one cluster of huts, you smell an unfamiliar smell. You eventually realize that the occupants of the huts must be brewing a potent alcohol, similar to moonshine. As you approach, they stop what they are doing and look in your direction in silence. You have heard of this practice, but this is the first time you have seen it being made. The beverage is popular, though you know its production to be illegal, as it is unregulated and often contaminated with harmful substances.

You introduce yourself and your team and ask them if they have a few moments to answer some questions. They smile at you, agreeing hesitantly. As you sit down, the man you are about to interview offers you a cup of the pungent brew. What should you do? Maybe think it over a bit before I tell you my perspective.

***

Here are two obvious immediate reactions: 1) Of course, I’m a young adventuresome person with nothing to lose – this is the kind of experience I came here for!  2) Of course not – I don’t know what’s in this and I don’t want to go blind.

Neither of these would have been appropriate in my mind.

There was a more implicit message the man was trying to communicate to me. Though these are only my assumptions, here is the situation as I saw it from his standpoint:

  1. You are a stranger here and I don’t know if I can trust you yet. You’ve just walked in on me doing something illegal (though I don’t know if you care or not). If you drink from this cup, then you will be just as culpable as we are and we can’t get in trouble. I can then trust you and be more open with you, both now and in the future. You will get the data you need for your survey and your work will go smoothly.
  2. If you don’t drink it, then I will still answer your questions, but I will give you minimal information and remain suspicious of you, and maybe I’ll tell others that you can’t be trusted.

From my perspective:

  1. This has implications for my professional reputation, as my colleagues are with me and have expectations of me. However, I know that this will likely create a bit of social distance that may have repercussions for my work later on.
  2. I am comfortable with trying new things, but I am not really comfortable with breaking the law in order to facilitate the work I am doing, even if it would be great to try something new, even though it would make a great story, even if my actions may be fairly harmless.
  3. I am also a representative of my country and my organization and I can’t really be seen setting a bad example, nor is it acceptable to establish or reinforce a negative stereotype.
  4. My relationship with this community matters a significant deal, not only to me, but to future cohorts of volunteers who will pick up where I leave off.

Keep in mind that chang’aa is a lone source of income for some families in this area where their land is not suitable for cultivation of crops or animal husbandry. With HIV/AIDS having affected a significant portion of the men of working age, this is one of the only forms of employment that women can hold out of their homes.

I didn’t end up taking the cup. Fortunately, my colleagues, who were members of a neighbouring community, seemed to be able to smooth things over fairly well and I think we saved face just fine, although they spoke a regional language I wasn’t familiar with, so I’ll never know for sure.

Categories
Debatables Personal Experience

In which Matt loses an important argument to a bigoted idiot

By Matt Whiteman

I met a xenophobic, racist, white South African man on the plane last Sunday and he said a number of absurd things that I strongly disagreed with but which at the time I was unable to adequately defend against. He came on incredibly forcefully, and I was so stunned by some of his comments that I didn’t know where to begin and I eventually just gave up and left, shaking with rage and muttering to myself.

Here are just a few paraphrased samples from our 3 hour long argument. He actually said these things I promise… you can’t make this stuff up. I apologize if this gets a bit ranty:

Him (fully knowing who Robert Mugabe is…): We have a big problem with refugees crossing into South Africa from Zimbabwe. Why can’t they just go home?

Me: Well I think poverty in general and the situation in Zimbabwe are both pretty complex subjects, and there’s a whole course at UBC on the dynamics of migration and settlement. Plus, how can you even rationalize sending them back to the environment that is responsible for bringing them to be refugees in South Africa in the first place?

Him: Harumph! Complexity-shmomplexity. I don’t like taxes. Out!

***

Him: … okay then, explain to me why Namibia, Botswana and Vietnam went through decades of conflict but are now sporting good economic growth and have their HIV/AIDS problems under control?

Me: I don’t know enough about any of those countries yet to be able to answer you intelligently… and wait, doesn’t Botswana have one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world?

Him: I win!

***

Him (practically yelling at me at this point): France and Germany were completely destroyed after the Second World War, and they rebuilt themselves in a decade. We’ve spent over a trillion dollars on Africa over nearly 60 years, why the hell can’t they get their act together?

Me: Well… you see the thing is… The Marshall Plan, uhh… well you see Europe is… huh.

***

Him: Why do African people keep electing corrupt politicians? I mean how stupid do you have to be? It’s the corrupt politicians that are the reason everybody is poor and dying!

Me: Well what is it that led them to corrupt behaviour? Corruption doesn’t exist in a vacuum. After all, if the politicians are corrupt, then the elections are probably not legitimate in the first place, are they?

Him: But after all this time, they’re still doing it. Have they learned nothing? (I know, this argument got old pretty fast for me too)

Me: Well the colonial governments weren’t exactly run by the Dalai Lama, and nation-states they inherited didn’t exactly run like a rube-goldberg machine. And don’t you think that colonial history still might have something to with it? And there’s this whole thing about dependence and debt, you see… and don’t forget civil conflict and endemic disease and pretty unfortunate geography.

Him: So now you’re reducing it to geographical determinism? What a fool! Well what about in the cases where they are more legitimate than others? They still vote for the personality rather than the policies.

Me: How many degrees do you have?

Him: Two – and I paid for them myself! And that’s another thing, why should my taxes go up in order to subsidize education and services for someone who can’t pay for it themselves?

Me: Easy for you to say. And don’t you think your two degrees might have an effect on your level of political literacy and thus your ability to vote in an informed way?

Him: No, these people have had every opportunity, which they have wasted at every turn. Both big aid and grassroots volunteering are a waste of time. The only solution is to become ENTIRELY uninvolved and let the continent destroy itself.

Me: (twitch)

***

He eventually boiled it all down to a matter of cultural inferiority, and it took every ounce of will-power not to say something truly hurtful or to slug him right there on the plane (I imagine that would not have made me very popular with CATSA). I spent the rest of the day fuming at home, reading and writing down as many counter-arguments as I could come up with.

At some point in the conversation, Shakespeare would have said,  “I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see that you are unarmed!” It did indeed dawn on me that I was losing an argument to a complete idiot, but saying so wouldn’t stop him from being an ignorant racist, so I pressed on.

Now I realize it’s unfair to rant about him without him being here to present his side of the story himself, but I felt it was my responsibility to not let this guy get away with saying these things, and at the time, I’m ashamed to say that I fumbled and felt like I’d forgotten everything I’d learned, and ultimately couldn’t rise to the challenge. Maybe it was because I didn’t know the history  and politics well enough, or maybe because I still haven’t learned how not to default to one-dimensional counter-arguments. Maybe it’s because I was afraid of what would happen if I made a bigger scene by calling him a racist to his face. What made me even more angry was that I had to resort to homogenizing complexity myself to be able to advocate for the continent at all. It left a bad taste in my mouth to even start trying to defend  my position by saying: “well hasn’t there has been a lot of brutal conflict in various parts of the continent that make things like building infrastructure and sustaining trade really difficult?” I can still hear his voice vividly in my head as I write this, and I’ll admit, I feel very small.

I realize now why it became so hard to argue against him – not only because he was so forceful, but because it’s easy to fit a lot of really loaded language and ignorant assumptions into a single, forceful sentence, while it’s much more difficult to unpack all those assumptions and respond thoughtfully and adequately in an equivalent amount of time. So when I would begin to respond, he’d cut me off after my first sentence and immediately retaliate with another insane rebuttal.

I realize also that it’s probably unfair that I portrayed myself as having the last word in most cases. I’m not writing all this because I care who won the argument. I’m not trying to flaunt my “impeccable liberalism” as Binyavanga Wainaina would have it, or my moral or intellectual superiority. But I should remind you that the conversation was 3 hours long, and even though I didn’t have any checked baggage to claim,  I stayed with him by the baggage carousel for 20 minutes after I deplaned before I realized that I could spar with him all day and I would never be able to change his mind. We parted without ever knowing each other’s names. I cannot remember ever being so mad at a complete stranger.

I couldn’t believe there were people like this out there, especially not ones that carry a Canadian passport (by naturalization for him). It scares me that people like him could be teaching kids or managing government programs (although I never asked him his profession).

I write this because I think it’s important to learn how to put people like this in their place; it’s important to remind people that this kind of racism, arrogance and bigotry are real in a big way in Canada. Remember this the next time you refer to Canada as a “developed” nation.

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