Tuesday, May 10, 2005

The Right Thing To Do

A couple of nights ago, I bumped into Hans on msn messenger. He was drunk. There was a short time we used to get on-line together and get pissed drunk and re-live the old days when we used to do the same on his balcony at his Beirut appartement. We've known each other for a long time, somewhat by coincidence, we met in Baghdad International School. And we bumped into each other in Lebanon where we both stayed for 5 or so years.

He's been studying 3rd developement in the UK for the past several years. So when I started telling him about my farm in Al-Shamiya and how much of a smelly place it is he got rather excited, realising the potential good that could be done in the community there. So I posed him the question of how do I convince some of the people to make their kids attend school. He certainly enlightened me on how to go about the subject. The only ideas I was able to come up with so far was to find some way to force them to do so. Hans explained to me that I've got to understand why they think school is of no use. Is it because they don't have an example of somebody succeeding through education for example. He even provided me with ways to go about it.

Hans emphasized that what I should be doing is satisfying the wants of the people as opposed to imposing my own opinion of what's best for them.

It's such a shame that I didn't save the conversation, because I can't remember half of what he said, he wasn't that much sense either because he was so drunk and tired hehe. It's a shame I have zero interest in the place and rarely go there. But my dad wants me to get involved in it. I don't know how it's all going to work out.

A day earlier I had downloaded Keyhole and got a free 7 day trial. The bastards had mis-spelt Al-Shamiya. They had spelt it Al-Samiya. It's in between Najaf and Al-Diwaniya btw (something I didn't really know until then).

Yesterday I finally got my dad's car back! First thing I did: buy some booze. I'm drinking much slower than I expected which is a good thing. I'm pretty happy about that. It doesn't seem I'm going to enjoy getting drunk though. I wish I could get drunk but I just seem to be too tolerant.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Shaggy,

Maybe you could hire a local teacher and set up a school-room at the farm. Perhaps you could pay the children a little bit to go to school. Make a big deal of it being their "job" and they would have a little money to give their parents.

I get the feeling you might actually enjoy learning how to run the farm. Being there during the summer sounds a lot more pleasant than being in the city with its iffy electricity...

Take care,
Tilli (Mojave Desert)