Pangea 2008

Have been in Niamey for about a week to work with the Pangea music/dance/theater festival that some PCVs have organized in association with a local music school (the only one that I know of actually). Monday was focused on traditional music, Tuesday was focused on blues, jazz, soul and funk, Wednesday was hip-hop, Thursday was theater, and Friday was the closing ceremony and concert. It was fun to hang out while some of our PCVs jammed with the Nigerien musicians. I wish I had more music ability, especially on guitar. Kinda a lame description of events, check out Will's page, he actually has interesting things to say; I just take pictures

Check out the link to my Pangea photo album on Picasa
Or
Facebook (with more pics of friends)

So in the week since my last post we’ve had rain maybe twice. I’ve played football once. I’ve gone to the inspection a handful of times. Nothing super exciting.

Finished “The Corner,” the book following people living in inner-city Baltimore; living the corner life of drug use, abuse, and sales. Good book, a lot of what I studied in College is in there and it makes me wonder if anything has really changed in the ten plus years since the book was written. We certainly don’t talk about it anymore with terrorism and elections and the Iraq war grabbing all the headlines. Though we really, as a country, need to do some real soul searching as to how we want to shape the future of our land. Do we want an institutionally entrenched underclass or are those who have willing to give a little to even the tables with those who have not? If not enough to achieve equality, at least raise themselves up to discredit and disband the economic motivations behind the open air drug markets; the corner.

Jobs. Real rehab programs (which need to include jobs). Improved schooling with support and real post K-12 opportunities, like jobs and continued education. These are the things that we need to be addressing. Why aren’t these things that any of the new presidential candidates talk about? Why isn’t there a national discussion on how to revitalize our urban centers from their post-industrial distress?

I always thought we should employ people from these urban centers to help rebuild and refurbish them, kind of like a New Deal jobs corps.

Though I guess the reality of the situation is that in a post-industrial America is that jobs have divided themselves into two categories: high paid jobs requiring high education and service sector jobs, tending to be low pay and with a low educational demand. To increase the ability of the service sector workers to make a decent living we need to increase wages and provide health care to protect everyone from the knockdown punch of catastrophic illness or injury, or in the case of my last book, drug addiction.

Plenty of time to ponder all this in much more depth, but for now I’d like to have another coffee, a main reason I’m rambling on with this issue.

This week is just about up. It’s been fun to hang in the NY, to eat good food and see my Annasara friends. Today I’m back off toward Gaya, though with a stop in the bush to visit a friend, climb his mesa, and hit some golf balls. Smart kid had a couple of irons sent to him and pays village kids pennies to go chase the balls down and bring them back. Should be a good time. Gonna go grab a bush taxi, catch ya’ll later,

JK