Perpective

(In respect to the private conversation that I refer to, I have shielded the identity and particulars of the situation that the individual is working through.)

I had a conversation regarding the recent killings of three police officers in Pittsburgh. I was talking with a young friend who has done some pretty hardcore traveling recently. (S)he talked about not being able to muster the same outpouring of sympathy as the rest of the community displayed.

I saw the struggle in him/her. The crime was heinous, but in other parts of the world atrocities of much greater magnitude happen regularly. Are the lives of police and military in Afghanistan or the West Bank any less worthy of our collective sorrow?

I felt a strange sense of guilt and rage when I started to reintegrate into American life after developing world trips. We are privileged here. We don’t even think about our expectations of entitlement for things like clean water, governmental stability and basic human rights.

I realized that something had changed in me when a beloved pet had to be euthanized. I was devoid of emotion, where it would have been in the bounds of normal to be broken up. I called a friend who had served in combat. I said, “Why don’t I feel anything? Why am I not crying?” I was worried that my emotions had somehow died. He reassured me that this was not true, but that I would deal with loss when I had taken care of all of the things that needed done. He talked about the painful gift of perspective that people receive after they have seen poverty, disease and war.

The perspective scared me. It is like looking down into a valley of grief and realizing that I am absolutely powerless to ease the agony. I had shed a layer of ego.

That created the next conflict in me—why care? Why witness?

The answer was as simple as the questions: because it is my nature. In telling stories I find that while the overwhelming problems still plague us, some good does come of it. I found a compassion for people that is worth cultivating. It is not pity because pity erroneously usurps part of the experience that the other person is going through. I witness the other person’s humanity. I think that it is important to express kindness if it is welcome. The other part is to redirect judgment into something positive. What is the real reason that people act as they do?

I didn’t have an assignment to photograph the memorial service for the fallen police officers. I’ve learned to listen to my inner voice that says, “Do this. It is the right thing.”
So I went down to the City/County Building and photographed the memorial service. You can see it here at http://www.rosensteel.com/Tribute/
I knew that I could carry the burden of witnessing with compassion and sensitivity. I knew that I could do it without exploiting people deep in grief. That was the gift that I could offer.

I was curious, too, about the whole ritual. I learned why we, as a community, felt obliged to mourn so greatly. Most of us didn’t know the officers, but we knew what they represented. They were our symbol for protection, for the order of things. That symbol had been compromised by extraordinary, irreparable violence. The illusion of safety had been shattered.

The community responded with an overwhelming, powerful display. Thousands of officers, some from as far away as Canada paid their respects. The procession of police cars to the funeral lasted hours. There was little doubt that many would have laid down their lives to have stopped the events of that terrible day. In the rite of funeral, we sought to heal the insanity with and exceptional exercise of order; public acknowledgement of the lethal risk that lurks despite our best efforts to thwart it and the valor of those who would face that evil despite the price. The collective presence was the only meaningful gift that anyone could give.

It wasn’t about how many people died. It won’t keep a bomb from ripping through a market crowd in Pakistan or solve the poverty of the Kenyan ghettos. It was about being human despite history that each of us owns.

My friend had chosen not to experience the memorials. I saw the same churning emotion in him/her that I go through after a tough trip. (S)he’s got to find his/her own resolution to walking between the developed and emerging countries. The only thing that I could say when (s)he looked at me for a response was,” I understand.”

The Awassa Youth Campus

I’d gone on other developing-world trips with Ben Sota before. He teaches circus skills in youth organizations that have circus programs. It sounds odd for Americans, but street performers are not uncommon. Because many aspects of circus rely on communicating through gesture, it fits in places where many languages coexist.

The Awassa Youth Campus which runs a circus, is a free-form self-described “open door” courtyard where kids from 5 or 6 years through young adulthood go. Spontaneous jam sessions break out. Teenagers practice acrobatics with ferocious intensity while other kids hypnotically concentrate on the juggling pins that fly through the air. Four tiny boys watch intently. These little ones are homeless. The campus welcomes all kids—homeless, working class, middle class. It doesn’t matter. There are only a few organized classes: Aikido, English, and circus practice. One young man paints in an open air studio. Others play foosball. There is an air of randomness that fits with the laid back rythem of the town. John Mckay keeps track of the kids, trying to fuel the sparks of creativity and interest that happen spontaneously with the kids.

Ben’s job was not so layed-back. He had to act as artistic director for a show that was to go on tour in the Omo Valley in just one week. A second circus, Fekat Circus, from Addis had come down to join the tour. He cobbled together the existing acts of the two circuses around a loose storyline about three little boys who discover a world of circus underneath the trappings of everyday life. Check out the slideshow >>

We went to the Omo Valley—35 people stuffed in a 24-person bus for 5 to 8 hours a day mostly on dirt roads. The landscape changed to a more arid savannah. We saw fields of corn that had received too little rain too late brown-edged leaves on scrawny stalks hopelessly finishing the growing season with the only the anticipation of a woefully lean harvest. It was the beginning of a green famine. Most people looked relatively good, but the mood was angry and jealous of anyone who had the money to ride into their town on a bus.

It was obvious that for every look, for every plea for money, for every brown field, there was a deeper, incredibly complicated tangle of failure that was so much a part of everyday life that people had adapted to it. Loss of the tribal seclusion, the spread of AIDS and malaria, conflict escalated by cheap, plentiful and deadly weapons, and misplaced foreign aid were just the easy factors to point to.

I felt frustrated. I felt humbled by my own self-righteous ideas that I might be able to help right something in a tsunami of wrong. I stayed focused on my work, videotaping and photographing everything I can find. The trip is exhausting, bouncing in an overcrouded bus along unpaved roads for hours. We can only travel by daylight because the risk of running off the unlit mountain roads is too great as is the threat of bandits. When we would reach the day’s destination, the troupe sets up for a show at a market-o (outdoor weekly market) or a football (soccer) field, blares the bus’ loudspeaker to draw a crowd, does the show and then moves on until late afternoon when we would find cheap hotels to stay in. (I opted for the relatively posh rooms at $5 a night.) At one hotel I pitch my tent on my bed and keep my gear locked down because there were just too many cockroaches in the room.

I have had a pretty easy trip in comparison with the way that most people in the country travel, still, I feel a resentment when I see the Landrovers full of rich adventure tourists in Jinka. I feel it, so I can’t imagine how many times it amplifies in the minds and hearts of people who do not have enough to eat. White means “extravagantly rich” there. I can’t hang a disclaimer on my skin. And I can’t even imagine the absurdity of translating, “but really—I don’t have money, not money like THEM.” So I just don’t. I understand better why there are so many warnings about banditry. All those CNN clips about class warfare take on a new dimension. But to only tell the violence of the story is not fair.

Anne Frank moment: “Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.”

Africa

Africa--my trip was powerful. I came home without words for it.  I mean, I saw kids in open sewers, horrible disparity between my possessions and those of the people who I encountered, unrealistic expectations, attitudes and assumptions based on the color of my skin, unexpected kindness and generosity, and the sweet human desire to reach the person who is the "other."

I traveled from the US to Dubai, and then to Addis Ababba, Ethiopia.  I met up with Ben Sota from the Zany Umbrella Circus (I was in Africa to document his adventures.)  The two of us along with John Mckay from the Awassa Youth Campus stuffed ourselves and our gear into a mini van with a bunch of random people and headed on the bumpy, but paved, road to Awassa.  We left amidst a downpour, passing hundreds of homeless people huddled under eaves and underpasses. It was sadly familiar, except that the number of people living without a roof was exponentially greater than I see in the States.  

Outside the city limits things changed dramatically.  Ethiopia is still rural-- villages, farmland, open space. People don’t have much, but the quality of life does not ring with the same desperation as it does in the streets of Addis. 

On the 250 km ride I hung my head out the window, cranked up my shutter speed and shot.  I had come during the two months of the rainy season that turns the land to a lush green guarded by endless mountains.  I saw what the rain, cattle, increasing population and farming was doing to the land in the bare tree roots clinging to hillsides.  Erosion is washing away livelihoods and creating huge environmental problems.

We got to Awassa and I dropped my things at the Central Hotel ($10/night).  Hours turned to minutes that day –it seemed like I had just put down my bag and some one said “LET’S DANCE.” I squeezed into a three-wheeled motorcycle taxi with a bunch of European kids who were volunteering at an orphanage’s summer camp. We ended up at the local disco “The Inferno.”  In Ethiopia if you want to make friends, DANCE!