Of work, drought, dreams and challenges

The wind is whipping the branches into a frenzy outside my office window but the sky is blue and the sun warm. Finally, finally, my chapter is in the hands of my advisor, and I can move on with my other work. I've got three interviews lined up for this week, one set of follow-ups to send out and a cartographic translation to finish. I've done the peer review of the interdisciplinary conference abstracts, participated in the cooperative development workshop, given the bedroom a right good cleaning, finished 10 units of Russian and helped a friend apply for a PhD program. I've also reconnected with the part of me that loves to read and write for hours, which I'm thankful for at this stage of my thesis work.

I've always had vivid dreams, and last night was no exception. The CBC piece about the drought in Northern Kenya worked its images of starving children and cattle so weak they couldn't stand into my sleeping mind. I had that awful dream feeling of having an idea how to stop the worst effects of the drought but not being able to put my ideas into motion. Images of food aid, in the form of grain (in a region which was once the breadbasket of Africa), pouring in to the area (which helps in the short term but can destroy the local economy in the longterm) while the underlying effects of climate change, desertification and access to water went ignored woke me up in a sweat*. The ideas my mind was turning over and over were along the lines of Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement, permaculture design for drought control, and worldwide action on climate change. Those are projects and ideas that will need a long time to come to fruition. In the interim, we can do something by contributing to organizations like GBM (follow the link above) and MSF (who are currently pulled out of Madera due to security issues, but maintain a treatment feeding clinic in the region). Something else that is important, is to try and reduce one's ecological footprint and the amount one contributes to climate change. Can you tell that I'm in a "do-something" mood?

So, here's a two-part challenge if you read this, to be started on Valentines Day: 1) donate time or money to an organization working to give people improved access to health care, nutritious food, clean water or the means to reduce environmental devastation in their region. 2) figure out your footprint, and your emissions, and choose at least one way you will try to reduce these. Feel free to leave a comment if you want to join the challenge. I think it's a nice way to send a valentine to the planet and our fellow human beings, flowers be damned!

*Anon. points out that this can be an excuse for inaction by world organizations and governments when there are very real and immediate needs for aid to stop starvation. Definitely, anything that lets our governments stand by and waffle while an area goes critical isn't a good thing, but the way a lot of aid is done also needs to be rethought since it often means dumping of surplus in order to help one's own economy at the expense of others. In any case, aid is a big bloody complex issue which is beyond any explanation or even coherent argument here, so maybe, check out some books on it that say things better than I can. Both of these are very good, and should be available at your local cooperative bookstore. Hugs to anon. for the work she does with MSF and for just being her!