UPDATE

Recent Conversation with a 13-year old who is coming my hair for 15 minutes

GLOSSARY

• edge up (verb) - to cut the hair with electric clippers in order to make an even hair line on the forehead, temples, and neck
• edge up (noun) - the even (or uneven) hair line created when using electric clippers to smoothen the hair line on the forehead, temples, and neck

DIALOGUE

“Why did you get that edge-up?”

“What edge-up?”

(pointing to my hair) “That edge-up.”

(silence)

“Umm, I don’t think I edged it up. It’s just hair recession.”

“But why did you edge up your hair like that?”

“I didn’t edge up my hair.”

“Yes, you did, you have an M edge up.” (pointing to my forehead)

“My hair is not edged up like an M. It’s hair recession.”

“Well, why would you edge it up like that?”

“It does it naturally. The hair line starts to recede. No one edged it up like that.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

(thinking he doesn’t know the word recede) “I didn’t do that! It’s natural.”

“You should get a different edge up. Who is your barber?”

“Its natural man! The hair just stops growing. It just stops growing, man!”

“Oh, you mean you’re bald?”

(silence)

“Let’s go get some breakfast.”

UPDATE

Hello, and Happy Kwanzaa, Joyful Christmas, Merry Hanukkah, and Peaceful New Year to you!

Not much has gone on with me since I last wrote. I was able to take a few peaceful trips. I’m trying to be and live healthier and part of that is spending time in nature most days. So I was blessed to have the opportunity to travel to East Africa and visit my flatmate in Tanzania and Kenya. I was working with her to find an NGO with which she could volunteer and do legal work. She found one in Tanzania doing legal work on behalf of widows and women. I also helped her with housing there. So I went down to check it out. It’s nice to go to Tanzania and not do the touristy thing like most people do. They arrive, climb Mount Kilimanjaro, go to Zanzibar, and then do a safari in the Serengeti. I was able to hang out with local people, go into town, sit on war tribunals (a parallel court system to Western government courts), visit farm land over which there were disputes, travel on lakes, hike, visit cave and rock paintings, and laugh. I didn’t climb Kilimanjaro (most Kenyans and Tanzanians have not) or go to Zanzibar, but I did go on a safari for the first time in my life, as Alice really wanted to do so. It can actually be an amazing experience. I did one night in the Ngorongoro Crater and a 3 day trip in the Maasai Mara (northern part of the Serengeti in Kenya). Sleeping in a tent and hearing the laughing hyenas, the hooting baboons, and the growling lions as if they were right next to you was amazing. I spent time with Maasai villagers and warriors, danced with them, and laughed with them. It was really beautiful.

Sadly, a trip to Egypt was canceled. An intern of mine was getting married and invited me informally before she had a date. Later when she had chosen a date, she thought those had formally invited me and didn’t. She didn’t want to push because foreigners were scared to go to Egypt due to the turmoil. I was waiting for the formal invite and more information but I didn’t want to push because I thought she had too many people to deal with. So we missed each other sadly. It has been wedding season though. A Texas, South Africa, and Namibia wedding in November (I didn’t go and wasn’t invited to all). A Portland, Oregon wedding and a Yosemite wedding in September. And just wonderful time to travel through Oregon and northern California and view nature. Egypt was in August. And October I had a break. In November I took a short visit to Oxford to attend a talk by Bianca in their Social Policy and Intervention department. I just came back from a wedding in the States in Dallas and that was mind-blowing. Forget about properly planning the reception. The wedding ceremony itself was overflowing with people standing in the back of the church and people outside in the hallway. And this was with the edict that kids were not allowed at the wedding. Wow.

Of course, I visit students when I can and still hold onto the American tradition of Thanksgiving wherever I am, if I am able to do so. I’ve started work again on a school reunion though it’s been harder this time to rally people. Thankfully, one wedding proved surprisingly successful in recruiting volunteers, so it will turn out well in the end.

In September, I traveled to South Africa to speak at a conference of and for teachers. I’ve started helping teachers to reap the benefits of educational technology in low-resource settings. It’s hard work, but good work. I’m going to go do disaster response work in the Philippines soon. I’m always happy to do meaningful work like that, especially in the area of disaster risk reduction (DRR) or disaster preparedness. I’ve taken a break from some of my online courses due to focus on other things. I’m reading more now including fiction, and I’m loving it. If any of you wants to do a small book club, I’m always down and interested. I still try to cook meals and still learning instruments (like the accordion and ukelele) as well as counseling, working with ex-offenders, teaching, etc. There’s a choir that is interested in me, so they may actually find time to let me sing with them in a concert (you can always go to rehearsals but must audition to sing in a concert, but only when they need more of your voice part). I’m just getting adjusted to life in a new city and searching for locations to run a Sparks club. My last location fell through. In the meantime, I was cast as a zombie extra in an independent film but had to bow out due to a crazy weekend. But the idea was fun, and I look forward to the next independent film since I usually do stage work. In the meantime, I’m just hanging out with friends (Ekaaro, ekaasong) and even crazier friends (pigeon english), attending get-togethers and Christmas parties, taking cooking classes, and making my first double-layer cake.

I hope the latter half of the year has been meaningful to you, regardless of whether circumstances have been favorable, that in each situation whether bad or good, you have had the opportunity to respond well. I hope you responded well, displayed resilience and have had community around you to help you do that. I hope you are able to form and foment that even more so this coming year and in the holiday season. Happy Holidays.

EGYPT

At the moment, I’m in an Ethiopian airport on my way to Tanzania. However, I’m actually only here because a wedding trip to Egypt was canceled. Instead of celebrating a beautiful union, I instead watch the noise of the turmoil and growing turmoil there in the country. The reaction to the turmoil reminds me of the importance of being honest.

While meeting in London with a Kenyan friend who is studying at Leeds, we began to talk about international issues since he’s earning a Masters in international economics (or something similar). The one thing he kept reiterating to me over and over again is that people around the world like the US but they find the country too hypocritical.

Hypocrisy.

I remember the first time a university professor explained this important and true rule: whenever the geopolitical interests or agenda of the U.S. conflict with its ideals, the U.S. chooses the geopolitical interests. At that time I didn’t know many examples of this but I soon began to learn of them from studying and reading modern history especially from WWII up to the present (and even before). Truth be told, this is not specific only to the U.S. However, it is more noticeable with superpowers and superpowers who so vocally tout their ideals and their goodness to all the world. So when the military ousted the president of Egypt from office, there was a conflict.

On the one hand, in a strange way, it’s actually great that the people have power like that because it really keeps the leaders accountable. The UK and the US, among others, don’t really like the Muslim Brotherhood. So the ousting was seen as a bit of a relief. Add to that the fact that the economy had not really improved under the president and he was consolidating a lot of power under his control and away from other bodies like the courts. Besides, goes this line of thinking, a democracy is about giving the people a voice, and this is what the people want. It’s true that the Muslim Brotherhood did not win the presidency by a large margin. So it only takes a certain percentage of disgruntled voters to put the majority of the population against President Morsi. Accordingly, this line of thinking sees throwing the president out as a “democratic” move, the voice of the people.

And there’s the rub. In a democracy, every voice is heard, but every decision does not reflect every voice. Every decision is supposed to be informed by all the heard voices. Then a decision must be made, a particular direction taken. Secondly, in a democracy there should be a democratic process by which you can vote someone out of office for doing a bad job. We usually call this “the next election.” Thirdly, in a democracy there should be a democratic process by which you can vote someone out of office for doing illegal or unethical acts. We usually call this “impeachment.”

So it begs the question: if it fits the textbook definition of a coup, why not call it a coup?

This of course is a bit complicated and deals with the fact that the U.S. is obligated to stop the sale of arms to Egypt while in the state of a coup. Not only is the US arms trade a profitable business, but some view it as a stabilizing force in the region. Stop selling arms to Egypt and who knows what will happen. I’m going to ignore the validity of that statement for now as we can discuss it another time. What concerns me at the moment is what would have happened if the president were from a political party that the U.S. supported and favoured? What would have happened if a president from this favoured and supported party was ousted? Would it be a coup then?

And if the answer is yes, then that means that the definition of a coup and our support is not based on our ideals, but rather on our geopolitical agenda.

In other words, if the answer is yes, our actions are not based on democracy but on whom we like. And that’s a strange place to be, to

believe. Because hypocrisy always comes to bite you back.

MORE ABOUT WOMEN

Earlier I shared information and facts from a Foreign Policy article entitled “Why Do They Hate Us?” by Mona El Tahawy, an Egyptian-American columnist and speaker. I asked three Egyptian female friends about the original article. None of them are as extreme as El Tahawy, and none of them fully agreed with her. However no one refuted the facts I shared. The facts are true; the question is the perspective and conclusion. One good friend, Rania, shared with me a particular blog advancing a dissenting opinion from El Tahawy’s opinion. And there are many, many more opposing responses to El Tahawy’s article. Let’s take a look at people’s grievances.

When you tell people that virginity tests occur which can amount to rape of women, sometimes the hearer thinks that it occurs everywhere in equal measure. When you tell people that female genital mutilation occurs in Egypt, some will believe it occurs in the city as much as the countryside. (I see this same problem in journalism with topics like climate change in which the news media presents two sides without telling you what percentage of people fall into the two categories, much less that there really aren’t two categories but a multiplicity of nuanced views across a spectrum.) So I tried to be careful with that in the blog post and postulate, when I could, that certain acts like female circumcision probably occur more in rural places than in large urban places for the countries contained in that section of the article. So the first grievance was contextualisation.

The second was the conclusion: they hate us. “They” representing individual men in the Arab world. If you didn’t click the link to the article, let me paste here the opening paragraphs in which El Tahawy quotes a novel dealing with gender relationships, sex, religion, and society.

In "Distant View of a Minaret," the late and much-neglected Egyptian writer Alifa Rifaat begins her short story with a woman so unmoved by sex with her husband that as he focuses solely on his pleasure, she notices a spider web she must sweep off the ceiling and has time to ruminate on her husband's repeated refusal to prolong intercourse until she too climaxes, "as though purposely to deprive her." Just as her husband denies her an orgasm, the call to prayer interrupts his, and the man leaves. After washing up, she loses herself in prayer -- so much more satisfying that she can't wait until the next prayer -- and looks out onto the street from her balcony. She interrupts her reverie to make coffee dutifully for her husband to drink after his nap. Taking it to their bedroom to pour it in front of him as he prefers, she notices he is dead. She instructs their son to go and get a doctor. "She returned to the living room and poured out the coffee for herself. She was surprised at how calm she was," Rifaat writes.

In a crisp three-and-a-half pages, Rifaat lays out a trifecta of sex, death, and religion, a bulldozer that crushes denial and defensiveness to get at the pulsating heart of misogyny in the Middle East. There is no sugarcoating it. They don't hate us because of our freedoms, as the tired, post-9/11 American cliché had it. We have no freedoms because they hate us, as this Arab woman so powerfully says.

Yes: They hate us. It must be said. 

It’s quite a powerful opening to an article that reaches a conclusion that does not connect with a sizable portion of Arab-world female readers. The first people who disagree are always the people who use one example (which could be an exception) to disprove a rule. “. . . I am happily married to an amazing Egyptian man, who loves me . . .“ writes the blog writer in a response piece. This may be true, but the question before us is not whether there are examples of good man, but whether a type of “hatred” is a trend. Exceptions disprove rules; they do not disprove generalisation. The term generalisation doesn’t mean it is absolute but rather that it is quite prevalent to a high degree. So, is it true? Do Arab men “hate” Arab women?

Well, many Arab women disagree. Part of the problem is “hate” is such a strong word. El Tahawy is no stranger to controversy, and she purposely chose the extreme word “hate” as she says in a BBC World News interview about the article. She knows it’s a provocative word, but she feels it’s her job to be controversial and to poke painful places. The problem is that there are many women, including women who wear the full niqab with only their eyes revealed, who feel they are completely free. So in another stereotypical dualistic media interview about the French ban on publicly wearing the niqab or burqa, El Tahawy argues for an extension of the ban around the world for the sake of freedom while her debater, Muslimmatters.org blogger Hebah Ahmed, argues for permitting the niqab for the sake of freedom. Can freedom be co-opted and used by both arguments and sides?

To be honest, there are many women for whom banning the burqa violates their freedom. However, I’m not too simple-minded to know that there are regions (even within France) in which women are pressured and forced to wear the burqa so that a ban on a burqa creates a bit of freedom (I say a bit because I believe such religionist enclaves or subcommunities might still force some other stringent dress code in place of the burqa). So in reality it’s somewhat complicated. The tough part about the ban is that though it might give freedom to some it has removed it from others (those who are not pressured and choose to wear it). And is it ever ok to create freedom at the cost of freedom of another?

Regardless of whether the burqa or niqab should be banned, is it possible for women to be hated and not know it? And does hate always have to be overt or conscious? I spoke with one of my Egyptian female friends (she is an intern with me) about this idea of a subconscious misogyny which we experience in many countries, even here in the UK. I’m definitely of the experience (not opinion) that my eyes are not fully open as I walk through life. And I continue to see places where I practice hate, perhaps unknowingly, meaning I haven’t fully loved another person, group, stranger. However, El Tahawy uses such a high, elevated standard on individual men whereas some readers feel the men are ok, that it is the dictators or leaders. Others blame the structures and institutions. No one (none of my friends) disagree that women and men are not fully equal politically and socially in the Arab world, that there is still much to work toward and to achieve. The question is why do women not yet have those freedoms. Is it because they hate us? Or, rather, do women not have certain freedoms due to historical, political, and economic reasons?

Regardless, I’m always quite amazed at how women can find ways to personalise their niqabs or burqas or hijabs. Today I saw a beautiful woman with a tighter-fitting (around the bum) burqa, make-up on her face, and a hijab that went high in the air to cover her new hair-do which took the shape of a type of side-ways beehive. So yes, her hair was covered up, but you could tell she had a nice hair-do!