Day 311: The Return

"Prejudice is an emotional commitment to an untruth."

- Dr. Magdalene Carney

I've been under increasing international pressure to update this blog. People have employed various methods of coercion ranging from a comment to a phone call to threatening physical violence if I don't do it right now. Hence, I'm updating. But if you're looking for an update about my trip to western Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya then you're going to have to wait. Not only would that take most of a day to compile, I'm saving a lot of stories for a series of devotionals I'll be holding to share experiences about my trip. So if you want to hear about it all, then the first one is on January 13.

The question on everyone's mind is: "Are you happy to be home?". Unfortunately, the answer is less straight forward than one might expect. Of course I'm happy to be home and see my friends and family but I also left behind friends and family. To be honest, I didn't think I would miss Africa very much at all. I knew I'd deeply miss the Sabets but the place itself left me so frustrated at times that I was looking for a way out. The corruption, scandal and attitude of people launched a three-prong attack on the hope I had for Africa and as the days dragged on my optimism dragged down. However, now that I'm not there, it's a bad case of not knowing what you have until it's gone.

So far I've been deeply unhappy about having to leave, which brings along with it all sorts of attending depression and regrets. I'm slowly getting over that as I readjust to life in the United States, but I think I will be in a permanent state of limbo about our lifestyle now that I've seen and been in the "other" side where development is at a pace of two steps forward, one step back. And that's just not going to help things because God knows I was cynical enough in the first place! =P But somewhat uplifting was the Baha'i conference on social and economic development that I recently attended where I had the opportunity to meet some of the Baha'is who are actively working around the world to tackle the social and economic ills facing society. There is work being done but it's pace will condemn hundreds of millions to an unnecessary death.

Samir and I were discussing the other day that the supremacy of the United States is on the decline. He identified the loss of our competitive edge in sports as the most obvious harbinger of the loss of our competitiveness in other areas, but signs are already cropping up that point to the decline of economic might and the failure of our education system. The world without a dominant super power will be dangerous but far more dangerous is the fact that our social ills are eating at the vitals of every society on Earth. The decline is not just national but global.

The more contact I have with younger generations the more obvious that seems. Our youth seem destined to fail society in the long-run by neglecting to recognize the source of its illness. There seems to be a sharp disparity between the people concerned about and actively working toward social justice between just my own generation and the one reaching adolescence now, and I truly feel they will barter away the morality and vitality of humankind in exchange for the materialism and earthly comfort that dominates their everyday lives. Whether or not it's their fault or the fault of their parents for instilling those values in them is irrelevant. What's more important is the action that's taken now - which will be far more reactive than it should be - to address the situation and ensure that the world is still around in fifty years.

But, hey, it's got to get worse before it gets better, right?

I have returned to Little Rock to find out that my entire department at the university seems to have vanished. It seems that there's a single professor coordinating and teaching everything. How can one guy run a degree programme? As if scheduling classes wasn't difficult before, now it's next to impossible. God only knows when I'll be able to graduate now. I have some very specific classes that I have to take and with only one professor teaching who knows when they'll actually be offered, or if the degree programme itself will even be continued. In fact, one of the classes seems to have been reduced from an entire semester of lecture to ten days abroad during the summer. With the shift in my concentration to education & development I'll have to backtrack a few things, but it looks like it'll be independent study. And with just the one guy (I'm assuming), I'll basically be paying them to teach myself.

This is all speculation until the university reopens on Monday and I can determine the specifics; nevertheless, it's really stressing me out. How am I going to graduate now? Will I have to switch majors? Transfer schools? And why would you just up and reduce the size of a department like that, especially "international studies" in an age like this? I'm worried I may just have to settle on a political science degree. Or pay thousands of dollars to teach myself international studies. =/