Today I met with my Peace and Conflict professor to talk about my senior thesis. Before getting to the coffee shop I tactfully brought up the problems we are having with the program. His response was less concerned with tact and included the word "incompetent" more than once. Apparently he was supposed to teach during the summer program and ended up turning them down after dealing with a certain someone during the course of my class. It's a shame because he is hands-down the best professor we have had, but it also makes me feel like I'm not crazy and imagining the problems. He also said we can include his email in the letter we send to Arcadia and he will talk to them. I don't like feeling like we are staging a coup, but I'm looking forward to (hopefully) something changing. We are also learning a lot...maybe Arcadia intentionally put 8 strong-willed people who have to be together 24/7 in a random country with only one resource who is really difficult to work with. It's like Real World: Tanzania, conflict resolution edition.
I'm doing my thesis on the role of outsiders in the DRC conflict. I'm SO happy that my professor is helping because even though I have done a lot of research in the past, I have never written a proposal for a 100-page paper. He is going to help me get in contact with scholars that I can hopefully invite to speak at Goucher. He also helped me think about what I want to do after college, which I unfortunately realized today is coming up pretty quickly. Peace Corps? Law school? UN volunteers? University for Peace in Costa Rica? At least make an attempt at making money?
On a less stressful note, there is one funny thing that happened last weekend when we were staying with families that I forgot to mention. Kaliya, who is mixed (and no one here seems to know what to make of her), was having a conversation with her host mom about African Americans. She explained that some can be really light skinned, and apparently as they were going to bed that night her host mom asked if I am African American! I'll leave it at that so that I don't sound too much like one of those girls who wishes they were black...except I'm not going to pretend that it didn't make my life complete. Also, it was hilarious.
Thursday night I went out to ViaVia thinking I would just stop by and ended up not getting home until 3:30 am. This wasn't because I was being crazy. Two of my friends went to the bathroom at one point and there was a British girl in there who was completely hammered. She introduced herself and started talking about how her friend had been raped earlier that day and how she was alone and stuff. Later I kind of eaves dropped on this conversation she was having with two guys who were trying to tell her she needed to find a way to get a friend to come and bring her home. I went and asked what was up and the guy told me she was drunk and that she shouldn't be alone. So we spent about half an hour trying to get her to come home with us. It was kind of scary because the guys brought over all sorts of girls who had frightening stories. One girl's friend had been raped, and another girl came over and had half of her head shaved because someone had jumped out the trees and hit her and her friend with a machete. Tash, the British girl, finally decided to come with us, except she wanted to go back to her house. At this point we didn't really know if she knew where that was, but we got in a cab and she ended up being able to tell the guy where it was. Of course, it was in the middle of the woods about 20 minutes away and the cab got stuck in the mud. I wasn't upset, though, because we managed to push it out and I would have been worried about the girl if we hadn't brought her home. It's pretty scary to find out how violent Arusha is at night, but it makes me really thankful for having so many people here so that I don't ever have to go anywhere alone at night (so don't worry about me).
I miss home a lot! Even though I'm having mostly a really good time, I know I'm going to be ready to go home when the time comes.
Some things that I know I won't die without but would rather never have to live without again:
-Lindy Hop
-Abby Becker
-Philosophy classes
-Sam Cooke
-My family
-Jews (that's a biggy...who would've thought?)
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3 comments:
Uhhh....Oscar is only a little offended that he's not on the list! :)
Love you!
Sarah - you are really so wonderful with so much learning going on - you are a bright and shining star already and only getting brighter and shinier evry day. Love you so much!
Wow Sarah. I miss you so, so much. I just got back from traveling and feel like it's time to go home except that I have a HUGE amount of work to do. Only 5 more days in Switzerland and then 2 weeks in Croatia.
In response to your previous post, I can feel you. SIT is supposedly reputable and shit, but there is one person who actually listens to me here and she is a rule stickler. I am starting to think that people outside of our cocoon just really don't know how to listen as well. That's a generalization, but... basically I can sympathize. love, abby
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