I went to a Mariners game tonight with my family. It was an interesting experience to look around and realize how much money, time, and energy is poured into professional sports each year in America, and feeling nearly sick realizing that it's such a small piece in the world. If the MLB, NFL, or NHL was to stop playing for a year, what would happen? Would the world drastically change? Would it be worse off? We joked in Kenya that we would come home and view the world in shillings. Well, as I sat back down in my seat in Safeco Field tonight, I looked down at my water bottle that I just bought. I realized that for the price I just paid, I could send a child in Kochia, Kenya to primary school at Abba Primary School for over two months. I could buy 40 bunches of bananas at Thursday market. I could feed a family for who knows how long. All this, while the glacier on Mt. Kilimanjaro is set to be gone within the next ten years, and leave millions of people without any water.
These are choices I make everyday, as well as millions of other Americans. We choose to buy things we don't need, while we instead convince ourselves that our life will not be whole without them. I work at Lowe's, and spend every day ringing up people's purchases for "that one tool designed to save 30 seconds" that will cost them $50. 10 months of primary school. 250 bunches of bananas. I watch people paint their rooms simply because the old color is 'boring.' I see people spend $300 dollars on flowers. 5 years of primary school. 1,500 bunches of banana's. Half a year of private secondary school at Ombogo Girls Academy. Why do we convince ourselves that these things are necessary? And why, in our society, are you a better person if you have these things?
I've made a personal goal for myself to not buy any new clothes for a year. It's interesting though how people try and work around this. They find it great that I want to do that, but ask if it's against the rules if they buy me clothes, or find excuses to explain to me why they could never do that, but they're so proud of me for trying. In the end, they all miss the point. This isn't about me saving money. This is about the experience I had walking through Homa Bay, Kenya, and seeing children with Ohio state tee shirts on, likely not having any idea where Ohio is. This is about wandering through Thursday market in Kochia, and seeing rows and rows and rows of used clothing laid out to sell, shipped over and donated from the Western World. We love to think we are helping out these far way helpless Africans. We think they don't know what they want and need in life, and think we are the cure-all to their problems. We aren't. Here's a fact for you: Since 1981, 50% of unemployment in developing nations was caused by donated shoes and clothes destroying the textile industries of these nations. We are keeping them further impoverished by treating them as less than human. In all reality, the people I met during my time in Kenya were more hardworking, determined, and uncomplaining than anyone I have ever met during my entire 20 years of life in America. Ever.
Thursday Market in Kochia, Kenya
Back to my year without new clothes. I challenge you to look in your closet. Look in your dresser. Count your shirts. Count your pants. Count your shoes. Please girls, count your shoes. Do I have 40 T-shirts because I need them to survive? Or do I have them because I convinced myself that the old one's weren't enough, so I bought new ones to wear, and forgot about the old ones sitting there, rejected and unacceptable? The fact is, I have no reason to buy new clothes. Many of my jeans are wearing through, and I'm also losing weight, making some pants not fit well. However, if I was to use an old unwanted T-shirt to patch the hole in those favorite jeans, how many more years do you think I could get out of them? 2 years? 5 years? Where would they have ended up otherwise? A landfill maybe, destined to sit in the ground for the next thousand years? The back of my closet, destined to sit just as long? Maybe a market in Kochia, Kenya, destined to put heads of the house out of work indefinitely? Or, I could live within my means. I could wear what I already have, and buy used clothes if desperately necessary. Save someone else's old jeans from putting a man out of work. Refuse to support a major corporation's unfair labor practices in sweatshops in China. Keep myself from using resources that don't need to be used. Our choices everyday impact the entire globe.
As American's, we love the idea of helping other nations develop, and come out of poverty. We donate to 'charitable causes,' we buy shoes so other shoes will be given away, and we wear T-shirts with peace signs on them. But the simple fact is, we keep them in poverty based on our actions. Even developing nations suddenly were able to live like us, it is impossible. The world cannot sustain the ways that American's live. We live so far beyond our means of what is necessary, and convince ourselves that it is completely necessary, that we cannot turn back. Our society is set up in such a way that without a car, you are limited in your life choices. Without a large house, you will not be happy. Without 30 pairs of shoes, you will not be able to walk anywhere. I own one pair of tennis shoes that I wear everywhere. There are holes in them, and they are nowhere near the color when I bought them. But I put them on my feet every morning, and they take me from point A, to point B. They do not affect the person I am, and they do not change how I live my life. However, when I asked my best friend why she owned so many shoes, she responded that she needed them. I struggle to understand the necessity behind a different pair of shoes for every day of the month. During my walks to and from Ombogo while I was in Kenya, the local children would run up to walk us to our destination. Everyday, I saw the same children, in the same outfits, and the same shoes. They wore these until they were literally falling off of themselves. I saw pants without bottoms, I saw children in one shoe, because the other sandle broke. However, they cannot afford more outfits, because there are no jobs left in the country. I would never ask my friend to give up on her 30 pairs of shoes, because that would simply be inconveniencing her. We love to donate clothes to help those children without clothes, but we drive our Hummers to donate them. We donate our clothes so we have room to fit all of the new clothes we just bought. We are sad to see poverty in developed nations, and do our best to avoid it, because it's simply easier not to think about it.
Celeste and I with some of the children of Kochia
Why is it that living beyond our means is 'cooler' in America than living within our means? Why do people judge me for trying to make a smaller impact on the planet during the course of my life? I am judged because I care about the people in developing nations that are in poverty because of the choices I and my family and friends have made our entire lives. I went out of my way to compost instead of throw away old food the other day, in which my friend simply laughed and said "you would." Yes. I will. I vow to live within my means, and not use resources that do not rightfully belong to me. I will do my part to make a fair world for everyone to live in. I was being the "crazy hippy girl" by choosing to recycle instead of waste, and choosing to not buy clothes for a year. But it never crossed anyone's mind that maybe I was being "the girl who wants to make sure her friend in Nairobi will have a job when she graduates secondary school." I mentioned that I am very close to being vegetarian to a friend the other day. She laughed a little as expected, and responded with "please don't... I hate vegetarians... I love meat too much." How has our society come to a place where we ostracize those people who choose to live only as much as their ability allows? Why are you judged for wanting to make the world a better place for everyone to live in? Are we so set in our ways in America that it is such a difficult task to change our habits? If I cannot help my best friend to understand these things about myself and my desires, who can I get to understand? Who can I get to listen to me, and change their ways? How will the world ever change from it's sad state without people taking steps to change it?
A friend asked me when I got home from Kenya what the biggest thing I learned there was. I told her I didn't know yet, because everyday, new things hit me. Experiences that seemed inconsequential suddenly would have meaning to me as I looked back on them in the context of returning to America. As I rose for the national anthem at the Mariners game tonight, I looked down at the American flag waving in the breeze. I thought, as always, how unproud I am of that flag, and how much I detach myself from it, and detach myself from being American. But it hit me. It doesn't matter what I say, I will always be American, whether I like it or not. Sadly, but fortunately in some ways, I was born American. I cannot deny that, and grudgingly accept that whether I like it or not, I will always be American. With being American comes the knowledge that the choices I have made in my life have directly or indirectly caused the suffering of others, and that is a fact I must live with, and work to change in the future. This blog is designed to log my efforts at living a better life, and fighting my American instinct to do none other than consume. This blog will likely offend some, upset others, and tell stories people do not want to hear. But the fact is, they must be told. This is my life as a Mzungu, living in America.
