Tuesday, January 11, 2005
more books, and etc...
I got the rest of the books required for my class, and have skimmed through them. I look forward to reading Notes from the Hyena's Belly, and think that I will find Africa and Africans mildly interesting. I'm still finding the ethnography of the Dobe people the most interesting.
I missed class on Monday, and am anxious to see what our research topic will be. I'll be making notes, and posting links here for myself, and classmates as well. With any luck, we will jointly author a paper that will be presented at the research symposium in May. That's going to be super cool.
Dispelling myths about Africa will also be fun. I still remember the comments of a friend of a friend when, in 1990, I got the opportunity to visit Kenya. His only reaction was "why would anyone ever want to go there?" These days I would most likely just laugh at a person who said that, or at least not bother with answering them, because I can already tell what kind of person I'm dealing with from a comment like that. Talking to them would be useless. However, as it was then, my answer was simply "why would anyone NOT want to go there?" I still feel that way today.
In 1990, however, I was twenty years old, and stupid. I was also visiting missionaries, so my vision of Africa was viewed through certain pre-conceptions. I visited Africa at a time in my life when I was just trying to figure out who I was, and where I belonged in the world. It had a profound effect on me, however, one that sticks with me to this day. I'm anticipating learning more about the place I visited though, learning more right here in the Inland Northwest than I learned while right there on the ground in Africa.
Africa is often forgotten by the west. Geonocids take place there without even a nod in their direction by the largest "Christian" nation on the planet. The reason? I'll blog more about that later. But, since the slave trade was ended, I suppose there hasn't been much economic interest in Africa, and until there is renewed economic interest, the US will most likely be blind to most of what goes on there.
