BASE believes it is necessary to coordinate and cooperate with stakeholders, other NGOs, INGOs and government officials. This coordination helps share the practices, experiences and knowledge of each, and it allows for an efficient distribution of best practices. Coordination and networking adds collective voice and power to campaigns. BASE has forged a strong network among NGOs, INGOs, GOs and other stakeholders by invites them to meet, develop common understandings, and undertake joint planning to pressure government bodies to implement policies for child rights and education. This network then regularly monitors program activities, government enforcement, and stakeholders commitments. BASE organizes coordination and networking meetings regularly in order to eliminate child labor as well as to raise the common voice for this mission. BASE employs radio media to broadcast programs that raise awareness about child labor.

From “Child Labor in Nepal: A Brief Overview” by Jim Flood

Quick Facts
•    There are 2 million children working in Nepal
•    50% work without pay as family members or bonded labourers
•    42% of 10 to 14 year olds are working rather than attending school
•    62.7% of the male population and only 34.9% of the female population over 15 are able to read and write
•    60% of the child labourers are girls
•    Girls work longer hours than boys
•    Children comprise 20% of the total workforce (one of the highest proportions in the world)
•    80% of the workforce is employed in agriculture

The main areas of work are:
•    Agriculture – planting and harvesting tobacco, maize, tea and rice
•    Quarries – carrying and sifting stones
•    Brick making – making and carrying bricks
•    Mining – both coal and magnetite
•    Domestic service – often some distance from their homes
•    Construction work – often on dangerous building sites
•    Factories – mainly making carpets
•    Prostitution – many female sex workers are under the age of 14

Harms

Child labor is a huge barrier to education, and it is understandable how basic subsistence takes priority over school attendance. However, lack of education perpetuates the cycle of poverty and therefore is a high hidden long-term cost to the child laborers and their families. There is also a cost to the country, because an educated workforce is essential to support economic growth. Education provides a form of social capital that raises aspirations by making people aware of their situation and by giving them the means to take action to improve it. Economic growth is a key factor in eliminating poverty. If the Nepali economy is to grow, then the government must invest more in education. There is evidence to suggest the quality of education provided is critical to school attendance. Improve the quality of the learning experience, and attendance will improve concomitantly.

Causes

Child labor is a systemic problem, resulting from a number of factors that combine to produce an amplified effect. The main factor is poverty. With 45% of the population living on less than $1 per day (and probably much less in rural areas) and unemployment at 42%7, children are the cheapest form of labor and readily available because of a poor education system. Another main factor is a culture amongst the poor that tolerates child labor, and places little value on the benefits of education.

The Government must also carry some blame for failing to implement the laws and protocols it has signed up to. However, the aid given to Nepal ($320 million in 2004) is tied into agreements to implement liberal economic policies that tend to encourage free trade and discourage regulation. This means that Nepal is unable to regulate imports or exports. It is part of a global market that includes large, fast-developing countries like China and India, who still have access to cheap labor. To survive in a world market, the Nepalese government might have little choice but to ignore child labor, in order to maintain a competitive economy.

Hey there readers,

Here are a couple short video pieces about work that BASE does. Sorry they’re low quality! Slow internet, etc.

Made some great contacts this week with local musicians who okayed the use of their recorded pieces for the eventual film. Exciting!

Warmth and Compassion,
Kan

Because child labor is a burning issue in Nepal, BASE implemented the “Freedom for Child Labor” and “Child Labor Rehabilitation through Child Friendly Village Programs” in order to eliminate Child Labor system in Nepal.

The program aims to reach to children working in private homes, shops, hotels/restaurants, and industrial settings, as well as the children who are at risk, not enrolled in school, and school drop-outs. During the conflict in Nepal, large numbers of children were displaced to cities from their villages for work. Poor economic conditions, lack of awareness among families, misbehavior of stepparents, and irresponsibility of parents towards their children are all contributing causes of child labors.

BASE programming aims to (1) eliminate this hazardous system, (2) make children free from slavery, (3) create friendly environments in their home villages, (4) send each and every children to school, (5) make communities and parents aware and responsible toward their children, and (6) pressure the government to apply existing laws and policies and formulate new laws for the welfare of the children.

BASE programming accomplishes these goals by combining policy influence among other NGOs, INGOs, and the government. They also have a mass-mobilized grass roots volunteer base with which to create social change at the village level. Mobilizers start local level groups to address issues like child labor and convince families to change their views.

Well, I just learned there are a series of required blog posts that I didn’t know about. So here goes!

BASE, the organization I am partnered with, works to empower all marginalized groups within their districts; however, they focus on issues affecting Tharu people. Tharus are one of the indigenous people of Nepal. In 1854 Jung Bahadur, the first Rana prime minister of Nepal, developed the Mulki Ain, a codification of Nepal’s indigenous legal system which divided society into a system of castes. The Tharus were placed at next to the bottom( lowest touchable, above untouchables) of the social hierarchy. Their custody of their customarily held land was taken away, disrupting their community and displacing the people. In the 1950s, World Health Organisation helped the Nepalese government eradicate malaria in the Terai region. This resulted in immigration of people from other areas to claim the fertile land, making many Tharus virtual slaves of the new landowners and developing the kamaiya system of bonding generations of Tharus families to labour. The Kamaiya system was only formally outlawed by the government of Nepal on July 17 of 2000. The implementation of this policy by the government was slow, and BASE played a lead role in freeing ex-Kamaiyas from their owners. While prior to 1983, most Tharu children worked for landlords instead of going to school in order to repay their parents’ loans, today, most of the child labor in the regions I’ve been working in have been Tharu due to the poor economic conditions that the ex-Kamaiyas have experienced coming out of bondage without sufficient livelihood support.

The Work

Well they don’t teach lawyers to lie here as well as in the states. I asked to talk to the auntie/law student/client who the lawyer said picked up Sabita, and the law student randomly showed up this afternoon. I started up the ‘ol camera and was surprised to find my first Nepalese person who did not consent to be shown in the film. Well she said that she would be willing to explain the story to us off camera. She said if it would be shown in Nepal, she did not want to appear on video since she’s a law student and will depend upon her reputation in her career. This reason didn’t do much for my faith in the veracity of her statement.

She went to the village twice. The second time, the lawyer came because he was helping her with some legal matters concerning her land. He said he didn’t. Sabita said he did. The law student also said that the lawyer actually owned two different buildings—one for his family and another for tenants such as herself. She goes on to claim that the lawyer only saw Sabita when he came to access the storage room where he kept books. Both the lawyer and Sabita contradict this. The law student also claimed she spent every night with Sabita. Sabita mentions that the law student auntie stayed at another house whenever the lawyer’s wife and child came to visit… The law student then blamed the hand and foot problem on Sabita buying bad soap which caused an allergic reaction. She named the hospital and doctor they saw—all of which Sabita has no recollection of.

I could hardly keep myself from smiling at the introduction of a third story that did not match the other two. If this lawyer and a law student were to come up with a plausible story to redeem the lawyer’s good name, they probably should have sat down and figured out one story to tell—this seems like something a professional litigator would know something about.

After she left, I finally interviewed Purna-ji, who raided the lawyer’s house to rescue Sabita. I misunderstood yesterday about Sabita’s mother being there apparently and she didn’t show up until a few days later at the BASE office, which both Sabita and the law student confirmed. However, the rest of his interview really made up for loss of contradiction. Apparently, Purna shows up at the door after receiving a tip on the phone from a neighbor who sees this girl kept in one room working all the time. She wasn’t even on the BASE survey of children in Nepalganj. They show up, knock on the door, and Sabita doesn’t open it because she’s scared.

The rescue team finds the lawyer’s number and calls him down there. They ask who she is and the lawyer claims she’s his adopted daughter. When they explain what they’re doing, he’s furious. He says they have no right, that he’ll sue them since she’s his servant and he has a right to her. If you’ll remember, the lawyer told me that he was delighted to see the team and delighted to deliver Sabita to them since they could provide for her better. He offered his legal services to us in case we might need his help in prosecuting child labor offenders.

Purna then revealed that they really used this guy as a warning to other professionals in town and broadcast his name on a radio program about child labor. Since then, he’s been very interested in clearing his name since he depends on clients, which explains why he was willing to talk to me and to send his client/tenant/servant/who-knows-what-else to see me.

This job is pretty sweet.

I’ve also been toying with the idea of setting up a “buy.” That is, pose one of my coworkers as a Nepalganj businessman looking for a young child to work. He’d explain that I’m following him all the time to film his life for a tv show. And then we could see what the process would be for buying a child. Then after the transaction, we’d reveal what we are actually doing, explain that they shouldn’t be selling their kid, and give the kid some school supplies.

Is this ethical? Comments, please.

Musings

While taking a break from translating footage, I began making a bit of small talk with my new translator Sangita. (I somehow lost the translations done that day—nothing like losing a day’s worth of work to exercise that rage restraint muscle.) She asked me about the wedding I’d gone to in America and then followed up by asking when I would marry. I laughed. I always laugh when people ask this question—so presumptive! I told her I didn’t know, that I’d only really romantically loved one person and that we’d already parted ways. She looked confused and asked, “Why?” before saying never mind and mumbling something about it being too personal of a question.

I told her we just had different trajectories, were going to be in different places. Satisfied that I had continued despite her withdrawal, she said, “That’s not a good reason in Nepal. If you’re in love.” Tons and tons of the people I meet out here have significant others somewhere far off getting an education or making more money—a journalist once told me nearly a fifth of the income here is from remittances. Couples can remain apart for long stretches of time. My translator hasn’t seen her boyfriend of three years in almost two. He works in India and is coming back in two weeks. She’s pretty sure they’re getting married. They’ll stay apart while she finishes her degree and then they’ll get married. She’ll either split her time between her family and him, or she’ll move to India.

In a culture still balancing arranged and love marriages, the concept of love has a weight I don’t fully grasp. You meet someone, you fall in love, you spend the rest of your life together. Wait a minute, that’s pretty easy to grasp. It is in fact what all love stories are about. So what happened in America? Why did we lose our patience for love?

I explained that in America it’s different, that among my friends the majority of long-distance relationships don’t work out. As I casually passed these words, I did not expect to struggle so hard for a reason to justify them. The reasons that popped into mind were either vulgar, selfish, small, or some combination. Identities are really strongly tied to profession among the well educated and people get lonely and the… sexual norms are different. We date so many people, and we have more free time that needs… filling. And uhm… yeah…

… You’re probably right, Sangita. Shall we get back to the translations?

The Work

Today I interviewed Sabita’s owner, an attorney in town. I had yet to fully interview the children for their stories because they’ve always been too shy to speak so this was my first chance to hear about what happened to her first hand.

“It’s all a big misunderstanding.” Apparently, a client of his who also rents a room with him has land in Sabita’s family’s village. One time, she encountered Sabita’s mother, felt sorry for her, and offered to take Sabita to give her a better life. She took him back to the house where Sabita helped her out—not the attorney. The attorney had no idea until she showed up in the house. Sabita was enrolled in an education program for child laborers because it was too late to enroll her for school. And when her hands developed the red spots and were bleeding, they took her to a clinic where the doctor said she had an allergic reaction to soap. Later the mother wanted to come and live with them too. The attorney agreed but before she could show up, BASE staff showed up and wanted to talk to him. When they arrived, he said of course they should take her if they can give her a better life. “I fully support the work of BASE, and I’ve been telling everyone in my community they should not bring child laborers into the neighborhood because it is bad.”

Wow, what a huge misunderstanding. After Kushal bought some Fanta for us and we began to chit chat, this guy even then offered to help us with any legal advocacy work we needed.

Well, if law school has taught me anything it’s to always be suspicious of a lawyer. I brought in Sabita and this time she was more forthcoming.

This guy came to the village with the woman. They made an arrangement with her aunt who pretended to be her mother. She was taken to his house where she cleaned his clothes, cooked his food, did his dishes, cleaned his floor. No clinic for her hands. She got yelled at by both of them for any mistakes she made—like not cleaning the dishes well enough (again, Sabita is eight years old). She did this for three months before the mother showed up with BASE.

So how do I know who’s lying? Well Sabita told a pretty detailed story with lots of unnecessary detail—like forgetting the key to this door and having to wait here on a couch, etc. Also, the aunt’s story corroborates Sabita’s about the contracting. And tomorrow I have a feeling the staff will confirm that Sabita’s mother was there. If the attorney lied about two parts of the story, I’m going to go ahead and presume that he made it all up so that he wouldn’t have to look bad in this small town.

If the staff confirm that mom was there, the viewers will get to exercise their compassion for the guy. As for me, it’s not like he interpreted events differently. He knew he would look bad so he lied to me. That means he felt shame, knew it was wrong, and did it anyway.

Musings

The books I read enrich my understanding of life here to a great degree. Having finished almost all of Steinbeck’s East of Eden before losing it at the Kathmandu Airport, I felt addicted and, when I could find it in the local bookstores, I picked up a copy of Grapes of Wrath. Steinbeck’s writing about the American West in the early twentieth century describes the Tarai to a remarkable degree.

When I landed in Nepalganj for the second time, I hailed a rickshaw and began the 30-minute journey to the transit house. As this vehicular human being pedaled without rush or laziness across fields tended by the hand of man, I realized there’s a richness in Steinbeck’s descriptions of turn-of-the-century California that most people I know can no longer access. The intimacy and importance of the well, the annual obsession with rain that hammers out the human calendar of activity, the singular importance of land, the thinness of livestock, the saturating transition from agrarian life to city life. These issues seep into one’s skin here; they’re everywhere, in everything. As a result, there’s a richness of human characters here. Something homogenizing has reached a critical mass back home (at least where I live) hiding characters in unseen corners, but here the stories are abundant and sharply in focus without need of embellishment.

The Oklahoman Dust Bowl resembles the monsoon season afflicted with drought we’re undergoing. Last year farmers had already harvested their crop by now. This year, no one has even planted. Even with my helmet visor down, riding the motorcycle necessitates constantly wiping big mounds of dust from my eyes. Everywhere people ride a bike or a motorbike or a truck, plumes of dust rise in accordance to the size of the object in motion.

When calling to a friend in The Grapes of Wrath, Tom yells, “Casy. Oh, Casy.” Having not seen this “oh” phrase in any films, I can’t even imagine how it would sound. But, surprisingly, this is how folks call each other down here when they’re yellin’ at somebody across the way. The “Oh” is elongated and rises in pitch. Imagine someone calling me and yelling, “Kan-ji, ooooooooooh, Kan-ji!” It’s kind of awesome. I plan to re-introduce this phrase into American parlance.

The preacher in Grapes of Wrath, discussing his decision to quit his profession and wander the earth to learn about religion experientially, mumbles Taoist realizations about the oneness of existence in a trance-like state. Steinbeck published the book in 1939, years before Eastern religion and spirituality would begin to take root in American culture. The man must have been a mystic as well as a genius of a writer.

Riding the motorbike out into the field a few days ago, I got to thinking about what I loved so much about riding the bike. There’s a kind of immediate reality on the motorcycle that doesn’t exist in the jeep. Somehow I knew I was moving in a way that wasn’t quite as real while inside the “cage” last time. (My friend Ben Amel, who I motorcycled from Guatemala to Texas with, told me motorcyclists refer to cars as “cages.”)

In Shop Class as Soulcraft, the other book that’s inside my mosquito net (the equivalent of bed stand), Matthew Crawford, the motorcycle mechanic / philosopher / author, points out that our physical reality is retreating farther and farther away from our immediate perception. After watching a TED movie on a social scientist’s perspective on happiness, I’m happy to hypothesize that this retreating of physical reality to farther distances correlates with the continuing increase of anxiety, depression, and suicide around the world. So what does that mean? It means that in Steinbeck’s novels, the physical world around people—what it looks like, smells like, sounds like, feels like, tastes like—is a direct result of what you or close-by individuals do. You see it done. You understand from whence physical reality cropped up.

In our world, especially in the wealthier countries, there’s a trend to hide this immediacy. Sherman points out that car engines—especially German ones—try to cover the engine with a smooth metal outer shell to hide what’s going on. Decisions nowadays about what things exist, how they’ll look, taste, sound, and feel are decided by invisible conglomerations of decision-making—Frankensteined together from disparate and disconnected pieces of human consciousness. I think that answers partly why I sometimes find myself laughing to myself walking down the dirt road from the office to the internet café. I pass by buffalos and hogs, slip on a cow paddy if I’m not mindful, and I laugh as the sun falls and the clouds turn golden. I feel happy and I can’t put my finger on why. Maybe it has something to do with how much more like Steinbeck’s world this one is than the one I’ve spent most of my time in. The well, the dust, the transparency of devices intended to assist in our endeavors, the honesty.

Inspired by Steinbeck and Crawford, I’ve put aside my vegetarianism for my time in the Tarai (you’re welcome, mom). Going to the butcher is an amazing experience. The smells, the carcasses hung up, the butcher who holds a knife between his toes and pulls the meet across the blade toward him, the flies, the children of butchers who speak English well. The taste in my mouth at the end of the evening is a result of Kalika or Komala combining seasoning in oil and water in a pot with this meat that was sliced by this man’s foot and came from in front of his stall where the rest of its body still hangs. The goat was likely one of the many goats that passes me each day eating the same grass I walk on. How can this possibly compare with going to a grocery store and looking in a glass case at some polygon of flesh?

The taste of food is an epiphany here. For several weeks I’ve eaten the national dish, Dahl Bhat, for every meal. It consists of rice, lentils, and a curried vegetable. I hear from expats living here that they quickly tire of it. A while back I went to the fanciest hotel in town a couple times to eat some Indian food. It tasted good but it didn’t taste nourishing. This is a little hard to explain. I can say only that I realized I love Dal Bhat. Not necessarily the dish, but my experience of it. I love it because I sit down on mats in the kitchen with the children and aunties and, even if I don’t particularly care for the vegetable of the day, it’s a spiritual experience. Eating next to these people I’ve come to care about, smelling the smells, hearing the banter, seeing the smiles, I always feel grounded to life, to being human. The food that my hand brings to my mouth sustains my body but it also travels down deeper and, there, it nourishes the soul.

Howdy Readers,

I’m getting back into the swing of work down here and have decided to split blogs into two sections—the work and musings. The work will let you know what’s been going on with the film and Musings will give you some insight into the little oddities of living in Nepal.

The Work

Today Kushal, Purna, Songeeta, and I set out at 6:30 AM to conduct a follow-up on the three kids we returned—Binti, Rogina, and Sabita. (If you didn’t get a chance, read the prior post about the return mission and Sabita.) After a recent meeting with Dilli, the President of BASE, the staff decided to move forward with post-rescue operations such that children who do not have feasible homes to return to will be kept at the rescue center, enrolled in a local government school, and transferred to the school’s adjoining hostel.

As a result, part of this evaluation trip was to determine whether the kids should stay with the families or return with us. Binti and Rogina are happy with their families and decided to stay. The kids are enjoying their monsoon season holiday for planting (yes, the long summer break still makes sense here) and all the kids were off playing somewhere—Binti caught quite a few fish with bamboo rods. We showed up, checked on their school work, and asked them if they wanted to stay. I was somewhat surprised to find that they both did. I guess I didn’t know what to expect.

As you’ll remember, Sabita’s aunt wanted us to take her back when we returned her. When we arrived back this time, Sabita looked drastically different in a way I can’t quite put my finger on—something was raw about her. Her hair was in disarray and she was far dirtier than Binti or Rogina. We discovered that she had been living with and caring for her elderly grandmother. The aunt did not enroll her in school so Sabita just went to the school and asked the headmaster to be admitted. She was, and she went to school and did her homework. Pretty amazing, right? All this aside, she looks and sounds different. Her interaction with me is cold where before she was one of the warmest.

We ask her if she wants to stay or go. She asks who else is still there and, upon hearing that Sima and Ram Kumar are still around, decides in that moment that she will stay in Nepalganj until she finishes school. I ask her if she understands she probably won’t be able to come home for a long, long time. She says she does. The grandmother begins to cry. She is afraid of being alone. She misses her daughter and now thinks no one will take care of her. Every time I come here, human tragedy is unfolding. I have no idea what to think so I’m glad I have a task. I continue to film and am again numbed with the bizarre experience of watching someone fall apart from behind a camera. We finish interviewing everyone and I film the grandmother holding Sabita’s hand as we walk toward the motorbikes.

When we return to the transit house, the aunties comb over her body and point out problems that I can’t see. After her first shower in a while, she keeps scratching at her head. Ram Kumar and Sima help her scratch. The Auntie’s are asking her about what happened. Everyone is laughing. She is coming back to herself. Sabita is home. More home than anywhere else. I am instantly thankful for this place because, out of all the massive suffering in the world, it saved this one little person’s life from a continuance of tragedy. And that matters.

The film is coming to focus more and more on Sabita’s story as one of my co-workers went to college with her former owner. Expect to see lots of her in a couple months.

Musings

Having come back and feeling more at home, I’ve decided to start making some requests. One, I no longer carry the heavy camera bag on the back of a motorcycle where the full weight sits on one shoulder for several hours. Instead, I ride a motorcycle. Upon leaving the city into the rice paddies at dawn, I realize this is what I should have been doing all along, maybe for my whole life. Doing good work and getting to ride a motorcycle in awe-inspiring openness. Then we rode into a monsoon storm and spent about 6 hours riding over golfball-sized loose rocks. This was probably my least fun motorcycling experience. But it was still okay—especially when I got to push my motorcycle up and down a 2×6 beam onto a longboat ferrying passengers and bikes across a river. I walked on one 2×6 and pushed my motorcycle on the other—bear in mind that my tire is about 3” wide and the motorcycle weighs something like 300 pounds. The boat was a good 3 feet higher than the shore, meaning that the motorcycle could have easily fallen over into a river, probably with me. It’s amazing how quickly one acclimatizes to increased risk. If you had asked me if this was possible before I came to Nepal, I would have laughed. On the boat, I just got in line behind my coworkers and walked the plank with my bike. And then rode up what seemed to be a 40 degree incline of sand. So yeah I went to work today and at no additional cost received what could be billed as an adventure motorcycle journey—except more dangerous. I learned that it is relatively safe to ride a motorcycle about 35 miles an hour on loose stones. Kushal and my new translator Songeeta did fall off and one point after breaking hard ahead of a huge snake. (Sorry mom. Don’t worry thought it was dead.) I also had the sweet, sweet experience of riding between trees in a forest on a bike that was made for paved urban streets.

Independence Day. Another year of America. But this year Barak Obama’s America. This past year of America I read for the first time both Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of The United States and Barak Obama’s Stories from my Father. One made me feel ashamed of my nationalism. The other validated it. It still seems bizarre that meritocracy could work after eight years of W. A President with a broad range of human experiences and a mind sharp enough to process it all with scrutiny and an eye for beauty.

And how to fit rural Nepal into the picture? Sometimes I’m waiting to hear someone ask me what the hell I’m doing here since I don’t speak the language and thus my work requires double labor—myself and the translator.

Volunteer adventurism? Prodigal son attempting to validate extreme vacationing?

In Stories from my Father one of the women Obama works with community organizing in Chicago asks him why he does it since he doesn’t have to and he could be making more money. She says she does it out of religion. Not religious at the time, Obama responds that he doesn’t think their motivations are all that different. One gets the feeling there are two answers. One is just an intuitive sense that he needs to be there, something about the notion of community draws him. Not entirely overlapping is a moral impulse, which his answer hints at.

A moral impulse. The humanitarian endeavor. The international development endeavor. Somewhere between geopolitics and morality, individuals from around the world meet and work together on relieving suffering, improving livelihoods—sometimes with less than impressive outcomes.

So part of me is seeking meaning out here by anchoring to the moral weight of the issues: bonded labor, child abuse on a mass scale—it’s easy to find the moral high ground and look down. Solutions are more complex.

Children suffering. The auntie here tells of all the children arriving in physical and psychological shells. They can’t be close to people, express themselves. They have internalized a submissive self out of necessity. Laxmi, my interpreter, tells me that she used to have a child domestic laborer. She let her go after the child kept making simple requests like whether she could go across the street to the store. She realized the child thought she was in a cage. And the beatings and the neglect of obvious physical harm.

Should I be anything less than morally indignant that people with college degrees would behave in these ways? Is there some moral relativism I should be aware of? There’s certainly a degree of cognitive dissonance in meeting the employers since, to me, they are always cordial and inviting. The former owners of bonded laborers have degrees from American universities (following in the footsteps of our slave-owning forefathers) and they can converse with me in English about the issues of the day, offer me tea and cookies. It’s all very strange, the lack of clarity. They have dehumanized swathes of people to mistreat them, yet to fully attack the perpetrators requires a similar dehumanization—a need to paint their rationalization, their normalcy, with a kind of malice that may exist outside their perception. If I can refrain from giving beggar children food on the streets of Kathmandu, maybe they can see their child laborer’s bloody hands and feet and refrain from intervening. Maybe they don’t feel responsible.

I suppose if I can forgive Thomas Jefferson, I might as well take a more compassionate approach toward the offenders here. I wonder if one day soon this place will have an Obaman equivalent—a person who acts as a lens to look back and say, “Really? How far we’ve come. How proud I am of the present incarnation of a history so ugly.”

Happy Birthday America. Thanks for this past year.

P.S. On a non-Independence Day note, I kept on being waken by mosquito bites last night despite ensuring the mosquito net was tightly pressed under my bed pad. Realizing there must be a perforation and that I would not get a good night’s sleep henceforth without a resolving the problem, I borrowed some insight from the HBO documentary, Hookers at the Point. (If you’ll recall, I’m spending my leisure time watching docs to get ideas for shots.) So I’m going to “double bag” with two mosquito nets. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The Advocacy Project requires a series of short videos to be produced during the fellowship. The first is to document our expectations for the trip.