Consumption and War in Congo Well, having introduced labels into this blog, I've realised that I've rambled on and on about how we are going with this challenge on a personal level but haven't really gone into any real details about the information I have come across that brought this about. So I'm hoping over the next few weeks to slowly compile them. With consumption being so central to our culture, we just focus so much on our wants and "needs" but don't think of the true cost to our greed.
Here is an article by Johann Hari, journalist working for The Independent (a British paper): " A journey into the most savage war in the world" An excerpt from the article: This war was launched by nations that sensed rightly that our desire for coltan and diamonds and gold far outweighed our concern for the lives of black people. They knew that we would keep on buying, long after the UN had told us time and again that people were dying to provide our mobiles and games consoles and a girl s best friend. Today, we still buy, and the British government along with the rest of the democratic world obstructs any attempt to introduce legally enforceable regulations to stop corporations trading in Congolese blood.
They ignore the UN s warnings that without the wealth generated by the illegal exploitation of natural resources arms cannot be bought, hence the conflict cannot be perpetuated and insist that voluntary regulations and asking corporations to be nice to Africans is the most effective route. Conrad warned that the conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. So we have chosen not to see.
It is only on my last day in Kinshasa, walking among the burned-out shells of buildings, that I realise what Congo reminds me of. In the movies from my 1980s childhood imagining what the world would be like after a nuclear winter, people were left to wander across a burned landscape, scavenging for the bare necessities of life. Water was contaminated.
Food was sparse. Death was everywhere and inexplicable. Children suffered from brain damage en masse because of the malnutrition.
Order was a memory, and the men with the biggest AK-47s ruled and raped. This is Congo, 2006. In Bukavu, a 29-year-old human rights campaigner called Bertrand Bisimwa summarised his country s situation for me with cruel concision.
Since the nineteenth century, when the world looks at Congo it sees a pile of riches with some black people inconveniently sitting on top of them. They eradicate the Congolese people so they can possess the mines and resources. They destroy us because we are an inconvenience.
As he speaks, I picture the raped women with bullets burying through their intestines and try to weigh them against the piles of blood-soaked electronic goods sitting beneath my Christmas tree with their little chunks of Congolese metal whirring inside. Bertrand smiles and says, Tell me who are the savages? Us, or you?
Taking it to a personal level, my own contribution to the deaths of men, women and children and the rapes and mutilation of the vulnerable are: - 4 x mobile phones (my own only, I'm not even counting my husband's) - 5 x computers and laptops - 2 x DVD players - 1 x portable DVD player - 1 x hand-held GBS and 1 x mounted GBS So in light of the cost, are any of my above items really a "need"? at 4:30 PM So what do we do for Birthdays??
Well, I've posted before about what we did for Christmas and essentially I have said that I ended up just buying presents from Op Shops and baked cakes and biscuits for hampers for other people. What we do for birthdays is actually quite different though and has been something in place for two years now. We don't buy pressies at all.
It all started when I read this article, "Presents - Breaking the Cycle" at Natural Parenting. For those who don't subscribe, the general gist of the article was that this mum found that the stress of buying presents slowly became more damaging to family unity rather than building it. Children would rip open presents only to discard it 5 mins later and it then became just another toy.
I could immediately relate to what she was saying from my own childhood. I remember just wanting so much and then only a few minutes later no longer tossing it aside in order to start the nagging for the next present. I also realised that the special presents I do have (all two of them) were pressies that would have probably been given to me anyway - regardless if it was my birthday or not.
for what they represented Now at over 30 years old, I also can not remember who gave me what at each of my birthdays (save for the special items I've talked about before) - and I'm not just talking childhood here, I'm also talking about my adulthood. What I do remember though are the events , the times when someone went out of their way to think of me and the times when they touched my heart. And with the exemption of my husband presenting me with my engagement ring - NONE of those events are related to the presents I was given.
So yeah, now we don't do presents. Instead what we do is that we try to make that day as special as possible for the birthday person. On birthdays, we give the best thing we could possibly give.
Our undivided attention and unecumbered love to the birthday person. My daughter is *still* talking about her 3rd birthday - when we went to Questacon and I organised a special tour with staff members just for us. For the whole day, my husband and I played with her and her special friends and put her wants above everyone.
She is also still telling people what she did for her 4th birthday - when again, my husband (who had to take the day off from work) and I took her to see Hi-5 and I organised for the Hi-5 group to wave specifically to her her. I also did make her a pressie - it was a little book of her being 4 years old and I placed pictures of her as a baby and then as "kid" (her term). For my own birthdays, my husband has taken me out to a wonderful dinner and (better yet) engaged in conversation that he knew would interest me - rather than just talking of work and day to day stuff.
Anyway, its working for us and I hope that we will build up a storage of wonderful birthday memories for all of us.
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