The International Women’s Day in Burkina Faso

Spending the 8th of March in Burkina Faso has been a joyful experience. We failed to find any particular event or celebration, but merely walking in the streets of Bobo Diulasso sufficed. Men, women and children have gotten special outfits tailored for this day. There is one particular fabric designed that everyone uses for their dresses and shirts that are sown in a range of variations. The fabric has a colorful pattern and printed logos reading:

«Journee Internationale de la Femme 08 Mars 2012 BURKINAFASO – Donner la vie sans perir» International Women’s Day March 8, 2012 Burkina Faso – Giving birth without dying

The logo implying that birth mortality is this years focus

After not finding any official event going on, we spent the day trying to take sneak photos of people wearing this costume. It wasn‘t an easy task as you don’t want to be too obvious, but we finally caught this favorite

8th of March dress, high heels and hijab

Happy Women’s day to all!

Hackney – Where ideas are born and bicycles are (almost) stolen (by knife)

As our dear readers might know, some of us were privileged to meet up in London last weekend. When Anandita, and her (very sympathetic) boyfriend Zach were planning to go traveling in Wales with her parents, nothing felt more natural for me and my (very handsome) boyfriend than to catch a cheap flight to the UK, and for all of us to merge in the capital!

And what a weekend it has been. We of course did the good old traditional sightseeing: The British museum with all the stolen goods of the empire, Tate Modern with it’s progressive paintings and installations, Brick Lane with its lovely curry, shopping in Camden Town/Market and a stroll along the south bank of the Thames with all the sights that has to offer. Anandita, Zach and Juliane also went to a lecture with Arundhati Roy (!) and “some random Marxists”, where the latter apparently weren’t too impressive. The visiting boyfriends (Chris and Zach) are dedicated Clash fans and made sure we extended to some untraditional sightseeing as well. We went far down south to the (in)famous Brixton. We were disappointed to see such few guns but the number of squeaking ambulances were at least far above average.

Brixton

The main excitement of the trip was of course to see each other’s long missed faces and to exchange recent experiences, old memories and eternal ideas. One of the social highlights was the day when Sofie had arranged the MUWCI (and friends) summer shindigs in London fields (a huge park close to Ant and Sofie’s flat). Here we met more MUWCI people than I had ever dreamed of.

Some of the old friends we met during the stay

Bezzerwizzer in the park. Anandita carry these photos in her wallet.

After enjoying countless beers and conversations in the sun we slowly returned to the flat where more beers were in order, not to mention a delicious meal served by Anthony. The board game Articulate! was also a big hit. As the hours were getting late, people came and went but the core remained.

Acticulate in Anthony and Sofie’s living room.

Eternal ideas. Around midnight the same night Anthony’s (very charming) architect friends came by, and somehow the whole atmosphere became very philosophical. Perhaps not so strange, since Anandita currently is doing her PhD in philosophy at Boston University. Also given our philosophical background from the IB, it was granted for it to become a subject of conversation eventually. At some point Sofie came back into the room, after being absent for a while, when she suddenly became very worried about her architect friends’ well being (read: them being bored). The reason was that Anandita and I were rambling about Hannah Arendt’s (or originally Aristotle’s) distinctions between labor, work and action and the Human condition in general. Though, as soon as Sofie expressed her apprehension one of the architects immediately dispelled it. He engaged in the conversation starting to throw out ethical dilemmas for every one of us to take a stand. In regard to this we ended up hypothetically killing a man on a railroad track to save ten (or two hundred) people, in addition to killing a man in a coma for some other alternative purpose.

The discussion about the common versus the elite was the most intriguing though. The starting point for this debate was a claim that

“the idea of people sitting in their offices doing philosophy is useless or irrelevant, unless their ideas are brought to the masses”.

The extreme example of this would be some French philosophers like the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida etc. Anandita presented a very nuanced and well-grounded argument against the above claim based mainly on Hegel and partly on Hannah Arendt (and her own viewpoint of course). The poor thing was constantly interrupted by Sofie and myself who had countless (ir)relevant insights and digressions. We/I must have been pretty annoying because, due to the large quantities of alcohol that had been consumed, I kept forgetting the main argument and demanded she’d explain the whole thing again and again. Luckily I finally decided to write down the The Main Ideal Argument which goes as follows:

“Forget about Hegel (though it’s all Hegelian)*. When intellectuals dump things down so that everyone can understand them, then all they do is to give the masses a glimpse of the truth, or a certain form of the truth that isn’t the ultimate truth.”

Be aware that this is the ideal argument. The practical application of this could be:

“Given that we need work and labor for the survival of society, it’s important that those who do work and labor are able to at least get a glimpse of the truth, or a certain form of the truth, since they don’t have the time to be philosophers”.

Examples of these glimpses of truth could be the concepts of freedom and democracy. The conclusion of the discourse was, that the path to reach the ultimate state of enlightenment must be the employment of Robots.

Some of the notes from the discussion. Notice the washing machine in the robot's stomach

At this point I stopped taking notes. The good news is that in the future we wont have to live in the shadow of the ultimate truth – because Anandita is now becoming an official contributor to the the world and other issues! So let me pose a question for a potential follow up post to this philosophical debate: Wouldn’t this lead to a complete Marxist alienation (all work and labor conducted by robots)? And if so, is that a problem?

And last: During our stay Anthony caught a rude thief at the outside entrance of their house. The thief was about to steal Ant’s bike, when Ant rhetorically asked the guy what he was doing? The thief replied that he had a knife. Being the man of steel that he is, Ant asked him to show his pockets and surely a knife was revealed. “Fuck off” was Ant’s reaction, and fuck off the thief did – with the parting promise: “I’ll be back!”

I’m sure I’m speaking for everyone when I say that I share the thief’s sentiments (about coming back to Hackney Baths). Hopefully Shane will be with us next time.

*Anandita had first spent a lot of time explaining Hegel – unfortunately casting pearls before swine.

Wazirpura

Snapshot from Wazirpura, Agra, where I am doing my design project this year (for three more days!) Amazing colours!

Travel Guides for the Lost!

Once upon a time, Sofie and I dreamed of creating our own guide to India. We wrote it on notebook paper in Varanasi, beginning, most logically, with Paud.
Now, as I have told Else on Skype today, a friend of my dear friend Emily is going to spend next year in Pune! So I have excitedly scribbled this out for her:

pune - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: pune

It's a little unclear, because such is my spatial awareness and memory, but it was so fun and I thought maybe it would be fun for you guys to see it! Additions? Corrections?

The World in the Most Obvious Pictures

The other night, Ola & his friend Gautam were passing through New York on their way to Spring Break in Brazil (bitches). Over some over-priced hookah, we got to talking about national stereotypes, and I mentioned the photo to the right that Else had posted on Facebook that was just stereotypical Norway, in my mind. I described it and Ola said, "Yeah, that would be like the very first photo if you looked up 'Norway' on Google Images." Thus the idea for this blog-post was born (actually it was Gautam's, originally). So here are the first pictures, excluding maps and flags, that you find when you type in the names of the following countries.

Norway: The real one.

Uzbekistan: My friend Adam and I gave each other assignments over winter break to each research a country; he was supposed to learn about Switzerland and I Uzbekistan. We didn't really follow through, at least I didn't, so now I am -- visually! Now this is random.
Our Beloved Mother India: Gee, this one's a shocker.
Mali: The Mosque of Mud.
Yemen: Wow that blond woman is really a good Samaritan.
Ecuador: Now that I'm not so exhausted, I see that it really is a stunningly beautiful country.
Brazil: In honor of our intrepid friends. Oh man they are going to have an awesome time -- this comes up even before the map or flag!Samoa: There's a place in Humboldt County (Northern California) called Samoa, because so many Samoans live there, or they used to anyway. They have a cookhouse for lumberjacks, and I ate breakfast there once, even though I'm actually not a lumberjack. Not to be confused with this Samoa, the real Samoa.
Lichtenstein: Poor little guy. I actually had to search "Lichtenstein country" because when you type in Lichtenstein, all that comes up is the art of Roy Lichtenstien (which is, after all, amazing in its own right).
U.S.A.: Last but not least, the land of the free and the home of the brave. You have to wade through a number of flags to get to this one, but OMG. Thanks for representing me to the internets, lady!

**Amendment!!!**
Switzerland: Looks like Adam did his research too!

Dance in the street

So, what has been up beloved ones, in the big apple and in rock city? I'll start this post by trying to create a little atmophere discription of the Paris of the north. Key words are darkness, snow, northern lights and Christmas decorations. That's for the visual description. This Saturday we had a little party, (a three-people-party, so can hardly be called a party but anyway) and then we went to town to get some drinks and see some peeps. I hadn't been out for a long time because of my exams, so it was really nice. And the nice thing about Tromsø is that it's such a small town, but still kind of big, and all the pubs and bars are concentrated in one small area, pretty much. This Saturday the street was full of people everywhere and there were street musicians with accordions and guitars and everybody were dancing around in the street! That was my perception anyway, but I was slightly drunk. But people were dancing, that's for sure, and it is just so nice; darkness, snow and the warmth of people. But now it's time to travel down south again. This Saturday I'm flying to Oslo, but before I go home to Mandal I'm going to visit Sigrid and Christopher in their homes. And then comes family time and Sofie time around new years eve.

Exams aren't over yet unfortunately. This week I am writing my home exam in philosophy which is far far beyond me. So that is what I should be doing this very moment, but in stead I'm writing a rather lousy blog post which doesn't really evolve around important issues of the world. But one ting I can tell you: if you don't have one already, get yourself this device (which I don't know the name of in English) to steam milk with! It increases your life quality to have steamed milk in your coffee (especially if it is espresso coffee). But I think my coffee consumption, which has been rather extensive lately, is giving me yellow teeth.

And it you haven't guessed already – the picture is of the transsibirian railway which I definitely think we should hop on and go to India.

"Eating Breakfast on the Moon"

Lately I have been quite amused by my own dreams. A few nights ago I dreamt that I was in India, but with no permission to be there, so I was constantly hiding and running form the government.  

I recently made a new acquaintance with whom I had a conversation about dreams - in general. He recommended that I wrote down my dreams, since this after a while would make me able to consciously design my own dreams and thus being able to do really funky stuff; like flying. He had personally acquired this ability after keeping a dream journal for some time. The dream had to written down the moment you woke up. Not after for example eating breakfast, because then you have forgotten so much of what you dreamt that it no longer would be any use.

This morning I woke up quite puzzled by the dream I had just dreamt. I was not in the mood of getting out of bed, so I decided to write down my dream in my diary. I created a new section in my diary labelled: Dream diary. Here follows a short summary.

In my dream it was possible to visit the moon. Sigrid and I decided to go there. We packed food and clothes and flew up to the moon in a funeral casket. When we reached there we were met by Ella and one other girl. We exchanged a few words. There was no gravity on the moon, which made me scared of disappearing into the universe. Sigrid told me that the moon existed long before anything else: all the stars, the earth and the sun. On the moon there was a digital device which informed us of how far away form the earth we were. The moon (or the earth) seemed to move around fast because this number changed in the speed of the light, up and down. We ate the food we had brought with us, and then we travelled back down to earth. To get down again one person had to sit in front in the casket and put forth her arms, just like when you're diving. If you wanted to go up again, you had to stretch your arms towards the moon. I sat in front. It was fun so I kept doing this for a while, going up and down, up and down.

Back down on earth we met a big group of people, amongst them many MUWCI people, who were all talking excitedly about this new phenomenon of going to the moon. I was especially happy because I was going to make my new blog-post be about this (I thought this in the dream). I was going to call it: " Eating Breakfast on the Moon". I felt so content, because this was really going to be about the world AND OTHER ISSUES. I met Neta among all these people, but he didn't find the possibility of visiting the moon very intriguing.

Later in the dream I was required to do two assessments for some sort of educational institution; one was written and the other was practical. For the written one I handed in my blog: "Eating breakfast on the moon". The practical one was about how I handled life on a ship. I spent some days on a ship, where there was an examiner who observed the behaviour of me and the rest of the group that was also there. A few days later, when the ship had gone back to shore and the test was over, Sofie and I went to check our scores which had been put up on a board. Sofie had scored '6' in both assessments (which was out of the IB 1-7 scale), while I got an 'F' (A-F scale) in both the written and the practical! I was devastated. The examiner on the boat told me that I hadn't put the hood on my safety vest on properly and that he didn't approve of the soup I had had been drinking every day during the trip.  

My ambition is to keep up the dream log, and if the theory works, maybe I'll be able to conduct miracles in the end.

this blog seems to be all about norway

and here comes another post on the topic.

this weekend, anthony and i went to norway. we flew from "glasgow" (prestwick) to "oslo" (sandefjord) - that's right, ryanair.
so we spent quite some time on buses/trains to and from airports. then we walked around oslo, friday was a beautiful day. we had dinner with mum and then got on the night bus to aalesund (10 hours). in the middle of the night the bus stops in "mors kro" ("mother's inn"), in the middle of nowhere, and "mother" provides us with waffles and hot chocolate and various norwegian specialities such as "vestlandslefse". we opted for pizza though.
anthony was amazed that we can pay by credit card on the bus.
then we came to aalesund, and basically we spent the whole of saturday and sunday visiting people and having food and wine and beer and more food and more beer. saturday night was my dad's 50th birthday celebration, so we went by bus down to the beach where we made hot dogs on a bonfire (another very norwegian experience for anthony). then we got back on the bus and went to a mountain, took the ski lift up, and had a big party at the top. the party involved wellie boot throwing, nail hammering, music quizzing, drinking, eating and even a visit from elvis in the late hours.
very strange, yes.
the best part was taking the lift down in the middle of the night, together with a bunch of drunken 50 year olds. the wind was strong and we bumped into bushes/trees on the way, but it was such a beautiful night and we could see all the way out to aalesund town and all the lights were nice and bright.

we took the night bus back on sunday night, so it was quite a travel-intense weekend, but also a lot of fun.

norway is rather weird.

how do your parents celebrate their birthdays?

Summary (Montreal! Americans!)

Now this was a lovely weekend: I went to Montreal! Oh it's such a beautiful place; I try on cities like I try on clothing, and Montreal is my new favorite dress. I visited Sukanya, & Srishti & Alissa, and my cousin Jamie, and the colors were really bright, essentially. And the feeling of being in motion again (& my first overnight bus ride on American Soil) was pretty fucking lovely, too.

I won't narrate too much, but here's what happened after all the fun was over and I was sleeping my way south:
Coming back over the border was hilarious: an overweight, pink-faced, crabby female customs officer got on the bus and jarred me from my sleep with her squeaky & repulsive voice. "TAKE ALL OF YOUR BELONGINGS WITH YOU. LEAVE THEM ON THE KERB OUTSIDE AND PROCEED DIRECTLY THROUGH THE GLASS DOORS. THERE IS NO RESTROOM INSIDE; DO NOT ASK." I briefly entertained the notion that it could have been an ironic joke, but then I looked at all the French Canadians giving each other knowing looks, and I realized, no, it is not an ironic joke. It's just America at its best.

Question:
Which city is your favorite dress? Or pair of sunglasses? Etc?

Questions of Travel

i decided to post my reply to shane's school assignment here.
i also decided to focus on the Questions of Travel

i think this is what it all comes down to, questions. yes, i think that if we had stayed at home, we would have asked questions, and yes, we might have found answers to them. the difference, i think, is the kind of questions we ask.

i find this really hard, i have deleted and re-written this paragraph about four times now.
in essence i think that shane, you are right, we are better off with the experience. even though when it comes to questions, i still tend to wonder "when will i have enough money to buy those nice winter boots?" rather than "when will the genocide in sudan stop?"
i think i am, in a way, defending my worries about silly mundane things by thinking that, well at least now i am educated enough to think of the genocide in sudan once in a while. like, now at least i kind of know what it is. there may be many better examples of this, and i do still feel rather uneducated.

i have so many things to say and such bad organisation of my thoughts!!!
i think i will continue in bullet point form

1. the other day i was at a dinner party and i was talking to a middle aged american woman who was "very worried" about the fact that american high school students don't even have to study world history. i agree, that is rather worrying, but you don't have to study history in high school in norway either, or britain for that matter (i think), and (sorry, american kids, i'm sure there are many exceptions to this one) europeans still seem to generally be more aware of what's been going down around the world in the past. so maybe education is not the problem? maybe it's the media, maybe not, maybe it's the conversations you have with your friends, maybe it is what is talked about around the dinner table.
i remember going to ola's house, sitting around the dinner table talking about politics and history and whatever (this was pre-muwci) and i remember thinking that "this is how kids learn. why isn't my dinner table like this?" ok i realize i am digressing here, but i guess my point is that you learn so much from the people around you and that maybe, yes, you learn stuff in school, but unless you learn to think critically (as you might learn from discussions around the dinner table, maybe even over a beer in paud) that knowledge is worth nothing.

2. at this afore mentioned dinner party, i disagreed with most of what the american lady was saying, but i was really appreciating the conversation! (it helped that there was a very intelligent guy from bangladesh there, and one from germany and one from england and an american girl) i think this is the essence; we were from all over the world and so we had so many things to learn from each other, and so many things to tell. i think this is how we learned in muwci.

3. a guy just walked by, outside the internet cafe window in glasgow, wearing a "same same but different" shirt. i wonder if he went to india, and i wonder is he asked many questions while he was there, and i wonder if he asks different questions now than he did before. (maybe he went to thailand or morrocco for that matter)

4 this is the most incoherent thing i have written in a long time. shane, i think it's good that you're the one taking a writing class.

5. i am listening to sufjan stevens, he is talking about running out of springfield, maybe he wants to go out and learn about stuff so he can ask new questions.

hmm i think that when you're in a place for too long, you kind of run out of questions to ask and things to talk to people about, so you start talking about the new, modern roof of the local shell-station and forget that there's a world out there. it's dangerous, and i feel myself falling into that trap! i'm forgetting to ask questions and i forget to remember what i've learned, and when the news come on, i switch to "america's next top model".

where will this end.
thank you girls for making me think at least a little bit.

An Angel

This is the story about my subway ride home on Friday night. The first part is a funny anecdote and the second part is the meat of the story:

So I wandered/tottered, ecstatic, into the subway near where my friend Raia lives; it was about three in the morning and I have to confess to some problems with my Metrocard. But eventually I made it through the revolving gates (everything in fucking New York City REVOLVES), and as I walked in, three very disgruntled Frenchmen walked out: 'Well,' they said, 'you can wait but ze train eez not goeeng to come.' They obviously thought that America sucked. They were right in many ways, but wrong in a very crucial one, because five minutes later, the train came! & I got on.

Somewhere in the seventies, I believe, a tall thin man with red-rimmed eyes, long white pants, and a shimmery pink shirt got on, carrying a pair of hula hoops. I was getting pretty into the Side Brok I was listening to at the moment, so I didn't ask what the hula hoops were for, I just looked at him: he had a sympathetic face. He pointed to where a watch would be so I showed him with my fingers 3 0 4. And then I thought, I can listen to Side Brok later, so I asked: 'What are the hula hoops for?'

The hula hoops? he said, They are for dancing. This is how I make a living. Well, one quarter of a living. You can only make one quarter of a living dancing with hula hoops, but it is worth it if dancing with hula hoops is what you love. And he explained to me how he makes the other 3/4 of his living; I have since forgotten.

This was an introduction to a fifteen minute motivational speech on the importance of following your dreams and doing what you love. Security, he told me, is overrated. It is important, you need to pay the bills, you should not get into too much debt, but sometimes it is worth it to get into a little bit of debt if it means that you are more alive as a person. If you follow your dreams, he told me, the most likely outcome is that you will be disappointed. Probably, your dreams will not come true. But there will be the tiniest sliver of a chance they might, and, he said, in his opinion it is better that there be a tiny sliver of a chance that they might come true than certainty that they won't. Because although at the end of the day you will probably go to bed in the same bed you would have had you walked the safe line, at least you will be able to sleep peacefully, not wondering what if? What if? So, he said, follow your dreams. Do crazy things. Probably, it won't work out, but maybe it will. And he got off at 14th Street and he was gone.

Happy I danced home in the rain. The end.

cycling

dear friends, thank you for helping reviving the blog!
we are bringing back the muwci conversation, in internet format! it is indeed about time for some creative and critical thinking and writing.
i am not going to make this sentimental, though i do agree, i miss muwci.

my life is quite A4 at the moment, working 9-5 for service and devotion, going to the pub in the evenings.
i work in the other end of the city, so i get a nice long bike ride in the mornings. biking is so good! i like looking at all the suit-clad gentlemen and the fat, pale glasgow gals in their tracksuits, golden earrings and high ponytails, often pushing a pram around, alternatively a man, in a similar tracksuit, just black instead of white, wearing silver jewellery instead of gold. arguing, screaming "aye man, what shait!". glasgow is quite funny. there is so much comedy on the streets! the other day i overheard a conversation between three old men outside a pub, at about 5 in the afternoon. one of them was quite angry about something, and chatted with the other man and he said; what the fuck is going on here?" and the third guy said; what do i know, i'm jus' 'avin me fag!
it's mostly the accent that does it for me. so funny.

ah talking about what's going on on the streets, the other day day i had my first driving lesson on the wrong side of the road! all went well until i drove back to my house and entered the one way street in the wrong direction! what shait man. also they have some weirdo rules about how you're allowed to hold the wheel when you steer, the PUSH AND PULL method which i've never even heard of. it looks silly and it feels even more silly for my hands to try and do it when they know pretty well how to steer a car anyway. oh well.

well this was not really about the world and other issues but i do have one issue to raise, related to my story; we need more cycling lanes! in all streets! and cars need to be fined for driving or parking on them!
cars are big and ugly and bikes are small and sexy and so cheap and air-frendly. shall we start a campaign for more bike lanes in this world?

(how ironic i am working on getting my lisence)

I ain't got no one to be gussied up with (except that Vietnamese woman sitting next to me, but that was a long time ago)

Dearest, most precious, friends.

I just spent the past hour reading Sofie’s blog. It provoked sentiments and even tears! I am moody these days. The image of Sofie, always sitting out there on that stony floor, smoking too many cigarettes, producing, oh so many, wisdom words. It’s been a long time since I missed, and treasured the value of, MUWCI as much as in this very moment. And strangely, what I most feel the urge of doing right now, is to stand outside the Bombay airport in the humid, polluted, air and hear Sofie shout at the jeep drivers. It is like I am floating in that air, but not being able to inhale it.

So, the world and other issues? Does anyone really write/read blogs anymore? Well, I think we should. I also think we should all move together to, say, Vienna (open for other suggestions, I don’t think Vienna is the best idea. In Vienna there’s ten pretty women, and we’re only three. But we probably count as ten. Or we could make seven pretty female friends). Alternatively we could establish an organization constructing and managing buildings (Sofie, the architect) where various forms of social work (Shane) could take place (and I can deal with the philosophical/political/economical aspects). And if we can’t wait that long to interact and cuddle we can meet in London (Glasgow?) this spring! And we can even travel to India the summer of 2010. Inhale that dusty air. I feel it.

I don’t know which part of my rational mind that convinced me to go and study at the worlds northern most university. Shane tells me she loves New York, and it stings my heart and my urge for the urban. Sofie is in Glasgow, which is also urban. No, it’s not the urban thing, urban enough it is here, at least for me. I think it’s more a matter of gravity. It sometimes feels unnatural, against the way nature has meant for it to be, to be on top of the world, miles away from the continent. It is like I am being dragged down. Okay, I know gravity doesn’t work like that: we are pulled towards the core of the planet earth (at least we think so). But before I remembered that, it seemed like a very likely theory. And if the theory is altered a little, it still works; because it is more of a sentimental gravity where my body pains because you are so far away. Thus dragged down.

If you don’t want to make our relationship a professional one, like in the building of social work and philosophy (which doesn’t necessarily need to be professional), we can group up in an Israel-style kibbutz and raise each others babies!