Complete with soda, too much food, cake, and extended family, the pomp of the birthday celebration August 1 was the same as any other I’ve been to but the circumstance was different. It wasn’t my birthday, but it was the anniversary of the coolest thing that has ever happened to me. The coolest thing by far.

During the summer of ’05, I volunteered for an NGO in Kibera, one of the largest slums in Nairobi and East Africa. My project finished before the date of my departure, so much of my time was dedicated to letting children pet my milky skin, spending time with people, and doing my best to lighten the mood whenever inappropriate. Up to nothing of note, the head of the organization summoned my volunteer title and volunteered me to paint the clinic. Situated within the slum, the clinic provides basic health care on a sliding scale for residents of the community and was in the process of formal registration in the hopes of getting free vaccines from the government. Regulations stipulated that the clinic be white.

Replete with a coverall, paint and brushes, turpentine, no clue, drop clothes, and a foot stool, I set to work. Unlike my jokes or vague development lingo, painting the clinic was a tangible contribution. It made me feel good. The work I did in the clinic on August 1, 2005, however, made me feel even better.

Hopped up on turpentine fumes, I was brushing away, a veritable painting machine—the Arnold of slum clinic painting like you’d never believe. Most of the patients just stared at my like I was nuts. One patient was different, in far too much pain to notice the connect-the-dots pattern spackled on my face, eight centimeters preoccupied.

Another volunteer burst into my studio—“There is going to be a baby!” she effervesced. Flashing back to the “Miracle of Life” video in Mr. Aptekar’s class, my initial reaction was “eww.” Another couple of minutes, and I poked my head in to ask the nurse to ask the woman giving birth if it would be ok for me to sit in. She said yes. With the paint still on my face, I gloved up, put on a white coat, and did what I thought I was supposed to. “You are doing great momma,” I cooed in English to a Kiswahili-speaking woman in labor. She froze me with a look: “Shut up boy, this is not a sitcom, this is number six and the last,” curtly communicated her wrinkled face. My pit stains continued to grow.

I meant well but took the hint, content to hold her hand and wipe her forehead. With a strong push, there was another life in the world. In that moment, there was a presence in the room bigger than any individual—in the balance of the Earth, creation, destruction, life, death, I saw a child born. There was no conservation of mass in this equation. A new baby in the world, a new person. Slimy, gross, and more beautiful than anything I have ever seen, the recently converted amphibian was handed to me. Thirteen seconds old. My hands were quaking. A new person in the world, and I was holding him, before the mother, before the father, as he was taking his first breaths.

As the nurse focused on the mom, I focused on the baby, wrapping him in a sweatshirt, cleaning him up, in awe. Newborn topped with a hat, the mother in recovery holding her new son, I was now up to effervescing, writing the word “baby” all over the walls of my masterpiece—a best attempt at trapping a the enormity what just happened.

At the end of the day, exhausted, I cleaned up, washed my hands, got dressed, and went to thank the mother. Babbling in a mixture of English and almost Kiswahili, I told her thank you, thank you, and thank you, my best attempt failing again, unsure of what really just happened but knowing I was forever indebted to her sharing his birth with me.

“Asante sana, mother. I can’t thank you enough.”
“You’re welcome,” she said, in a tone of voice that told me how tired her soul was. HIV positive, like her husband, neither employed, there was now another mouth to feed.

“What is his name?”
She looked up at me, her eyes glowing, a smile more sincere than any I’ve ever seen. “Baby Aaron.”

August 1, 2006 was baby Aaron’s 1st birthday—happy birthday, baby Aaron.

Aaron Charlop - Powers

Just because the Israeli military warned the civilians of Qana to leave does not give it carte blanche to blindly attack.

—Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, speaking about the recent Israeli attack against the Lebanese in Qana, in which more than 54 Lebanese civilians were slaughtered, including at least 34 children.  Human Rights Watch warned that “consistent failure to distinguish combatants and civilians is a war crime.”  Although Israel suggested that there would be a temporary cessation of air raids after the bloody debacle at Qana, Israeli strikes continue to hail down upon Lebanon.
  
The Lebanese health minister puts the nation’s death toll at around 750 people, most of whom were civilians. 55 Israelis, including 19 civilians, have died in the mounting war.  Israel attacked Lebanon after Hezbollah — backed by Iran and Syria and based in Lebanon — captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12th.  

Mimi Hanaoka

You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow.

—Cormac McCarthy

George Carlin, on one of his albums, joked about the similarities between humans and chickens, eventually coming to the conclusion that chickens have some type of moral superiority over humans.  “Chickens,” he pointed out, “are decent people.”

A couple of days ago, I was sitting next to a window and, not long after the people at the table outside had gotten up, a bird flew over and knocked a half-eaten piece of bread onto the ground.  The bird took a few bites out of it and left, apparently satisfied.  Moments later, a group of smaller birds flew up to the same piece of bread to try and feed off of it.  There were about seven or eight of them and they were all concerned with the immediate gratification of satiating their hunger.  

What was interesting about their method of getting to the bread was that there didn’t appear to be a method.  I’m no ornithologist, but it looked like the birds were more or less just trying to get their share, other birds be damned.  Whichever one had tried to take it, and as soon as one dropped it, another one came in and tried to do the same.  Occasionally two would get a hold of opposite ends at the same time, and the result was clearly not as productive as the birds must have imagined.  

Now as people, we are better than these poor animals because somewhere along the evolutionary line, we developed language, reason, thought, and self awareness, among other things.  This mixture left us as the most advanced members of the animal kingdom, and ever since we have loudly proclaimed our supremacy.

Birds, not realizing that they are some of the unfortunate creatures that progress left behind, are simply guided by the laws of nature and have been relegated by humans to serve one of four basic functions: the foreground for movie sunsets, a hobby for naturalists, egg producers, or dinner.  And this is fine, since we’re a movie-loving, omnivorous bunch.  

What struck me while watching the birds fight over access to a piece of bread was that, although they are birds, the comparisons that can be drawn between bird behavior and human behavior are so obvious and still so strong.  Humans, as advanced as we are, always find ways to territorially fight amongst ourselves.  Do we use thought or reason to achieve compromise?  Certainly not as often as we could.  

If there’s a piece of land that two groups lay claim to, not only will each group fight for jurisdiction without making any concessions, but more sophisticated reasons like history, religion, and revenge will all become major factors, further complicating the issue.  At least chickens have the excuse that they’re chickens.

Which brings us back to George Carlin: maybe he was on to something here.

M R

It’s very difficult to understand the kind of military tactics used by Israel. These are not surgical strikes but have caused death and misery to many innocent civilians.

— Jack Straw, former British foreign secretary and current Leader of the House, speaking on Saturday, July 29th, about the Israeli massacres in Lebanon.

I think it needs to be clear that Israel is not in a hurry to have a cease-fire before we reach a situation in which we can say that we achieved the central goals that we set down for ourselves.

— Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, speaking on Sunday, July 30th, and defending Israeli attacks in the escalating war in Lebanon.

Action is needed now before many more children, women and men become casualties of a conflict over which they have no control.

— Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, condemning the most recent Israeli attack against the Lebanese in Qana, in which more than 54 Lebanese civilians were slaughtered, including at least 34 children. Annan implored the Security Council to condemn the Israeli attack on Qana. The U.S., a staunch Israeli ally and member of the Security Council, has defended Israel’s actions in the continuing 19-day war in Lebanon.  

The Lebanese health minister puts the nation’s death toll at around 750 people, most of whom were civilians. Fifty-one Israelis, including 18 civilians, have died in the mounting war.  Israel attacked Lebanon after Hezbollah — backed by Iran and Syria and based in Lebanon — captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12th.

Mimi Hanaoka

It has been just over 31 years since two FBI agents were shot and killed on a South Dakota reservation while searching for a robbery suspect.  Their deaths lead to four arrests and one conviction — that of Leonard Peltier, the widely respected leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM).  

The combination of two dead FBI agents and a jailed cultural leader made this a fairly infamous case and, depending on whose side you listen to, Peltier is either a ruthless killer who wouldn’t hesitate to shoot an already wounded man from point blank range or an inspired leader wrongfully imprisoned because of the threat he posed.

Peter Matthiessen wrote a book about the incident entitled In the Spirit of Crazy Horse in which he described the history behind the shooting as well as the known facts of the case.  The arrest and subsequent prosecution of Peltier came to represent a people and their struggle to save their culture while merely surviving.  Matthiessen observed that “the ruthless persecution of Leonard Peltier had less to do with his own actions than with the underlying issues of history, racism, and economics, in particular Indian sovereignty claims and growing opposition to massive energy development on treaty lands and the dwindling reservations.”

Passion for these events still runs high years later, as seen in the petition on AIM’s current website and a CNN report from 2000, when Peltier was up for parole.  Louis Freeh of the FBI spoke of the crime’s “cold-blooded disregard for law and order” and how “the rule of law has continued to prevail over the emotion of the moment.”

Peltier, although saddened by the lives lost in the shooting, still professes his innocence and freely provides his thoughts on the subject:  “When you analyze this whole event of theirs, you are slapped in the face with the cold reality of racism.”

Looking back on injustices of the past is always easier than looking at those of the present, because…well, because they’re in the past.  Time and distance have softened the blows.  There is nothing to do except study them, acknowledge them, and vow not to make the same mistakes again.  

That is of course until the mistakes are repeated, leading to a period of acknowledgement and a vow not to make the same mistakes again.

We will never know whether or not Peltier is guilty of the crime he’s been convicted of unless somebody confesses.  We do know that where poverty and intolerance co-exist, crime will follow and things are not likely to get better from there.  

Individuals should not have to lose their lives to make the rest of us see what happens when these issues are ignored for too long.  One can hope that people from all walks of life learn from an occurrence like this, but that is still to be decided.

M R

Experiencing turbulence, I awoke startled. Tired, cramped, I was ready to land in Kenya, but the map said we were just crossing over the Mediterranean. To my left snored a middle-aged man wearing a black shirt with bold orange letters that read: Baptists for Botswana.

Missionaries speckle the Kenyan landscape—roaming in Range Rovers, rivaling the cheetah population—wild creatures in their own right as they Bible-thump their way into the slums proselytizing predatorily on the starving poor, poaching tribal traditions towards the brink of extinction. Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religion in the world. Kenya is a Christian country. Most mission work that is done in East Africa is headquartered in Nairobi, the largest city between Cape Town and Cairo, the control center for thousands of sentinels seeking to civilize the barbarians, redeem them in Christ.

The presence of Christian missionaries is undeniable, but it is easily eclipsed by the bigger cars, budgets, houses, egos, and bolder t-shirts of the secular missionaries that occupy the gated neighborhoods surrounding the city center. Forget cheetahs—we are the wildebeest. Like the religious work that is headquartered here, any news agency, NGO, micro-credit scheme, fair trade organization, women’s empowerment group, or foundation has an East Africa office here. I am a disciple of the secular gospel, doling out condoms, pushing women’s rights, starting sustainable enterprise, empowering youth, in command of all the jargon, the development testaments new and old.

With a faith as strong as a Baptist for Botswana, I believe that the work I do is right, part of a larger plan that will help positively impact the lives of those same starving poor. I choose not to think of my work as predatory, but when I walk through Kibera on a Sunday and hear the sermons, revival meetings, and exorcisms my scoffing at religious mission work doesn’t make my white skin, my presence in the largest slum in East Africa any less obnoxious. Neither condoms nor communion are helping in the long term.

Both sets of missionaries are equally culpable, both to blame for the problems that aren’t fixed, for living a lifestyle that is entirely disharmonious, prowling the slums by day—be it to convert or to vaccinate—and eating $15-dollar meals by night before retreating to a gated compound. Doctrines aside, there is a common baseline that indicts missionaries of all belief systems. There are no simple solutions, and while both sides insist they are right and the other wrong, neither is consistent. Lifestyle is a choice. Inevitably, the most religious and the most secular, both passionate, live disconnected from the work they do, keeping them in business by driving, buying, living, socializing, drinking, and sleeping the system that causes the problems they work to solve.

Aaron Charlop - Powers