I've been on the road again with Buschgirl and there are some things that occur to me each time I leave Berlin:
German towns are small, spread apart by fields and people are connected by pubs where "everybody knows your name".
Germans in small towns are proud of their traditions but they are also super curious about the world outside of their own.
They like a good laugh, a good beer or glass of wine and will forgive most German mistakes in this setting.
They really really like to witness a foreigner speak German well. It seems to be a relief that their language is worth learning.
Every 10th person I meet has a friend/sister-in-law/colleague who is "colored", which is why this person can totally relate to my experiences!
They prefer to think of me as Anne-Rose.
Haiti is synonomous with Hawaii, even in the local paper. I still can't figure this out entirely, it might have something to do with Obama having grown up there?
They are good natured and kind, despite the occasional gaffe.
Thank you Hessen!
Now I'm in Freiburg (31.1) at The Carl Schurz Haus and on 1.2 in Saarbrucken.
1/30/2011
1/20/2011
1/17/2011
A Murderer's Homecoming
Who let Jean-Claude Duvalier back into Haiti? Are the immigration officials so young that they don't know who he is?
Are Haitians so desperate that anybody offering help, even the dynasty that murdered their families, robbed them blind, terrorized them, drove the intellectual, middle class out of the country and then (the Duvaliers) lived like fat cats on the French Rivera with stolen Haitian money? Are Haitians so weary that they forgot the Ton Ton Macoutes and their machetes, Papa Doc and his lists of people to have killed, the curfews, the fear that their parents and grandparents lived in?
Where are the people calling for Duvalier's head? Where are the mobs? Where is the international police force to arrest this criminal and send him to The Hague? Why is Murderer Baby Doc being protected by guards while women and small children are being raped in tent cities?
This is a shame and a disgrace for Haiti and all of humanity. I am holding my hands up in the air in complete exasperation.
What's next? Will Idi Amin come back to life and get a "We Missed You" party?
1/14/2011
Losing my grasp on home
I caught myself staring into space several times yesterday, each time my thoughts wandering to Christina Green, the nine year-old girl who was shot and killed almost a week ago in Tucson, Arizona, when she eagerly went to meet Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Christina had just been elected to her school's student council.
A writer of fiction couldn't come up with as much tragic irony as that which surrounded Christina's brief life. She was born on September 11, 2001 and she died on just as violent a day as the one in which she came into this troubled world.
(One of the greatest ironies, of course, is that gun sales in Arizona rose dramatically after the shooting because subsequent gun control laws were feared. While family members mourned the loss of their little girl, people in that very community were running out to buy more weapons, thanks to an antiquated interpretation of the constitution that gives them and every mentally unstable American the right to bear arms.)
Between Christina's birth and death, exists a timeline of trends that could foreshadow disaster. After September 11th, the fundamental rifts between American political parties deepened and quickly grew toxic, platforms for incendiary rhetoric became commonplace as media grew less objective and more partisan, wars were started abroad to supposedly protect the homeland, while morally and financially draining it, the rich grew richer and the middle class became poor and the backlash toward foreigners in a country of immigrants, showed a very hateful, xenophobic side of Americans, particularly in Arizona.
Obama's speech in Arizona was very moving and eloquently called for unity, but conservatives and liberals despise each other so much right now, I wonder if much of what Obama said can be heard?
And Sarah Palin, yet again, managed to upstage the president's speech by putting together a presidential-like video of her own and spewing further divisive and anti-Semitic language at a time when Americans should be pondering why the USA is protecting "freedom" all over the world but it can't protect an innocent nine year-old child in her own hometown? And it can't protect mentally ill people from hurting themselves or their fellow citizens?
Neither "Islamic terrorists" nor illegal immigrants killed that little girl, a mentally disturbed American-born man with a gun did. Universal healthcare, which Giffords supports, (oddly, she also supports gun possesion) would cover treatment for more mentally ill people. Mandatory health insurance is supposedly "unconstitutional" and un-American. Allowing an insane person to buy a gun, however, isn't?
I'm at a loss. I really don't understand.
I wonder, is it because I've been here in Europe too long? Is it easier, from here, to see the USA's stubborn isolation in its handling of healthcare, gun control and human rights issues compared to other wealthy democracies?
"I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it," Barack Obama said yesterday about Christina Green. I want that, too but a democracy that allows for a dangerous mix of violence and social inequity will never live up to the expectations that Christina Green surely had.
May she rest in peace.
A writer of fiction couldn't come up with as much tragic irony as that which surrounded Christina's brief life. She was born on September 11, 2001 and she died on just as violent a day as the one in which she came into this troubled world.
(One of the greatest ironies, of course, is that gun sales in Arizona rose dramatically after the shooting because subsequent gun control laws were feared. While family members mourned the loss of their little girl, people in that very community were running out to buy more weapons, thanks to an antiquated interpretation of the constitution that gives them and every mentally unstable American the right to bear arms.)
Between Christina's birth and death, exists a timeline of trends that could foreshadow disaster. After September 11th, the fundamental rifts between American political parties deepened and quickly grew toxic, platforms for incendiary rhetoric became commonplace as media grew less objective and more partisan, wars were started abroad to supposedly protect the homeland, while morally and financially draining it, the rich grew richer and the middle class became poor and the backlash toward foreigners in a country of immigrants, showed a very hateful, xenophobic side of Americans, particularly in Arizona.
Obama's speech in Arizona was very moving and eloquently called for unity, but conservatives and liberals despise each other so much right now, I wonder if much of what Obama said can be heard?
And Sarah Palin, yet again, managed to upstage the president's speech by putting together a presidential-like video of her own and spewing further divisive and anti-Semitic language at a time when Americans should be pondering why the USA is protecting "freedom" all over the world but it can't protect an innocent nine year-old child in her own hometown? And it can't protect mentally ill people from hurting themselves or their fellow citizens?
Neither "Islamic terrorists" nor illegal immigrants killed that little girl, a mentally disturbed American-born man with a gun did. Universal healthcare, which Giffords supports, (oddly, she also supports gun possesion) would cover treatment for more mentally ill people. Mandatory health insurance is supposedly "unconstitutional" and un-American. Allowing an insane person to buy a gun, however, isn't?
I'm at a loss. I really don't understand.
I wonder, is it because I've been here in Europe too long? Is it easier, from here, to see the USA's stubborn isolation in its handling of healthcare, gun control and human rights issues compared to other wealthy democracies?
"I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it," Barack Obama said yesterday about Christina Green. I want that, too but a democracy that allows for a dangerous mix of violence and social inequity will never live up to the expectations that Christina Green surely had.
May she rest in peace.
1/12/2011
Looking back
A year ago, I was braving the icy streets of Berlin and buying last minute birthday presents for my eldest son. His party was only hours away and I was pondering the details of the pirate scavenger hunt we were planning for the eight rowdy boys that were about to descend upon our home.
It was grey, like most Berlin winter days. It was also cold and I wondered if we should still make a bonfire in such weather. I was in this world, far away from any other. Having children can do that, they can make one's universe seem very small.
But I was shaken back into the larger world, of course, a year ago today when we turned on the news. My son was ready for bed, still dreaming of the booty he and his friends finally found behind the garden shed.
We hadn't yet heard about the boys in my mother's orphanage in Jacmel.
The international community reacted swiftly, the press offered round the clock coverage, and friends reached out, new friends were made, my husband and I stopped working for nearly six weeks to plan a fundraiser.
Haiti became a household name in Germany. No longer did people ask about my parents from Hawaii. They could suddenly place it, there was a context. My children came to understand more about their grandmother, about themselves. They understood that children outside of this world, do not wait for birthday parties with presents and sweets and scavenger hunts.
A year later, and yet it feels like yesterday.
Photo: Rose-Anne Clermont (boys I met in a tent city in Jacmel, Spring 2010)
1/04/2011
A Time for Role Models
"Birthplace of The Civil Rights Movement" North Carolina, Greensboro
Originally uploaded by eleatherberry
The brown eyes at our dinner table grew wide with shock when they heard more details. Was this a true story? "Then what happened, Mama?"
I continued by telling them how hard it had been for the young black students to sit there and take the abuse but they were brave and they believed what they were doing was right, even though what they were doing was illegal.
"The white people spat on the brown people?" my youngest wanted to know and I when I said yes, he was indignant. "But that is mean!"
Oh, how the harshness of reality snatches away innocence!
But I added very quickly that many white people marched along with Martin Luther King and protested these unfair laws. "Together, many many people brought about change." This seemed to relieve my children, at least temporarily.
It is not entirely a coincidence that I brought this up. I recently found out that a regular bully on my son's bus told my son and another black boy "Ihr seid braun und seht aus wie Kaka," " You're brown and look like caca!"
Although I am not entirely surprised that it happened, it still felt to my husband and me that someone had punched our son and us in the gut.
How to handle bullying is something all parents will have to deal with at some point. It is a precarious matter because we struggle with how to protect our kids on the one hand but not allowing them to be subjected to more bullying by "saving" them. At some point children do have to stick up for themselves but they need the right armor, the confidence and consensus of the majority that show a bully for what he is; usually a weak, insecure person with a collection of his own issues.
Unfortunately, the majority often does not stick up for the minority, even when it sees injustice. Still, we have a chance in schools to teach right from wrong and very basic rules of respect. It is a road that I didn't yet expect to have to travel but here I am and I'm treading forward, confident that I can find enough examples of right and enough role models for my sons to allow them to brush off ignorance and not feel threatened by loud mouths with sharp tongues.
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