Don't Have a Cow (literally)

I was doing my normal stroll home after school yesterday. I was feeling good about the day, watching the sun set over the hills when I was stopped by one of the groundskeepers who pointed behind some bushes to show me something. Of course I was intrigued and strolled around to check it out. Of to my surprise, I cruise around the corner to find a man with about 3/4s of his bare arm inside the rear of a cow. I know what you’re thinking, so what, I’ve seen Mike Rowe on dirty jobs do this a million times. I promise you, seeing it in real person and without any sort of glove makes things different. I do have to be fair to the guy and say that he did take the precautionary measure of taking off his shirt before starting his adventure. So me and the other groundskeepers end up spending the next 30 minutes watching this guy pull a calf from this mother cow. After all was said and done, I would guess that it looked like someone had been slimed at least 10 times on Family Double Dare. I’m not sure but that might have been a life changing experience. Oh also for those that are counting, this makes it school number two that I have been at that has cows.

So while we are on the topic of cows, let me share with you some devilish little facts about cows. Cows can be monster producers of greenhouse gasses. I use the words “can be” because if they are grass fed and graze in a pasture the amount of greenhouse gasses are cut down tremendously. You might be asking yourself, well why? And are my cows grass fed? Cows that are raised in factory farms are corn fed. Cows cannot digest corn so they are pumped full of all sorts of chemicals to be able to digest corn. If you were wondering if the cows you eat are raised in a factory farm then they probably are. 98% of livestock is raised in factory farms. Another fun fact about cows is that while they are in these factory farms they pick up all sorts of nasty diseases that can be transferred to you and me like salmonella and e-coli. Cows are kind of cool animals though. If they go from the factory farm and graze in a grass pasture for just five days, they clean themselves of all harmful bacteria. Do you think factory farmers do this? Nah, it’s cheaper for them to slaughter the cows and send the meat off to nice old ammonia baths to clean them.

Conserve Water

It has become clear that the weather is starting to shift from the dry to the rainy season. A couple of weeks ago we would hope for a little bit of rain once a week. The water barrel outside our house had been dry for quite a few days. Small sprinkles were little victories until about a week and a half ago. We have started to get rain almost every other day and when I say rain, I mean a lot of it. I mean the skies go black and it’s going downpour for hours.

Thankful for the rain that we get, we try to conserve as much water as we can. We are aware the rainy season is coming but that is usually followed by a particularly harsh dry season for this area. We try to be careful of what kind of water we use and how much we use. The rain water from the roof and water barrel outside is usually collected with jerry cans and put into our 2 larger 10 gallon barrels. This water is used for drinking after being boiled. There is water that comes from the tap, which only runs a couple hours a week, we use for doing dishes, laundry and showers. Lastly there is water from the river. This is the dirtiest water which we usually use for cleaning the house and toilet. If we run out of one, we have to use the others to fill those needs. For example we had to use the collected tap water as our drinking water for a couple weeks when we had no rain.

Every day we see children and adults carrying jerry cans to the river for water. Many collect this water and walk it back to their homes to use to fit their basic needs. Many people use this water for everything as they have no devices to use to collect rain or this no rain to be collected. As I said earlier, this water is as dirty as it gets and everybody drinks it. This is why so many people die each year from water borne illnesses. I suspect when the dry season is upon us in full force we will have no choice but use the river water as drinking water.

Please maybe think about these things as you turn on your tap water to get a drink of water or take a shower that water is a luxury and millions in the world are living without fresh water. If you have house, maybe consider purchasing a rain collection barrel to use when watering the plants or washing the car. There are many things that can be done to conserve water. Please think about them.

Maybe we Could Ask the Government to Stop Killing People?

Right before moving to Rwanda I saw a news blurb saying that Rwanda will be joining the British Commonwealth. To be honest, I really didn’t know what that meant but somehow it came up in conversation in the teacher’s lounge and I learned that one of the requirements to be in the Commonwealth is that you cannot have capital punishment. Out of only a few requirements, not having the death penalty is one of them. So of course Rwanda doesn’t have the death penalty as well as a vast majority of countries. I find this quite interesting. Why America? Why do we still have the death penalty? There is no benefit to having the government kill people. The death penalty costs more than keeping someone in prison for life. It also has been determined that the death penalty in no way is a deterrent to violent crime. Another problem is that there are a lot of innocent people sitting on death row. Maybe you could check out Amnesty and their campaign to free Troy Davis.

Oye, I really believe that it just follows the myth of redemptive violence. I promise it doesn’t work. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. What can we do in America to stop these cycles of violence where we have continued to hurt each other again and again. I would like to end not with my own words but those of a man who understood the consequences of hate. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”- Martin Luther King Jr.

Rwanda made the choice to stop the cycle of violence and I can see it, I can see how happy people are to turn the other cheek. I would be lying if I said that everything was peachy here but things are good. People want peace and are working toward it.

Drone Love?

I must admit, I am quite fond of the title of this blog post. In my few minutes of internet time I was reading about President Obama’s decision to continue to increase the use of predator drones in the war in Afghanistan and let’s be real, can we just say Pakistan too. Predator drones are unmanned aircraft mounted with high precision cameras and high precision missiles, making one great killing machine. I was watching a television segment several months ago about the efficiency of the drone and how much they were helping America win the war against terror. PBS even had the opportunity to interview one of the drone pilots, not in Afghanistan but Arizona. A majority of drone pilots are stationed in Arizona. The news program even followed a pilot from his job killing people all day to his 30 minute commute home to his family. The use of the predator drone has been hailed as a great military invention keeping US troops out of harm’s way while being able to completely wipe out the enemy.

I’m sorry, this just sounds too weird to me. How far away from humanity and war can we get? I’m all about least amount of lives lost but what about our enemies? Are we really killing just bad guys from a million miles away? I don’t think so. I have seen that many news reports about accidental drone killings. Apparently it’s been hard to differentiate between a terrorist meeting and a wedding or funeral. Human rights groups have been resoundingly opposed to the use of the use of the predator drones. I can understand them. Can you imagine being at a wedding of close friend and out of nowhere a giant bomb explodes killing half of the wedding party? I can imagine that making some people downright furious. Can you fathom something like that happening to your family? I certainly cannot. Please lets get more personal. For humans sake.

China?

This is kind of a follow up to the Copenhagen post. I noticed that China has directly threatened President Obama about meeting with the Dali Lama. Similar to actions in Copenhagen, I think China is starting to flex its new economic power in the world. When I say the world, I mean it. China has hit the third world with tons of development. There are very mixed opinions about China’s investment and I’m going to share my perspective. The handprints China is everywhere in Rwanda, from the smooth roads to new towering skyscrapers overlooking Kigali. This is true not only for Rwanda but also many other developing nations. Many people living in Rwanda have strong biases one way or another. I think I have found a trend though. Many people with a mid to lower intelligence level seem to be very welcoming to China’s investment in their country, while those with very high intelligence levels seem to be very hesitant and downright disgusted with China’s involvement in their country. I found this to be the exact same case in Costa Rica. China promised Costa Rica a brand new state of the art stadium in exchange for Costa Rica’s most profitable resource, fresh water. Many people were enthusiastic about the idea of a brand new stadium while others were hoping the government would not go through with the deal, seeing the amount of fresh water China is asking for as ludicrous and a terrible deal for the country.

From what I can gather, the contracts that China is signing with the global south are quite unfair. I think the cost in natural resources developing countries are paying to China for development work is unjust. China is looking into the future with their exploding population and finding unethical ways to meet those needs. China does not require any human rights monitoring and employs mainly Chinese nationals, providing few jobs for countries that desperately need them.

On the up-side, they are investing and some people say really bad investment is better than no investment. I seen elected official say that they prefer working with China because they do not have to deal with the stringent requirement set on them by the US and European Nations. This could also have to do with the fact that China is more than eager to get things done under the table.

What $3.470,000,000 Could Buy You?

Actually I have no clue what $3.47 billion could buy you. I could give you some estimates though. $3.5 billion could feed a country like Zimbabwe for several years. It could provide millions of people with clean drinking water. It could buy 10 F-22 Raptors. It could provide 350 million laptops for children in developing countries. A couple of days ago the Center for Responsive Politics released a report detailing a record breaking year of money spent by lobbyist.

As no surprise the pharmaceutical industry racked up the largest amount of money ever spent by a single industry at $267 million. Other big hitters include the Chamber of Commerce, Chevron, Pfizer, BC/BS Exxon Mobil and AARP. Overall this is a 5% increase over last year. The numbers never lie for businesses. Even in these tough economic times, businesses have decided that its more advantageous to spend more money on lobbying because it will pay off in the long run.

EDIT: Actually, I know better than this. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have posted this. These numbers are too big to be able to fathom thus not having much meaning other than a ton of money.

Ain't Life Grand

So I was doing my usual 10k to and from town today, when I realized that life is really good right now. The temperature was quite hot but there was nice little constant breeze to make it bearable. I was to the stage of the walk where there was a huge corn field to the right of me and a semi open field leading down to the big trees surrounding the river and the city of brick makers. Falcons were gracefully gliding above me, playing with the breeze, while sparrows were swooping next me at suicide speed. I could hear the stupid monkey sounding birds off in the distance and a whole array of other organic sounds close and all around. At this moment, I thought to myself, damn life is really good right now. I don’t know if it can get much better than this? It felt good to take it all in. My steps were light under the red rocky road. This permeated my soul for another fifteen minutes or so until another thought popped into my head. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the direction my brain had gone it. People around stopped and stared even harder than they usually do. I thought to myself hmm, that’s really saying something to have the thought, hmm I don’t know if life can get much better than this at this current time? I laughed to myself thinking about the rice, beans, and cabbage I had been eating for a week straight, or how I have to fetch water in a Jerry can and then boil it just to drink it, or the 10 big hairy brown spiders I killed in my room this week. These things seemed to not faze me one bit. It’s amazing how much you think the important things matter when they don’t. I guess life could be a lot better. I could be eating delicious food or poop in a toilet instead of hole in the ground or enjoy the benefits of air conditioning and temperatures below 85 but its funny when you’re just living… all those things just seem to melt away.