Well, I must apologize: I had planned to have some new and interesting updates for you all by now, but it seems my life is too glamourous and exciting for my own good.
You may recall in my last posting here that I was given a reassignment to work on a children's' literacy outreach program in Guyana. Now, while I have gotten some details about the position, I really don't like counting my chickens before they hatch by telling you all exactly what I'm going to be doing there before I've even arrived, since as recent events in my life can attest, sometimes instead of chickens, you get omelettes. What I do know about the position is that I will be working in a community on the Essequibo Coast of Guyana, on the northern coast of South America (which includes some nice river-side real estate!). I will initially be doing some local research about mentalities towards education and try to find out as much as I can about why illiteracy rates are as high as they are, even in students – the ones who hypothetically should be learning how to read every day. Once I have compiled a sufficient amount of research, I will begin to develop a campaign of sorts to encourage reading and set up a program in a local library to that same end. Basically, my job is to teach youngsters that reading is cool and knowledge is power! So far, the best idea preliminary brainstorming has gotten me is to dig up old videos on Ebay of Reading Rainbow, one of my all-time favorite PBS shows, and I'm sure yours too! I mean seriously, if the guy from Star Trek with the funny space-glasses can't encourage them to read, what chance do I have?
Much to my vexation though, there's been a small hiccup in this little plan of mine. See, I'm writing this blog right now on Monday evening, May 21. I was supposed to be settling into my new life in Guyana right now, but it doesn't look like I'll be there for another three weeks because, as I said, I'm just too awesome for my own good! I've been using a special Peace Corps-issued passport for all my Peace Corps-related travel, which actually really just means going to and from Mali, taking various vacations, and of course, being evacuated. On this passport, I've visited ten different countries, and crossed the borders of those countries multiple times, as many as six times for Togo back in '09. Well, after all that flipping and flopping all over Creation, it seems that I've run out of pages for visa stamps, so before I could get my Guyana Visa, I needed to get more pages.
America baby, as much as I love you, sometimes I just wish you'd stop wasting your time on those useless extravagances like Brangelina's Baby or the Senate and take care of little ol' Humble Jake! (No, folks, I don't mind if you start calling me that.) All I needed were a few pages to staple into the back of my passport and now that it's taken too long to get them, I didn't get my visa yet, which means another 3 weeks or so until I get to leave. It's not the end of the world, but it is annoying and until my date is confirmed, I'm starting to feel like those guys in the heist movies where they are told to stay in their apartment for days but be ready to move on a moment's notice when it's time for "the job" to go down (thinking specifically of Reservoir Dogs).
In the meantime, I've gotten to meet my niece, Maia "Bean" Kupchan, a 10-week-old bundle of giggles, goofy faces, and earsplitting "I'm hungry/thirsty/tired/scared/bored/confused/lonely" wails. I've also happened upon some of my "bucket list" concerts which just happened to be in town in the same month which I wasn't even supposed to be home for (Rammstein and Mark Lanegan). I've helped my sister Aviva out at her urban gardening program, flexing my weeding and sewing muscles, and with my extra time on my hands, I might as well go back.
I have also, with almost masochistic concern, been keeping tabs on the situation in Mali. It breaks my heart on a pretty regular basis to see the progression of events there in the aftermath of the coup. Human rights atrocities have become all too common in the northern half of the country as about half a dozen Tuareg Separatist rebels and Islamist Extremist groups have been fighting over towns in the Azawad region, trying to take over land and either resist or impose Sharia Law. This is all as a result of the power vacuum left by the military withdrawal from the region when the coup started, and so far it hasn't paid off in the least. Cpt. Sanogo and his cronies have officially stepped down and appointed a member of the old president's staff to act as interim president, but even that is tentative.
According to a Reuters report, "Hundreds of protesters entered Mali's presidential palace unopposed on Monday and said they would remain there until interim civilian president Dioncounda Traore resigned. . . The protesters tore up images of Traore and called for him to be replaced by Captain Amadou Sanogo, the officer who led the March 22 military coup. . . Soldiers positioned at the palace stood by as the civilians entered the buildings." Within a few hours, the president himself was attacked by the mob and hospitalized. What this means is that the most vocal citizens of Bamako are in favor of having the coup leaders maintain their globally-unpopular and so far disastrous control of the country rather than let it fall into the hands of those who were in power during the stable, yet corrupt, office of the deposed president Touré, or ATT. I don't think that the population of Bamako is at all representative of most Malians, but I also can't think of a single nice thing I've ever heard a Malian say about ATT or the government at large. It may be that however convoluted his methods are, Sanogo might have a bit of a point with regards to just restarting the government from scratch and giving the people something to believe in again. It is getting harder for me to be able to tell whether I should support what my own sense of logic dictates – that the country is worse off than it has been in decades, with manipulative and hypocritical dictators running the show – or try to understand and reconcile my views with what appears to be the vocal majority.
This is a deceptively complicated issue, which has had dozens of articles written on it, so I won't waste space here just to be redundant, and instead I will just direct you to the News and to one of the best commentaries I've been reading.
Finally, I've posted the best of my photos from my latest gig in Mali, plus my Evacuation Vacation in Ghana onto my Facebook, which you can access here, even if you've never stepped foot on Facebook in your life!
You may recall in my last posting here that I was given a reassignment to work on a children's' literacy outreach program in Guyana. Now, while I have gotten some details about the position, I really don't like counting my chickens before they hatch by telling you all exactly what I'm going to be doing there before I've even arrived, since as recent events in my life can attest, sometimes instead of chickens, you get omelettes. What I do know about the position is that I will be working in a community on the Essequibo Coast of Guyana, on the northern coast of South America (which includes some nice river-side real estate!). I will initially be doing some local research about mentalities towards education and try to find out as much as I can about why illiteracy rates are as high as they are, even in students – the ones who hypothetically should be learning how to read every day. Once I have compiled a sufficient amount of research, I will begin to develop a campaign of sorts to encourage reading and set up a program in a local library to that same end. Basically, my job is to teach youngsters that reading is cool and knowledge is power! So far, the best idea preliminary brainstorming has gotten me is to dig up old videos on Ebay of Reading Rainbow, one of my all-time favorite PBS shows, and I'm sure yours too! I mean seriously, if the guy from Star Trek with the funny space-glasses can't encourage them to read, what chance do I have?
Much to my vexation though, there's been a small hiccup in this little plan of mine. See, I'm writing this blog right now on Monday evening, May 21. I was supposed to be settling into my new life in Guyana right now, but it doesn't look like I'll be there for another three weeks because, as I said, I'm just too awesome for my own good! I've been using a special Peace Corps-issued passport for all my Peace Corps-related travel, which actually really just means going to and from Mali, taking various vacations, and of course, being evacuated. On this passport, I've visited ten different countries, and crossed the borders of those countries multiple times, as many as six times for Togo back in '09. Well, after all that flipping and flopping all over Creation, it seems that I've run out of pages for visa stamps, so before I could get my Guyana Visa, I needed to get more pages.
America baby, as much as I love you, sometimes I just wish you'd stop wasting your time on those useless extravagances like Brangelina's Baby or the Senate and take care of little ol' Humble Jake! (No, folks, I don't mind if you start calling me that.) All I needed were a few pages to staple into the back of my passport and now that it's taken too long to get them, I didn't get my visa yet, which means another 3 weeks or so until I get to leave. It's not the end of the world, but it is annoying and until my date is confirmed, I'm starting to feel like those guys in the heist movies where they are told to stay in their apartment for days but be ready to move on a moment's notice when it's time for "the job" to go down (thinking specifically of Reservoir Dogs).
In the meantime, I've gotten to meet my niece, Maia "Bean" Kupchan, a 10-week-old bundle of giggles, goofy faces, and earsplitting "I'm hungry/thirsty/tired/scared/bored/confused/lonely" wails. I've also happened upon some of my "bucket list" concerts which just happened to be in town in the same month which I wasn't even supposed to be home for (Rammstein and Mark Lanegan). I've helped my sister Aviva out at her urban gardening program, flexing my weeding and sewing muscles, and with my extra time on my hands, I might as well go back.
I have also, with almost masochistic concern, been keeping tabs on the situation in Mali. It breaks my heart on a pretty regular basis to see the progression of events there in the aftermath of the coup. Human rights atrocities have become all too common in the northern half of the country as about half a dozen Tuareg Separatist rebels and Islamist Extremist groups have been fighting over towns in the Azawad region, trying to take over land and either resist or impose Sharia Law. This is all as a result of the power vacuum left by the military withdrawal from the region when the coup started, and so far it hasn't paid off in the least. Cpt. Sanogo and his cronies have officially stepped down and appointed a member of the old president's staff to act as interim president, but even that is tentative.
According to a Reuters report, "Hundreds of protesters entered Mali's presidential palace unopposed on Monday and said they would remain there until interim civilian president Dioncounda Traore resigned. . . The protesters tore up images of Traore and called for him to be replaced by Captain Amadou Sanogo, the officer who led the March 22 military coup. . . Soldiers positioned at the palace stood by as the civilians entered the buildings." Within a few hours, the president himself was attacked by the mob and hospitalized. What this means is that the most vocal citizens of Bamako are in favor of having the coup leaders maintain their globally-unpopular and so far disastrous control of the country rather than let it fall into the hands of those who were in power during the stable, yet corrupt, office of the deposed president Touré, or ATT. I don't think that the population of Bamako is at all representative of most Malians, but I also can't think of a single nice thing I've ever heard a Malian say about ATT or the government at large. It may be that however convoluted his methods are, Sanogo might have a bit of a point with regards to just restarting the government from scratch and giving the people something to believe in again. It is getting harder for me to be able to tell whether I should support what my own sense of logic dictates – that the country is worse off than it has been in decades, with manipulative and hypocritical dictators running the show – or try to understand and reconcile my views with what appears to be the vocal majority.
This is a deceptively complicated issue, which has had dozens of articles written on it, so I won't waste space here just to be redundant, and instead I will just direct you to the News and to one of the best commentaries I've been reading.
Finally, I've posted the best of my photos from my latest gig in Mali, plus my Evacuation Vacation in Ghana onto my Facebook, which you can access here, even if you've never stepped foot on Facebook in your life!
