I love my government class; we watch a lot of videos, discuss a lot of interesting topics, and cover a lot of current events. Today we watched a video about Afghanistan, more specifically the reconstruction efforts one year after the American takeover, more specifically the story of a former-war-reporter-turned-construction-foreman and her work rebuilding some houses. It's called A House for Haji Baba, and it's here: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/afghanistan/thestory.html
There are few things as sobering to a group of American teenagers as being reminded of one of the poorest countries in the world. Rubble, shootings, mud-brick houses, warlord governments--it is far from the graffiti and the poverty and the government ineptitude that are our problems. There, the white American woman draws stares because she wears a man's turban rather than a burqa. There, barefoot children fly new kites in the rubble, an activity much cherished because it was banned under the Taliban.
Now, we have our own problems, which doubtless we will all go back to thinking about speedily. It does no good for anyone if we sit around and feel guilty for what we have. But it's good to be aware. I sat there very still, looking at our school's plain cinderblock walls--which we always complain about, a school built like a box of bricks--and thought that, if I had to build my own school, stone by stone, I probably wouldn't whine so much about homework.
Afghanistan is the third world, it was even before America did anything, and there are many more countries like it. That's why it made me sad, to recall last week's video, which was about illegal immigration.
In it, a (rich white) fellow was shouting and protesting: "We cannot allow a third world invasion of our country!" he said, speaking of the undocumented workers which he believed were burdening the economy.
What a concept, to put it in terms of a war! It is not first-world versus third-world, the battle of the century. Imagine it, us with our tanks...versus sticks and stones? Versus famine? Versus rubble?
There are many forces that, I am told, it is effective to do war against. Evil, oppression, terrorism, (drugs?). Poverty and devastation are different. We leave a lot of it in our wake, both justified and unjustified, and perhaps we might bend some more of our superpower might to the task of helping. Not because of some sense of obligation to clean up "our" messes, but because it's the right thing to do. Because we have lots of food and they have little. Because building houses over the rubble is more useful than all the political campaigning in the world.
