I'm no Gandhi, nor do I wish to be. Gandhi had a troubled family life, and starved himself for the Indian people's freedom. Well maybe it would be life-changing
and eye-opening, but my life is structured around so much, I don't know whether I could abandon my safe little universe and live in Kenya wearing no shoes
and one cheap cotton housedress.
Well, maybe I could, at the best of times I'm not that high-maintenance. I think that going directly to a country is amazing, to learn about their culture
and living conditions.
But maybe what I really mean is that I don't think I need to be a suburban Gandhi to be aware of what's happening in the world and to make a difference.
Just because I don't spearhead ten different stylish causes and push everyone else to get involved and donate, it doesn't mean that I don't care. What
I'm seeing, especially at school, is awesome, that more and more people are becoming aware of world issues. But really, how much good are donations and care
packages really doing for the people of Kenya? Is it really going to change their situation? What I want to see less of is checkout charity, the donate
10-dollars-a-month-to-save-an-African-child-from-starvation-at-the-Fairways-counter-and-to-ease-your-guilt-about-your-comfortable-lifestyle and more of
direct involvement. Less Aldo T-shirts with hip slogans claiming to donate 10% of their profits to AIDS or breast cancer or something. Not that those
causes aren't important, but I think we're so caught up in the idea that we have what they don't, that we don't realize how much higher we're placing ourselves.
The idea of charity, the one-way interaction of one person indirectly giving another something temporary that they don't have, like food or money, can
only go so far in your relationship with that person. They think of you as the bank, and you think of them as a someone lower than you, someone that you
need to 'provide' for because you have excess, so why not give it to...