Hail to the Chief

"Until all nations and peoples become united by the bonds of the Holy Spirit in this real fraternity, until national and international prejudices are effaced in the reality of this spiritual brotherhood, true progress, prosperity and lasting happiness will not be attained by man."

- `Abdu'l-Baha

I have been having some really weird dreams about Tanzania. Last night I had a dream about returning to Tanzania. I guess the premise was that I'd only returned to the U.S. for a short period of time like I did in August and now I was returning to my service post. For some reason I thought I was supposed to return on January 29th but then someone told me I was supposed to have gone on January 23rd. I completely tore up my room in a horrible panic looking for the ticket and then when I finally found it, the ticket - for AtlanticAir, does that even exist? - said January 23rd. ThenI woke up!

A few nights ago, I dreamed I was elected the President of Tanzania. Apparently there was a national sensation about a mzungu (white person) being elected to the presidency. I was busy going around Dar es Salaam visiting the homes of the Baha'is trying to figure out if I was allowed to be a Baha'i and president at the same time. I remember visiting so many of the friends. Some of them were happy about it, some of them were upset and others were just flat out yelling at me, as if it were my fault I was elected.

Anyway, while I was in Tanzania I tried to keep up with the countries and states of origin of the people who were visiting my blog. It was interesting and encouraging to me to see how many "international" visitors there were because I know first hand how much of a change in attitude toward the world you can have just by exposure to people of different cultures, even if it is through personal thoughts and other sorts of exposure that blogs can provide. You can also draw a lot of conclusions by looking to see which countries visitors came from - most were in the developed world or countries where there is an emphasis on information technology (India, China, etc.). There are huge gaps when it comes to Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, South America and Southeast Asia. An explanation could be that the blog is in English or something to that effect, but still I think it's interesting to see what might be construed as the lack of diversity in the diversity of people who visited!

I've made some little maps here of the countries and U.S. states of origin of a lot of the people who have visited the blog. For those of you who are uncomfortable with the idea of trackers and what not, don't worry! It's not like it tells me who you are. =P It just says what country of U.S. state/Canadian province you're from and the town you're in. That's it!