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exhilarationBand Aid: Musicians getting together and recording a song about world hunger is about as effective as putting a bandaid over a gaping wound.
The song was recorded in 1984, same year I was born.
I grew up in the tail end of the AIDS scare. People don't seem to care much about AIDS these days - here in the first world we have easy access to protection, and that makes it all okay, I guess. It stayed a big issue with me, though, it was kind of one of the causes I adopted. In the late 90s, at least where I lived, there was still a huge stigma attached to AIDS - only gay people had to worry about it, stuff like that. At church (lest anyone forget, I grew up in a very religious environment, although I am not actually religious) when it was time to pray, my requests to pray for those living with AIDS always hung a little awkwardly in the air, because AIDS can only be contracted by un-Christian behavior. This isn't true, of course, but it was still the assumption many people made.
There was one kid who seemed to genuinely share my concern. He was home schooled, but, through me, he participated in the TTC things my high school organized, and then in the AIDS awareness things I was involved with in community college as well. That's how we got to be friends.
AIDS is a huge problem in Africa, and this friend is the son of missionaries in South Africa. South Africa is a second world country, not a third world, and the poverty depicted in the video is not footage of South Africa but closer to North-West Africa. Of course, more than twenty years later, some things have changed, but not necessarily improved. While I was in Africa I spend time in several countries much less developed than South Africa, but of course I stayed out of the really blatantly dangerous places.
But what was I doing in Africa in the first place?
My friend was a missionary. And I felt massive amounts of first-world guilt. By the time I was eighteen, his family's furlough was over and they were all back in S.A. and he and I kept in pretty good communication considering we had the Atlantic Ocean between us, nevermind being in different hemispheres.
I was embarrassed that I struggled so badly with depression. What business did I, a white girl living in an affluent area with three meals a day, two loving parents, access to a wonderful education, everything I could possibly need, and the best medical care available, have being so depressed?
I think all this guilt either started or intensified after I got hurt. It didn't escape me that someone with my injuries in a third world country would never have survived. Or, even if that mythical person had, the quality of her life would be nothing near the quality of mine. People died every day from injuries that would be easily treatable with the right equipment, sicknesses that were easily curable, not to mention the people that died simply from starving to death. And here I had gone and caused my injuries myself.
The summer after I turned eighteen I couldn't deal with the fact that I had everything. And so... in the perspective of some, God was "calling me" to do missionary work. I've never said I was doing missionary work. I wasn't - just humanitarian work, and just in the capacity that I supported others who were doing the "real" work. My friends here at home questioned why, if I wanted to change the world so badly, didn't I just join the Peace Corps or something, and how could I support missionaries anyway, being that I don't even believe in trying to convert anyone?
"I want" and "I'm called" are really the same thing in my perspective. I wanted, so I did. I was in Africa with my friend's family, basically doing volunteer work. Because I felt guilty, again, for having more than I needed when there were people out there who did not have enough, and that was the opportunity that presented itself to me.
I didn't stay. And I didn't leave on good terms. And that was the start of my detour around the world.
These days it's all the PRODUCT RED stuff - I don't know how many people really know that product RED goes to the AIDS crisis in Africa or if they just see it as donating to their favorite celebrity's charity.
So where's the "posting only good things" in this post?
Well. I did do good things while I was there. I can hold on to that, although, it does have the feeling of a bandaid. So does buying product RED everything - I'll only pick up Starbucks if it's RED, etc. But I've recently done a lot of comparing my perspectives now to my perspectives as a teenager - I'm about to turn twenty five, and that has a lot to do with it, I'm sure - and I've realized that while I still feel that first-world guilt, I don't feel the same guilt related to depression, like how dare I?
It's a chemical imbalance. I can't just will it away by telling myself how lucky I am to be born in a first world country. It doesn't make me an ungrateful person or a spoiled person or a bad person. It's taken me a very long time to actually come to an understanding with myself about that.
But I think I have, and that's my "good thing" of the day.
The song was recorded in 1984, same year I was born.
I grew up in the tail end of the AIDS scare. People don't seem to care much about AIDS these days - here in the first world we have easy access to protection, and that makes it all okay, I guess. It stayed a big issue with me, though, it was kind of one of the causes I adopted. In the late 90s, at least where I lived, there was still a huge stigma attached to AIDS - only gay people had to worry about it, stuff like that. At church (lest anyone forget, I grew up in a very religious environment, although I am not actually religious) when it was time to pray, my requests to pray for those living with AIDS always hung a little awkwardly in the air, because AIDS can only be contracted by un-Christian behavior. This isn't true, of course, but it was still the assumption many people made.
There was one kid who seemed to genuinely share my concern. He was home schooled, but, through me, he participated in the TTC things my high school organized, and then in the AIDS awareness things I was involved with in community college as well. That's how we got to be friends.
AIDS is a huge problem in Africa, and this friend is the son of missionaries in South Africa. South Africa is a second world country, not a third world, and the poverty depicted in the video is not footage of South Africa but closer to North-West Africa. Of course, more than twenty years later, some things have changed, but not necessarily improved. While I was in Africa I spend time in several countries much less developed than South Africa, but of course I stayed out of the really blatantly dangerous places.
But what was I doing in Africa in the first place?
My friend was a missionary. And I felt massive amounts of first-world guilt. By the time I was eighteen, his family's furlough was over and they were all back in S.A. and he and I kept in pretty good communication considering we had the Atlantic Ocean between us, nevermind being in different hemispheres.
I was embarrassed that I struggled so badly with depression. What business did I, a white girl living in an affluent area with three meals a day, two loving parents, access to a wonderful education, everything I could possibly need, and the best medical care available, have being so depressed?
I think all this guilt either started or intensified after I got hurt. It didn't escape me that someone with my injuries in a third world country would never have survived. Or, even if that mythical person had, the quality of her life would be nothing near the quality of mine. People died every day from injuries that would be easily treatable with the right equipment, sicknesses that were easily curable, not to mention the people that died simply from starving to death. And here I had gone and caused my injuries myself.
The summer after I turned eighteen I couldn't deal with the fact that I had everything. And so... in the perspective of some, God was "calling me" to do missionary work. I've never said I was doing missionary work. I wasn't - just humanitarian work, and just in the capacity that I supported others who were doing the "real" work. My friends here at home questioned why, if I wanted to change the world so badly, didn't I just join the Peace Corps or something, and how could I support missionaries anyway, being that I don't even believe in trying to convert anyone?
"I want" and "I'm called" are really the same thing in my perspective. I wanted, so I did. I was in Africa with my friend's family, basically doing volunteer work. Because I felt guilty, again, for having more than I needed when there were people out there who did not have enough, and that was the opportunity that presented itself to me.
I didn't stay. And I didn't leave on good terms. And that was the start of my detour around the world.
These days it's all the PRODUCT RED stuff - I don't know how many people really know that product RED goes to the AIDS crisis in Africa or if they just see it as donating to their favorite celebrity's charity.
So where's the "posting only good things" in this post?
Well. I did do good things while I was there. I can hold on to that, although, it does have the feeling of a bandaid. So does buying product RED everything - I'll only pick up Starbucks if it's RED, etc. But I've recently done a lot of comparing my perspectives now to my perspectives as a teenager - I'm about to turn twenty five, and that has a lot to do with it, I'm sure - and I've realized that while I still feel that first-world guilt, I don't feel the same guilt related to depression, like how dare I?
It's a chemical imbalance. I can't just will it away by telling myself how lucky I am to be born in a first world country. It doesn't make me an ungrateful person or a spoiled person or a bad person. It's taken me a very long time to actually come to an understanding with myself about that.
But I think I have, and that's my "good thing" of the day.
