When politics come before common sense

The Senate yesterday passed a bill to create a wall across part of the Mexican border. 700 miles, to be exact, out of the 1951 miles that comprises our border with Mexico.

What this bill will not do:
-Help us register the significant number of undocumented immigrants in our country
-Prevent terrorists feared to be crossing our border
-Save or create jobs for white Americans
-Address the political and economic issues driving people to immigrate from Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries.


What this bill will do:
-Earn Republicans and a handful of Democrats some "tough on immigration" points in the November elections.
-Further sour relations between the US and Latin America

Way to go, First Branch of Government.

I DID IT

When I applied to volunteer at Holy Cross Hospice, the director and Dean looked at my previous "Where is Mark" website, and were highly impressed. Unfortunately, they were impressed not by the content (mine) but by the design (my brother Robert's). When I showed up with a laptop, I immediately became the hospice's IT staff.

I inherited my mother's technological vibe. That vibe, once sent out, seems to locate the glitches in any new technology, then center them directly in front of whatever task we attempt. I actually stump actual IT staff sometimes when I bring them whatever smoking hunk of metal I have ruined this time.

Despite all odds, however, I* have managed to put together a website for Holy Cross Hospice. To see the first draft and read about the Tlokweng residential care hospice that is my next project, head this way:

http://www.holycrosshospice.org.

Specifically, check out the "Learn More" section - one that includes links to background information about HIV, orphans and vulnerable children, and the neighborhoods in which the Hospice operates.

*with help and/or pictures from Robert, Jason, Anne and Ami. Thanks, guys.

Safari Photos

While I have not managed to upload photos onto Blogger, you can view photos from my recent trip to northern Botswana and South Africa by going to my facebook profile (even if you're not on facebook) by clicking here:

http://vanderbilt.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032688&id=4704956&l=afd6f

Enjoy!

Big Safari Number One

I had hoped to put up some funny photos of my recent Botswana/South Africa tour. Blogger seems to have thwarted that. I am a little disappointed, too - I've got a pretty sweet shot of African penguins that I am convinced my grandfather Bobby would appreciate. Sorry, Bob.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD

I don't know how to say that in Setswana, sorry.

Off tomorrow with fellow American volunteer Emma to visit my friend Jacob in Capetown, via Maun in northern Botswana. Keep an eye out for me on National Geographic.

Africa Lite, Part II of II

...Botswana’s northeastern neighbor, Zimbabwe, suffers from stereotypical African repression and poverty. As the story goes, after overthrowing minority white colonial rule (either violently or non-violently), an indigenous strongman (sometimes democratically, sometimes with the help of the military) wins power, promising (or not) to operate in solidarity with the poor. Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe since 1980, follows this African pattern: after ousting Ian Smith’s white power government, he initially culled the support and favor of his former masters. Since the mid-eighties, however, Mugabe’s personality-driven dictatorship has turned increasingly violent, repressive and racist. As a result, he and his cronies have razed Africa’s breadbasket, leaving behind nothing but the charred remains of a fiefdom in which only his loyal and corrupt supporters have access to food, fuel and foreign currency.

Michael, a twenty-year old Shona speaker from Harare, repeated much of this to me the other night. After having dug toilet pits to earn enough money to come to Botswana, ($15,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars, or about twenty bucks in US money), Michael arrived in Gaborone on Sunday with only the number of his uncle, a local builder. When he couldn’t get in touch with his uncle, Michael had nowhere to turn but the church. He arrived on our doorstep Sunday morning with a single bag of clothes and documents, telling in broken but intelligent English his story and why he would risk being put in jail for working illegally in Botswana rather than return to Zimbabwe. “The situation in Zim… is tight,” he repeated. “Mugabe does not have heart for the people.”

Indeed. Zimbabwe has yet to exorcise the worst of its political demons, as South Africa has done. Botswana, happily, seems never to have had any. But the borders between it and its neighbors, thin and porous, ensure that the Batswana must work hard to ignore people like George and Michael – bloodied, desperate reminders of what makes Botswana so different.

Africa Lite, Part I of II

Botswana, with its well-managed diamond wealth and social safety nets, looms as Africa’s city on a hill: generally free of corruption and violence, a record of fair democratic elections, a military un-deployed during its forty years of independence. You can imagine, then, why some jokingly call Botswana “Africa Lite” or “Africa: Chapter One.” In the last few weeks, I have had two stark, personal reminders of Botswana’s exceptionalism.

The first was a visit with Father George, a South African priest still bearing the physical scars of that country’s apartheid era. The Unites States, of course, has its own dirty history of racial violence; South Africa’s Afrikaners, however, implemented a systematic ethnic cleansing of blacks from what they strove to transform into “white” cities. After years – decades – of peaceful protest against a violent and dehumanizing system, blacks turned to violence, winning majority rule under Nelson Mandela. George spent two prisons terms and the entirety of his young life struggling against apartheid; along with Mandela and other far-sighted leaders who came to power in 1991, he has spent the latter half battling for peaceful reconciliation between blacks and their former white oppressors. South Africa’s current president, by contrast, will be remembered in the history books only as the man who allowed AIDS to cripple southern Africa while he and a small group of crackpot scientists debated publicly whether or HIV or simply poverty caused AIDS...