Wednesday, November 5, 2008

to make an impact

2/3/2002:
looks like Mali will be playing Cameroon in the semifinals of the African Cup of Nations. they beat South Africa in Kayes [western Mali] today. Cameroon plays Egypt before the semis... don’t think that’ll be a problem.

reached Weh today. Maggie and i, of course. took the road to Esu a little out of town to this rock outcrop. nice view. whole thing took a couple hours. introduced Maggie to Pa Wango on they way back.

she thought he was cute. he is. also sensed he’d be a great person to sit and talk to. he is. i cannot believe i neglected to introduce him to mama. bad form on my part. especially b/c he’s got kids in the Maryland/DC area. alas...

a note. Maggie and i had mexican last night. got to talking about posts and PC admin. after dinner. especially as i got a package with some memos in it... Grace [PC staff from Yaounde] came out to visit her brother, the State Counsel.

anywho... we were talking about posts. my opinion is put volunteers in small, remote villages and give them a post-mate. that towns like Wum (and by implication, anything bigger) are too big for volunteers to make an impact.

Maggie agreed that it’s difficult to make a difference in larger towns, but that that is the challenge. to make an impact in towns like that. Africa is heading in that direction... urbanization, that is. and that’s an important step in development.

it’s easy to make an impact or a difference in a small village... the same needs to be done in towns, though. and that may be the setting where we’re needed most.

3 comments:

  1. pharaohs fans, don't fret... and forgive me for being so sure that cameroon would beat egypt in 2002.

    turn around is fair play, as egypt beat cameroon not once, but twice to take the cup in 2008.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_African_Nations_Cup

    i know how seriously these things are taken! ;)

    peace
    football
    mohamad :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. speaking of seriousness... i can't help but shudder as i read this post. not in regards to football, but to my thoughts on development, "Africa," and making an impact.

    i'll reserve comments, for a post reflecting on how i feel about all this now, until tomorrow...

    suffice it to say now, that i ask you take reading this post with a grain of salt.

    it was all i could do to publish it as is, when much of me wanted to hide that i even thought that way.

    more tomorrow, insha'Allah...

    ReplyDelete
  3. so glad you said it (2nd comment) cuz i didn't have the heart to. no way to bring it up w/o sounding like a buzzkill. we're probably all guilty of it given our indoctrination growing up. (what did illich say? america's #3 export is the young idealist?) it takes gumption to expose the evolution of a mentality.

    ReplyDelete