a spaceful place

Change? Yes, I can!

2010-07-20T09:33:00.003+02:00

For the past months, I've been changing some crucial things in my life. I've felt the need to write about it but always end up just making a note in my diary and changing my status on facebook to involve everyone in my development. Someone said to me recently that I apparently post everything in my status on facebook (in an annoyed tone of voice).

So now I feel selfconscious - but at the same time, I really want to share some of the greatest things in my life with people, both friends and acquaintances. I always have the fear of 'tooting my own horn' a little too loud but this morning I realised that I never had any thoughts about what might actually happen IF I tooted too loud... What would happen is probably what usually happens; those who envy the quality or performance that spurs the horn-tooting - because they find it difficult to do the same in their own lives - will comment critically (or talk behind your back about it).

An example: I achieve funding around 530.000 Euros for projects concerning repatriation in my department. I rejoice. I tell my colleague who is project coordinator in the department - her first comment: "We don't have office space for all the people, you'll have to hire!"

Those who feel insecure about themselves and haven't experienced the same success will probably think you're bragging (instead of sharing the positive vibes which is usually the case) and hence, that you think you're BETTER than everyone else because of your performance. This is actually the dilemma that bothers me the most - because I know this is how people react, and I recent them for it. I recent all those incapable of taking part in someone else's success. ESPECIALLY when that someone really wants to share.

Well, here's an idea - I AM better than everyone else, better at BEING ME! What tragedy if this was not the case!

So, I've changed lately. I moved to Copenhagen with Jesper last year around this time and it's been an incredible year of achievements for me. I've landed a permanent position in the NGO, I always dreamed of working for. I've created results in that position which has given me opportunities out of the ordinary. These are achievements I've earned through hard work - just like everyone else who achieve their goals.

I've lost weight, started aikido training, am a licensed MC driver with her own bike (thank you very much) and started track training for the a company event on September 2nd. Me who always convinced myself that I couldn't do any of those things! No physical activity ("it's just the way my body works"), no challenges too difficult ("I am the way I am and it's just the way things are"), no partaking in big events where everyone does sports ("I prefer doing things on my own, that's just the way I am").

But it's not, and they were poor excuses all along.

I've fought and been medicated through a minor depression for a year now, conquering all my demons through thick and thin AND taken control of the physical side of my life. Most people say "you?! Really?!" and look surprised. But that is me - too.

So, I've changed - not so much in my performances but in the way I take them on. No more excuses - no more limitations created in my mind. And I feel great (most of the time).

Yes, I can change. So can you. So can we all. It's just a matter of perspective - and eliminating the fear of sharing your good results. So, I insist on tooting my own horn every single time there is a good reason for it.

Toot-toot.

Loss

2010-03-02T20:31:00.004+01:00

I went to the basement to hang some laundry that had just finished spinning in the machine. Tough job. The textiles were still lukewarm. As I reached up to hang the large white cloth on the laundry strings (?), I realised that this is the first time I've washed the bedlinen that was my grandmother's.

I suddenly realised that I'd washed away the smell of safety and known places, of a human I always knew, all my life. It felt morbid in the beginning, when I first put the linen on the bed - but soon the smell lulled me to sleep so peacefully every night that I didn't stop to think or analyse it. I just loved it.

Now the linen smells like me, the detergent I've used sine I moved away from home and a little bit of cold basement. Does that mean that the security I used to extract from the 'old' smell, I have to find that somewhere else?

Some days ago, I flicked through my contacts on my phone to call my parents. I stopped frozen at 'mormor'. It hit me like a ton of something really heartbreaking that I will never try to avoid picking up when it's her again, I will never have to lie myself busy just to hear her say 'don't let me disturb' - I will never have that warm feeling in my stomach when I hang up after she's told me of her girlfriends, her dinner with the Church Crew, her worries of not being able to sleep for 'all them thoughts'. That special feeling I get when I'm there for someone; when I ignore most of what they tell me (because it's something I know nothing of) and focus on the fact that they're here to tell me. She's gone.

My grandmother. I had so many many arguments with her. I had so many thoughts and fights with her. I had so many laughs with her and about her. But mostly - she knew me, I knew her - all my life. And now she's gone.

An urge to speak

2010-01-28T09:02:00.002+01:00

I am sat in front of my computer at home, ready to work - but still distracted.

Yesterday, a social worker in Holstebro (incidentally where Jesper lived last year) was killed by one of clients. Stabbed numerous times in the chest and face. After getting out of her car to go to work in the morning. The supposed perpetrator was arrested an hour later - after she named him while struggling for her life in the ambulance. Apparently, he was angry about a job training arrangement that had been put up for him.

My stomach is one big knot from thinking about this situation.

It's absolutely catastrophic that Birhte was killed for carrying out the paragraphs of the law. A law which many social workers disagree with in the first place.

It's devastating that a young man - 28-years old - will turn to such measures because the system has failed him. He is clearly not well.

It's beyond tragedy that this young man seems to have been a Somali refugee.

Rest in peace, mormor

2009-12-28T12:51:00.005+01:00

Yesterday, my grandmother died. She left this world in her sleep during the night of the 26th of December. It naturally brings many emotions and thoughts about her life and the relationship she had with the ones close to her. I know that it can be difficult to learn from other people's mistakes - but the love I had for my grandmother bids me to remember hers so as to not repeat them.

She had a wicked sense of humour, especially at the end when she let go of her 'formal appearance' and cracked jokes about the end of lives and that final destination, no one knows about.

She cared for her family although not in an obvious way. Over the years, I finally learned how to extract the love from her sharp tongue - and realised how much I've come to be like her in that way. I promised myself - and her in the end - not to push people away with my sarcasm and need to be in control of the situation anymore.

Early on, she and others have taught me that 'the world is out to get you'. She realised late in life, and passed it on to me, that it is not so. She desperately wanted a close relationship with her children and grandchildren right up to the end. She surrendered herself to the care of those offering it to her - something she has never done before. She used to feel defeated if she was in need of help or assistance, and she would never reveal her weaknesses to her children. In her last years, she confided some of them to me - and I am grateful to her for it.

Because she showed me how loved one can feel, when you share your pain and frustration with someone who loves you. When you are received by someone you were trying to keep your cools with.

She was herself the last time I saw her. She cracked jokes and told stories - albeit stories that were not true - and basked in the attention she got. She showed great affection and talked of things, we never mentioned before she got sick. Great grandchildren. Sorrows of times past. Love and regrets.

She was ready to leave when she did. Maybe we were not entirely ready to let her go, but I know I did. I am proud of her fight and the vulnerability she showed me in the end, and I vow to myself that I will remember her 87-year-old revelations in my 30th year.

I know you will rest in peace - say hi to grandpa for me. I love you both dearly.

So what about them mountains, Dino...?

2009-11-28T09:15:00.003+01:00

When you look out of the window of Dino's old Mercedes, fogged thouroughly by cigarette smoke and devastating memories, you are naturally immersed into self-reflection and philosophical conundrums.

Many times I nearly cried during my 14-hour day with Dino, a veteran and torture survivor of the Balkan wars of the 1990ies. He has become a dear friend to me even though 22 years and a bottomless pool of events and actions creates a distance in life experiences. His likeness with me moves me - the way we understand each other and can finish sentences when they haven't even been uttered. Thee silence between makes my soul ache for him because only then will he expose the scars of his trauma and true age - closer to 150 than 50.

Every 15 minutes of silence would be broken up by Dino exclaiming 'Hej Sara!! Hvordan går det??' Ín the beginning I felt obligated to come back into the realm of the car, but soon realised that this was Dino's way of pulling himself back into this world rather than disappearing into the past. Thus, I'd respect his wish and answer 'Hej Dino!! Det går fint, hvad med dig?'

The one thing I absolutely hate in this world is loneliness. I hate when I feel lonely - I hate when I meet people who are lonely. But in these past months, working with the traumatised refugees of Bosnia, I've had to learn that loneliness is a part of the human condition. That some lonelinesses are existential and impossible to break apart and vanquish. It is hard for me to accept this fact, and I - you know me - just really wanted to hug Dino, behind the wheel, staring into space, the lines on his face more vivid than ever, the scars of torture screaming at me. I wanted to make sure he feels remembered and important and knows how fantastic he is - for he's gonee through, for what he was and what he has become.

Outside the car, ruins of houses stare at me blankly. Like big empty eye sockets, the window panes gives you a sense of death, despair and hopelessness - there's nothing to do about the past, these houses are not worth saving. So my mind races an analogy to the people I see in the streets here in Bosnia - are their souls liek empty eye sockets, showing you the scars? No. Is life here predetermined by the war? Yes and no - the financial situation is dependent on the war, but the everyday life does not include it as a meaningful factor.

Dino tells me, as we pass by his childhood home, that he was the one to introduce Janis Joplin, Hendrix and all them to Prozor. He would hold disco nights in his house, on the 1st floor, bringing people together, bringing the world outside the Balkanns to them. He had long hair back in the day. I laugh. Dino, the rock'n'roller. Not hard to imagine - even if it seems like a different lifetime.

Dino's aunt, only known to me as Tetka (aunt), prepared a Bajram meal for us in her home. She is beautiful beyond compare, at 81 surrounding herself with an admirable air of calm and caring. I loved her at first sight. Dino calls her his best friend, and I'm sure this is an objective fact of the world. She is a best friend.

And as we drive through the night, towards Sarajevo again, I try to fit the day's experiences into my pool of life lessons. How lucky am I to have met Dino. He shows me all sides of humanity, struggles to keep himself on the right track, after having his identity and life force broken by torturers. His existence is driven by the need to feel human, his thoughts circling around the fact that someone tried to take that away from himm. A professor. A wise man. Broken and angry at himself for not having the strength to develop his intellectual skills after the war. I love him so, my friend Dino.

On the radio

2009-09-06T17:09:00.002+02:00

Sunday in Valby. View to the pear tree of my neighbour, thoughts running around in my head, radio on about the international courts andreconciliation after genocides, unfinished letter for grandma on my desk.

I have to say, I've been blessed. I have to remind myself that even if my friends and acquaintances are not as verbal about being blessed as I am - it's okay to express it. I've been fortunate enough to be in this life, have and make these opportunities, know and love these humans - and endowed with a gift that allows me to describe my happiness, my love, my passion and strength with words that anyone can understand.

I am happy. I don't think I ever knew what it would be like to achieve personal goals, to be able to do what I'm good at and get paid for it - and to have someone to share my dreams, joys and sorrows with. I am blessed. Truly.

Favourite things

2009-02-23T17:59:00.013+01:00

(Coffees with) Jesper

Laughs with the ladies

And parents

I am the one to catch

2009-02-23T17:27:00.002+01:00

Last week, I spent some hours securing the home of a single mother and her three children. She had failed to pay her rent on time and had received an eviction notice.

The week before, I made sure that a single mother of 8 did not have her power cut off due to unpaid bills.

This week, I went to the bank with a Lebanese woman who has never in her life had control of her own funds, nor paid a simple phone bill. It is a teaching experience.

Late Thursday afternoon, I had a talk with a woman who came to Denmark from Bosnia 15 years ago. She had, during the war, been held captive by a Serbian officer and abused over a period of 14 days. After 15 years and no treatment for her trauma and PTSD, she's run down and desperately seeking an outlet. I listen.

Friday morning, I had an appointment with woman from Kosovo whose husband has been denied residence permit in Denmark due to lack of 'family ties'. The authorities claim that he, his wife and their 2-year-old may as well create a life and a future for themselves in Kosovo. She is pregnant and depserate, as she fears the life she will lead in the future.

On the same day, I helped an Afghani woman who is about to hand in her application for Danish citizenship. One of the conditions for granting it is that the subject has been 'self-sufficient' for 5 years prior to the application - meaning that she has not received any social welfare means for 5 years.

Today, I had a long talk with an Afghani man who is very highly educated and hence, does not fit well in the social welfare system. He and I are trying to find better solutions.

I spoke on the phone the other day with a 'pig-coloured' Dane, as we say, who was planning to bring his American wife to Denmark and was concerned about language school and financial support in case of need.

I also had a conversation with an Iraqi man who wishes to bring his wife and three children back to Iraq. I gave him advice on how to apply for the special services, the Danish state provides in these cases - financially, health wise and practically.

I send people home, I send people back, I help them stay where they are, I help them move forward. I have to stay calm and cool and collected because they do not. I have to be patient and understanding because they do not meet those capacities anywhere else. I have to stay focused because it has a deep impact on their lives how I handle myself. I have to leave part of my personality at the door because none of these people udnerstand irony - and I have to expose other features of my personality because it is the only thing that will get my through the day.

I love my job, care for the people - learn and take inspiration from the humans - but I'm so freakin' tired when I get home in the afternoon!

Persepolis - the Iranian revolution illustrated and animated

2009-02-15T21:21:00.000+01:00

I recently watched the film Persepolis based on the book by Marjane Sartrapi. I was given the book some years ago for my birthday - at the time, I hadn't heard of it. I thouroughly enjoyed it and read it many times, every time discovering some new detail. To those who haven't heard of it - it is a cartoon created by Sartrapi about her childhood in Iran and her subsequent exile existence in Austria and France.

The book is fantastically illustrated, and you come to love the arrogant and self-righteous Marjane at age 7 when she is told stories of the revolution and its adversaries by her uncle. Her uncle makes a deep impression on her and she makes him the promise to never forget her family's stories. The book Persepolis is a testament to her family history and it is a fascinating and gripping story.

I would've never thought that the story of the Iranian revolution could be told in a cartoon - nor that the film version of the same would move me. But both did and it was a very pleasant surprise.

Read it. Watch it. Let yourself be moved by the charming and philosphical Marjane. I hope you'll learn to love her like I did.

25 things

2009-02-06T09:52:00.001+01:00

A friend of mine sent me a challenge on facebook, asking me to list 25 random things that came to mind - little did she know that THIS would happen (neither did I, but glad it did...)

1. I often have the feeling that there’s a tiny democracy inside my head, representatives of absolutely every perspective on a situation arguing what will be my next move. It’s part of my daily life to argue with all the representatives – me being the chairman of the parliament and all – and it’s very tiring.

2. This week, I’ve been down with the pandemic flu. The democracy mentioned above was usurped and foreign powers invaded my space. Seriously scary business, I was getting worried.

3. I love listening to the radio, especially in the morning. P1, national radio in Denmark, have a sort of all-round show with analyses of national and international news and certain specific situations. I like how I listen and think “man, that’s interesting” and the following moment, I’ve completely forgotten about it.

4. One of my favourite things about life is mornings. I love the sensation of warm covers on my skin, possible my love by my side and the expectation for coffee. A whole new day to experience.

5. I get too involved with cases at work (surprise!). I get so worked up on social injustice, my head explodes several times a week. Paradoxically, the frustration is what makes me good at what I do. But I must admit, after 9 months in ‘the real world’ (= having a job), I realise that I make too few compromises with my work and too many with my health.

6. LittleBIGPlanet fascinates me.

7. I’m envious of most people. Think they do better than me, are happier, more balanced and have better jobs than I do. I’m generally not very good at being satisfied with what I’ve got. I’m working on it…

8. My partner, J, is the best person to know me. What I mean is I have never met anyone who is that good at knowing my moods, my moves and what moves me. Strangely, I find myself realising in the process that is a relationship that he only knows (intellectually) what I tell him – and yet he knows everything! Amazing – and also a bit scary…

9. My life has changed dramatically since 1 April 2008 when I started my first job. I don’t know how I’m supposed to leave my colleagues come 30 June where the position ends… It’s like my world changes every 1½ years with big decisions and transitions and just when I’m settled, I want to get going again.

10. Beverly Hills 90210 is still good entertainment. This surprised my colleagues at work the other as I am apparently ‘not the type to watch that kind of show’. I have the feeling that Steve, Brandon, Kelly, Donna, David, Nat and all the others were my best (only??) friends in my teens, and thus I can never leave them.

11. I consider the past year as one of the most important in my life. It’s weird how I can do that when I haven’t lived my life yet! But it feels important now. Starting a 8-16 job with huge challenges, responsibilities – and the ease with which I undertook the tasks. 6 months later I realised the consequences of the process: I’ve made my extracurricular activity my job and hence, don’t know what to with my free time. I’ve tried to invent a hobby but it feels awkward trying to force an interest for something forward. I seem to keep returning to things related to humans with troubles, someone I can be there for. But I shouldn’t take on anymore responsibilities for other people’s feelings… I got one great idea though – signed up for a choir and started singing with 50 others last week. Heaven!

12. Every year, I mark the day in my calendar when I first hear the birds sing – or when I first notice properly. It always makes me remember that I can’t control all things, I can only control the way I respond to them.

13. I have seen the Masada in Israel. Like so many other historic sites – mainly churches, monasteries and the like – I was spellbound by the magnificence of human enterprise, the wisdom of human engineering and the ability to produce such structures. All this is inherent in the human condition – magnificence, enterprise, engineering and productivity – but these days we seem to be blind to it. I think like this. Everyday, a colleague of mine brings to work a bracelet of little neon-coloured plastic beads. His daughter made it and he carries it around in his pocket. A bracelet made by a child – I figure a child will only make something exactly the way, she wants it. Truly magnificent.

14. Sometimes, I’m overwhelmed by the sheer size of the world. The thought that I have lived 3 months in India, 6 months in Italy, 10 months in The Netherlands and 6 months in Greece – already. I can’t wait to see the rest of the world.

15. I AM a serious chick, I really am. Sometimes I wish I could just not care so much, not have the daily sessions with the parliament in my head. But in reality, I would miss it terribly if things were different, would miss myself if I were different. I am blessed with a mind and spirit constructed this way and I am thankful that I’ve found a way to bring these talents out into the world. I can’t wait until I get better at all the rest…

16. Every once in a while, I have epiphanies about myself that utterly change the way I behave. I had one this night while I was fighting the fever (maybe this caused the epiphany…), awake, kicking the covers. I never believe I am good enough. I always think everybody else is better than me at everything. However, it is one of the hardest things for me to admit that someone is better than me at something. Isn’t that strange? Maybe it’s because in admitting someone else’s greatness, I admit my own little-ness. But I already have so that doesn’t make any sense. I thought a while about it and tried to find a solution – and realised that I’m just being stupid!! What a relief! I can change me…

17. Sometimes, this newfound adulthood feels constraining. I think of myself as a bug caught in an upside-down glass. Lot of air above me though not endless heights and a very confined space to move in. Even if the glass is transparent, it’s like everything on the other side of it, is blurred and somehow unimportant. The rim of the glass is the horizon and I don’t see beyond it. Work. That’s my life. Horizon is at the end of my desk. Ugh. I do not want to live like this. I beg J to take me away, drive out to the sea in his little Skoda and show me a different horizon. Sweet.

18. Making new friends. Staying in touch with the old. Really difficult things. I’ve come to understand that since I now have a ‘best friend’, like back in the day, I’ve stopped needing others like I did before. I always wondered what happened to my girlfriends when they settled with their men – how could they just change like that? How could they not miss the things they used to do with me? Maybe the same thing happened to me though the situation is different now since I am ‘the last’ of the singles. I don’t want my life to be closed around me and J, I want a lot of people to take part in our lives and us in theirs. I want us to make new friends together.

19. New life. A friend of mine is pregnant. One of my best friends. It scares me. I have ‘lost’ her once before but she found me again – I’m afraid I won’t be a good enough friend to her in her pregnancy and when the child comes. You know? I’ve lost other friends in this process and it pains me that we weren’t able to find common ground despite the differences in our lives. I truly believed – and still want to believe – that this difference, this most giant leap into adulthood, can be overcome by friendships, even when friends do not follow the same path through life. Otherwise, I foresee that I will lose all of my friends – the exact opposite of my wish which is to be an integrated part of my friends’ life whatever happens in it. And new life is such an extraordinary and immense happening, I cannot accept that it makes friendship impossible.

20. The Bucket List. An interesting film – very cliché and predictable, but certainly worth seeing. Reminded me that I want to make a “kick the bucket-list” because I don’t want to regret the things I did not do – like my mother always said.

I couldn't think anymore this morning, but will post 5 more things when I think of something... Watch out for my Bucket List!

An attempt to show things from my life...

2008-11-10T22:33:00.000+01:00

Since I've been wondering for months now why I can't seem to get my act together and write some posts on this blog, I've decided to upload indiscriminately things I do in my daily life.

This is a picture from yesterday where I was local coordinator on the great collection day for the Danish Refugee Council here in Aalborg. The collection is nation wide and entailed this year 14.000 individuals each armed with a miniature plastic truck, going around from house to house to house, asking people to donate their coins and whatever else they wish to. This year, the collections money goes to refugee children around the world, and the total ended at 14.5 million kroner = 2 million Euro - ish... :) A great success!

In this picture (taken by The Doctor, by the way), I'm conversing with a fellow who collected on a route in Hasseris, the posher area of Aalborg. When asked about the route - was it long, uphill, wet etc. - he answered "it was a horrible route! Everywhere I went, there was a Benz and a BMW in the driveway - but all they could manage to find for the refugee children was 4,75 kr. (less than 1 Euro)"

And I guess that was one lesson of yesterday - you cannot have a whole route of narrow-minded snobs who thinks "financial crisis" is when they cannot afford a new fur from this year's collection. You need the balance of those who open the door, almost look guilty the minute they see you because they feel they should give more (time) than they do...

Freedemption

2008-10-29T22:43:00.000+01:00

Won't you help me sing
these songs of freedom
is all I ever had
...redemption songs...

--- Put up your fists if all you want is freedom!
-- Put up your fists if all you want is freedom!
- We keep going on and we keep being strong
And we keep holding on - and on and on and on ---

Human satellites

2008-10-26T13:59:00.000+01:00

I've lost my inspiration to write. Somehow it's been drowned out by the daily routine at work, the tiredness I feel when I'm done for the day. But I've met a woman whose story I feel the need to write about. I don't know, maybe because it makes me feel so lonely...

For several reasons, I can't tell her story here even though I feel it painfully necessary. Because it is a horrible story. Because it is sad and hopeless and I need somebody else to feel the same about it. Becase it is the last thing I think about before I sleep. Because it happened not so far from us - and because it could happen to me and you. But mostly, I would've liked to tell the story because it is important and human.

N. is a survivor if I ever met one. She's been fighting against her tormentors for 15 years now. She is from Bosnia and suffered devastating abuse by her neighbours. She has never learned to live with it, never told anyone until she told me last week, never wanted to let them win. She married an abusive man, thinking she deserved no better. He let their children watch when he beat her up and threatened to take her life. He turned malevolent and jealous at the man that had abused her during the war. Go figure. N. understands all this.

N. made me realise something that I maybe understood a long time ago but never really understood. Humans are satellites, we are all separate entities who have no claim on being loved and cared for. We have no basic right to it - unless we are firmly living in the world, taking it in and reaching out for it. N. reached out for my compassion - had she not, she could have lived years on end with her tragedy, not knowing that someone might have helped her.

I'm not sure I can. I do my best. But in the end - who can cancel out the pain of a 17-year old who had her dreams for life crushed by the neighbour turned stranger, violator? In the end I wonder, if there is anyone who can make this woman feel any different about the trauma, the years gone by feeling useless, helpless and hopeless.

But I so so so wish someone could...

The lives of others

2008-08-12T07:26:00.000+02:00

The lives of others

While brewing over my morning coffee today, I heard trumpets and voices on the street. Peaking out, I saw about thirty people line dup at the foot of the house across the street from ours. A flag was draped from the balcony of the 2nd floor flat, and the balcony door decorated with flowers.
A silver-wedding. Does that exist in other countries? When you have been married for 25 years, you have your ”silver-wedding” – and apparently my neighbours have held on for that long.
Their friends were giggling on the street, singing along to a song about the morning and one about the beauty of having someone next to you on your walk through life.

It got me thinking. And smiling. A couple of months ago, the same family had a big party in honor of what I assume was the son or daughter - a group of youngsters with hats who were celebrating the end of an era - finishing high school.

I like how people celebrate each other. I like how this morning, I saw 30 people standing in the street, singing and laughing, and two people standing on a balcony with surprised looks on their faces and a happy tear in one eye. Celebrating each other. Friends and lovers and those things in life that are supposedly common - living together, having children, their graduation, all the regulars and givens - without realising that they're not. They are actually pretty special events and moments in our lives, it is actually quite extraordinary to see others partake in a happiness that doesn't concern them. Great for my morning vibe :)

Happy Tuesday all!

The loss of a friend, long gone

2008-08-01T09:17:00.000+02:00

Today I learned that a long-lost friend of mine died 4 years ago. I've been trying to reconnect with him for 5 years - and realise now why my efforts were futile. He was beautiful and I'm sure he still is - wherever he resides. I asked him to write me something before I left the Netherlands in 2000, and this is what he gave me...

Beware the sling + arrows of outrageous fortune
They find in man a range of being
From the stoic altitude of quiet fortitude
to the siren song of the muse set forth

Who's to shout of life's joys + cruelties
who of the mortal world of thought
To write or not to write; that is the question
To answer involves a leap of faith

Who is brave enough to place soul on paper
To render bare what all must hide
Humanity revealed, in black + white, on paper
Testament to mans quest for self

So wherewithal this writing business
this note in life's impartial eye
Feed me now what food can't nourish
Those stirrings of my mentor's minds

I place these words for your perusal in answer to your honest self
I wish you every 'fate's' indulgence
So you may gain your 'chosen' life
Beware! indulgence is an utter folly
what bounds, know not human conceit

I bid you check your sense perspective
Ensure it's point is you, your life!
For as you know perspective is everything
From where we look determines life

A book is surely one of man's great wonders
A chance to 'see' through another's eyes

May your heart be peaceful now, Draighnean...

mornings

2008-07-31T05:09:00.000+02:00

three years ago, i would wake up every morning after very little sleep and bad dreams, wishing the day had not yet begun - i knew i'd drag myself out of bed a couple of hours later, drink coffee for a while and stare at the wall the rest of the day

my mornings and days got better

a couple of years ago, i'd wake up every morning and wonder how i got so lucky, watching the silent sun beams sneak through the blinds, reminding me that i was living in italy - i'd be eager to greet the day and enjoy my homemade espresso while listening to gavin degraw, thinking i didn't want to be anyone other than what i was trying to be at that time... i'd leave the house through the garden and the gate, bike along the waterfront, enjoying the changing laguna as it rushed by

those were fantastic mornings - even when it rained

the following year, i'd wake up every morning to the sound of traffic in the street and possibly a man selling stuff from his car, screaming the object of this morning's sale in a megaphone - i'd remember the thoughts from the day before where i spent hours bending my mind around conflicts of racism, nationalism and politicism... how could i forget during the night? i'd get out of bed, put the kettle on and go wake up the little lady sleeping in the next room, wait for her with breakfast, hear her tell me a dream she'd had during the night, thinking she's a nutjob!

those were inspirational mornings, and days that seemed to capture all my intellectual powers

later that same year, i'd wake and forget where i was, then remember, and remember that what i was doing was merely postponing the real stuff i was supposed to be doing. i'd wallow in the emptiness of the flat and the darkness of the winter, i'd forget to be creative, i'd force myself to be ambitious but really not want to be

those were disheartening mornings - but even they got better

last year, i'd wake up every morning thinking there are other ways to do things than this particular way. some of those mornings, i would not be able to think of how - but most mornings, the coffee in my kitchen, jazz on the radio and a plan for the day would do the trick

those mornings were alright

exactly one year ago, i was blessed with the presence of a special friend who'd wake up beside me many mornings. he would not always salute the morning for its greatness, as it is sometimes difficult to spot just that one the back of ones eyelids, but to me he would be part of that greatness. i'd put on the radio, make coffee and sit in my kitchen on my own, lingering on that intriguing feeling of wanting to share. i'd start planning and get inspired even before the coffee was gone...

those were beautiful mornings, a turning-point

later that year, i'd wake up every morning to sound of trucks, cows and the milkman on his bike, to tea cups scrambling in the kitchen and somebody wretching in the bathroom. i'd open my eyes and watch my girls sleeping next to me, then greet the day with a thankful thought that i had landed just there at that exact time to this particular job. i'd know there was a meaningful day ahead of me...

those mornings grew harder every day

this year, i've been waking up confused nearly every single morning. for the past months, i've been so many places that i have to screen the room to locate myself... when i wake up here, in this room, i find it hard to get up, i wish i could just lay here for hours wondering, philosophising, figuring stuff out - but i never have the time. these days i wake up every morning with a job to get to, a responsibility to be met at 8 am every morning. it's strangely mind-numbing and satisfying at the same time

today's morning was calm and boring, and it was okay - i actually enjoyed it!

If I had known this was a path, I would've walked it long ago

2008-06-19T08:02:00.000+02:00

Some weeks ago, I met a lady whom I used to work with at the telephone company. She's always shown me interest and supported my ambitions and dreams in the world. I in return always admired her for her perserverance in the business, and for her leadership skills.

I met her on the bus. She has the most incredible hair, spiky and blonde - I couldn't miss her in a crowd of hundreds. She lives close by my place so we walked, stopped and talked in the rain. The inevitable question - what have you been upto - was always the spark of our conversations since I left the company.

This time, I would tell her a story of a proud young woman who achieved something she never thought possible. A story that somehow seems to repeat itself in my life - or is it me repeating it? It took the first 15 minutes of the conversation for me to realise that that is the story I'm telling about myself these days. Now my new job may not be prestigious - I am no UN volunteer in any crisis striken area of the world, nor am I an EU intern or trainee at the Council of Europe.

I am a social worker within the public administration system of Denmark. I work in a municipality of 192.500 citizens, the third largest municipality of the country. Aalborg is a port city and has the mysteries and adventures as well as the human hopelessness that such a city tend to envoke. I work as a 'specialist' with refugees and immigrants receiving welfare support from the system - a system that I have come to know as a curious tale of ideologies and idealisms realized to the extreme.

My typical day consists of one or two appointments with citizens about whatever situation fills their life at this particular time - and some administrative work that serves as a welcomed break from the disheartening practice it can often be to meet humans who have or feel like they have no control over their own existence. Humans who have seen the last of their hopes and dreams vanish down the drain of endless bureaucracy. Humans who have so little ressources and so much frustration that it fills my office even hours after they've left.

I have 80 'cases' - that is I have 80 files on 80 humans in the cabinet beside my desk. Files that tell ghostly stories of lives gone by in devastation and atrocities, lives wasted on the fringes of society - a society that has left them for too long and now is measuring up the damages and trying to repair what has been destroyed. These files tell of victims of the most incredible human fates, the most vicious of humanity's actions, the most vigorous of human wills. They tell of the perseverance of human spirit - and the defeat of social systems to support and encourage that spirit in time.

I see an incredible amount of 'cases' where strong and powerful humans have been turned into moaning shadows of themselves, institutionalisation taking its toll on their existence. I see the gratefulness in the eyes of a woman who thinks she can do nothing but let the system make all decisions for her. But the vast part of the individuals I meet, carry the same disastrous characteristic - they do not understand the system that 'takes care of them'. They cannot grasp the workings of a public administration so immense, so powerful and so debilitating that it pacifies the drive of human beings and replaces the usual initiative, most people have to rely on to carry them through the day and create new survival structures in their own lives. The system employs 1/3 of the current Danish work force (I said ONE THIRD), most of whom have the really important jobs in the country (such as day care workers, school teachers, nurses, doctors and the likes). But still, too many are employed to execute a set of laws and regulations that are extremely complicated and - in essence - meaningless.

I am still proud to do my job because I am the human side of the system. I am the person who does understand the system and am able to explain it in human terms to the people who do not have this privilege. It must be possible to do better - and in the next year, I'll figure out how...

A matter of attitude

2008-03-02T08:45:00.000+01:00

"Our deepest fear is not that we are not adequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is not our darkness that frightens us, it is our light"

African Mamas

Yesterday, I was at a concert with 9 beautiful women of South Africa - and I was both inspired and ashamed of myself. These ladies stood on that stage and faced the world no matter what mistakes they've made or how far from the 'ideal' of beauty they were. And they were proud. Proud to be whatever they are, together and alone at the same time.

The day before the concert, I had a conversation with a friend of mine. Maybe shamefulness is a general theme for me these days. She reminded me that constructing your life around beliefs and principles is a battle - but it is one that can be won if you're willing to stick it out. But who said it would be easy?

So I am picking myself and my beliefs up and fighting on. I was really moved by the statement by the African ladies last night - that we are, as humans, more afraid to shine in the face of the world than we are to linger in our own darkness. To me, that seems truthful to the core. And truths moves me...

Jo negociata. Vetëvendosje.

2008-02-19T04:20:00.000+01:00

I have a friend who works in Kosova/o. Her status on facebook at the moment is 'living history'. Undeniably. The events in the region over the weekend are truly historic. And most of the Kosovars are happy, celebrating, enjoying the independence they believe they've deserved. Danes of Kosovar origin travelled there last week and one can only imagine what it must be like to seek refuge from tyranny in one's home country - and then be able to return and see the dream one fled for come true.

But I have my worries. 10 per cent of the population in Kosova/o are not happy with independence. Their feelings of freedom is connected to that of dependence on Serbia - and they must fear for their future in a self-governed Kosova/o. The region has been under UN control since 1999 and is still heavily dependent on help from EU, OSCE and the UN. Some initiatives have been truly democratic, some processes have honoured the intention to create a democracy impenetrable by nationalistic forces on either side. But my visits there in 2005 made me worry about minority protection and equality. UNMIK failed gracelessly in the attempt to consolidate dialogue and cooperation between the new nation's ethnic groups. By now, the Kosovar Serbs have migrated to the north - closest to Serbia.

(Picture of the list of missing persons - in January 2005 there were still over 3000 missing, disappeared during the violent conflict in 1999)

I fear that Kosovar Albanians have benefitted from a guilty conscience that Europe has offered them - for not interfering earlier back in the late 90s. I fear for the protection of the 10 per cent - including Roma, Serbs and Turks - who have not been objects of this guilty conscience and to whom many Kosovar Albanians feel no sympathy or democratic obligation. I anxiously follow the developments of history...

Cartoon row 2.0?

2008-02-19T03:53:00.000+01:00

Two years after the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad were published in Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten, they still haunt Danish public space. Last week, the police apprehended three persons who are accused of plotting to assassinate one of the cartoonists. The one that drew the Prophet with a bomb in his turban. Hmm. Here in my town even. Hmm.

Congratulations to the police. They prevented a terrible act that, had it been realised, would have resulted in even more grief for the family of the cartoonist who have undeniably suffered unfairly in the aftermath of the row. It would also have spun the arguments about Islamic extremism in Denmark out of control and out of focus. I commend them for good work.

The issue brought back the debate about freedom of expression. And in intensified another discussion which has been going on for some years now, namely that of extraditions based on criminal activities of non-Danish citizens. Two of the three do not have Danish citizenship and face an immediate deportation order under the Terrorism Act in Danish law. This allows for extraditions without previous trial or the possibility for appeal - of persons dangerous to state security. The two men who are orginally from Tunisia have not denied their plans to kill the cartoonist but encouraged by the debate among politicians started wondering if this is right. They claim they will be subjected to torture if they return to Tunisia.

It seems to me that these men were a threat to the cartoonist, not to the Danish state. BUT - very importantly - they don't know what they are accused of and neither do we, the Danish public. It seems reasonable to assume that persons who would carry out a plan to assassinate someone they disagree with in this matter would resort to worse actions involving more people if they were pissed off enough. My problem is that I don't know the merits of their case. So I can't really form an opinion. Public debate about these two is irrelevant since no one has any idea what actually went on, or what will happen if they are extradited.

More urgent in this matter is the accidental coinciding of this issue and a so-called street war between the police and 'second generation immigrants' in Copenhagen. A new attempt to counter drug dealings and the weapon's market in the streets of Nørrebro allows for random searches of any suspicious looking person in certain zones of Copenhagen. The 'non-white' inhabitants of these areas ostensibly felt harassed and unfairly targetted by the police. Thus, over the weekend they resorted to pillaging, burning and wrecking of cars, houses, schools and what not - copying the actions of 'youth rebels' from the infamous Ungdomshuset, a building originally inhabited by squatters and until recently the home of urban youth on the fringes of society. The municipality gave the house to the movement back in the 80s but some bureaucratic mistake eventually ended up in the sale of the property to a fundamentalist Christian sect who tore it down in less than a day. The actions of 'immigrant youth' this past week are perfectly modelled over last year's civil disobedience connected to the sale of Ungdomshuset.

Over the week, the destructive tendencies have spread to other parts of the country where 'disgruntled youth' burn down public buildings at large. Also here, as Aarhus is a city with a large minority population. A notorious group of these have made life difficult for others in 'ghetto' for years. It added to the fire that the original drawings from JP were re-published in many Danish newspapers after the case last week. The 'street fighters' shout conflicting slogans at the police, not entirely sure what they are against - or what they're fighting for.

I'm tired. I'm tired of dealing with the same issues, hearing the same arguments and positions from the same people that have nothing new to bring to the table and nothing new to suggest as solution. I'm tired of 'disgruntled youth' who claim their rights - right as they might be - by destroying property and thereby harassing people who have no business in their rights claims. I don't want to defend them, I don't want to be against them. I don't want to keep guessing why people react this way, I just want to people to GET REAL. Start talking, stop complaining, start fixing, stop bickering. Enough from all sides already!

Tribute to my Pattan girls

2007-12-26T01:46:00.000+01:00

The best thing I know is thinking back on days where we laughed so hard that it can still make me laugh today
The best thing is knowing that you still exist in this world, that you are still here

The worst thing I can think of is us drifting apart, never rekindling that nearness, that intimacy, that incomprehensible friendship from those days
The worst thing is when I wake up in the night and think I'm back there, listening to you chatting it away, and realise I'm alone in bed (and what I can actually here is my mother snoring)

The best thing I can think of is when we argued so hard, so long that none of us could remember why - and you made me laugh at my own seriousness
The best thing is walking down the main street of Pattan, heading for the market, discussing the colour of our new clothes, planning to look even prettier tomorrow

The worst thing is recalling those days when I couldn't reach you, where you sat on the roof and disappeared into your own world of insurmountable emotion
The worst thing is thinking that our ages might keep us apart, you might get tired of my oldness, I might get impatient with your youth

The best thing, the absolute best thought of the day is that soon, we will be together again; we will laugh, I'm sure; we will cry, I'm even more sure of that - because that's the best thing. Not being alone when I was sad, not being alone when I was happy.

Isn't it our most incredible luck that we are alive at the same time, under circumstances which made us meet in such a rare setting, in a time when we were all ready to soak it all up, be the best us and become the best of friends...?

Sunita

2007-12-16T21:24:00.000+01:00

Sunita walks proudly through the village of Jarel. She has places to go, people to see. She reaches out to point somewhere, quietly yells at someone and grabs the long dark-brown braid that follows the curve of her back.
When she moves, you hear her coming. Her husky voice reassures you somehow that there's a menaing to everything. Nothing to worry about.The determined look in her eye tells me that hers is a spirit of victory and fragility, a perfect paradox of intricate humanity.
She is painfully aware of her circumstances; she lives a life constructed for someone much older than her, much more subdued, much less alive than her. She calls me over in the morning. I imagine her words meaning "come look what I'm doing". Though I lack the understanding of her actual words, there is a clear meaning to all that is between us. The tone of her voice says "come, give me strength to fight just one more battle, get through one more day; you made yesterday just bearable, spare me one more..."
And everyday, I grant it to her. I make no effort to hide my admiration fo rher; I hold her hand and listen to her talk. All I understand from our conversations is that her spirit is being tested - by her own community and the world beyond it. The "chalk police" which she bravely stands up to when they roam aimlessly around the village, sticks swung ready and eyes deliberately ignoring the humanity that is right before them.
Sunita gives her life in exchange for some dignity; she takes the beatings and the abuse simply because it is hers to bare. She carries a wild child in her chest, one that has never lived. The righteousness of her straight back never succumbs, she never breaks in the face of her everyday humiliation. Her defeat shows only in her footsteps which call out to me - "forgive us anything for we are nothing. Stay with us..." Her utlimate vulnerability shows only in the refelction of mine. She starves for my affection, my approval, as I crave hers.
In the end, the hardest part of my goodbye was revealing her naked truth in the midst of her peers. Her dreams and aspirations I had to speak out loud if I wanted the chance to say them at all. The hardest part was unveiling her to the others the way I had always thought she would do herself. It was the hardest part because only then did I realise that she couldn't do it on her own. And then I left.

When I think back now, I remember her like this...

Pretty women wonder
where my secret lies
I'm not cute or built to suit
a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them
They think I'm telling lies
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my steps,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's in the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing of my waist,
And the joy of my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
The palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally. P
henomenal woman,
That's me

"Phenomenal woman" by Maya Angelou

Victories

2007-12-15T09:15:00.000+01:00

Sona, Sumitra, Ramkanya, Sona, Basundra, Ajayraj, Manju, Pooja, Lalita, Rina, Kalawati, Santi, Bichudi, Rekha, Rajanti, Buri, Basanti, Pinka, Anita, Annu, Sona, Sumitra

Premchand, Pappu, Arjun, Vinod, Sureshya, Bhurelal, Pappu, Rakesh, Mendersingh, Rajababu, Pappu, Bhagwansingh, Sojan, Dilip, Nithu, Rakesh, Ramkrishna, Derminder, Vikram, Hemraj, Ragvir, Sanjay, Mahipaal, Rajababu, Manhorsingh

(These pictures were taken by my friend Morten Kyed - thanks for letting me show them here)

My personal defeat

2007-12-14T08:00:00.000+01:00

I have left one home for another. My homes are miles and miles apart, even worlds apart. I’ve left my Indian family, friends and home behind and returned to my ‘real’ home, Århus, Denmark. At this particular time, I’m sitting at my dining table, eating salty Danish liquorice and listening to Dave Matthews. Since I got here, I haven’t been able to tap into everything that happened towards the end of my Indian experience. Something in me has shut down and put it away. I haven’t even called and I feel guilty.

My guilt is momentarily overtaken by passion when The Doctor (aka Jesper) says he’s been thinking about how many desolate places in the world no one has ever seen, how many destitute peoples are balancing on the brim of existence, merely noticed by the few – purposefully or habitually ignored by the many. I have been to one of those places. I can put them on the map, I know their names, their fates – I can tell stories about them, I can let you be a part of them. I already have, involuntarily, in the hotel, the bar, the restaurant – any place where there’s people who haven’t met them, I struggle to shut up and always lose.

I want to tell their story in a dignified manner. It is my mission within the next couple of weeks. Putting these people, my friends into words, making something of them other than dry statistics and a rarely talked about nuisance. I know the idealist in me comes out in full bloom while I’m writing this. And I’m glad. Proud actually. I went, I saw – and I still believe. I still have hopes and dreams and ways to better the lives of someone else. I want to, or more accurately need to, honor the memory of all ‘my’ children, my pupils, friends and fellow humans. I just can’t seem to find the words yet…

Images of India

2007-11-23T04:50:00.000+01:00

Making use of your constitutional right to vote is very important. Especially to Nanna who was to vote for the first time in her life when the Danish PM Fogh announced general elections on 13 November 2007. In order to fulfil our obligations as citizens of Denmark we had to travel 2½ hours on two different buses from Jhalra Pattan to Ramganj Mandi train station where we boarded a 12-hour train to New Delhi. We then spent one day shopping in the Diwali haze of Delhi's busy markets and went to bed early to be on time Monday 5 November for our 10 AM meeting with an official at the embassy. In this picture, Hans, Stine and I are in a tuktuk on our way there, singing the national anthem (something I never thought I'd do whilst abroad considering my luke-warm feelings for my home country) and generally spread the vibe that democracy is something fun for everyone :-)

After some practical introductions in the art of letter voting we cast our votes and had this picture taken with our ballots as proof. Notice how incredibly grown-up Nanna looks (the pretty blue one on the right)?
...and just to prove that we were actually there, we didn't just pose in the living room...

From the weekend in Jaipur. We had just come down from Amber fort where we had a nice touristy afternoon, riding on elephants and getting pumped for tips.

And for the amazing Deepavali (Diwali) celebrations which in importance equals a Danish christmas; we were invited by our Indian family, Sohan and Pankaj, to their village, Bheslana 65 km west of Jaipur. It was, in all honesty, an amazingly intimate experience. The celebrations are kicked off by lighting candles at dusk on 9 November. In this little village, we stood on the roof of Sohan's family home and watched as hundreds of candles in rows on each roof top was lit by excited children and relaxed husbands and fathers. The two families welcomed us as integrated naturally in their lives.

Pankaj took me on an exciting motorcycle ride through the villages and landscapes of the area, I had a chat with his friends; Sohan's wife and sister-in-law sat on the roof with us and chatted in Hindi. And all the women of the household sang traditional songs for us women when we were leaving. These memories from the festival of lights are by far the best I'm taking home with me from this place. This is Pankaj, my chotti bhaia (little brother) and Sohan's wife, Ghita, for whom I have no words, but I shed a tear for her when we left and she honoured my arm with a friendship bracelet.
Women actually. I'm truly fascinated by them anywhere I go. They show their fragility and weakness in the same gestures as they show their power. This I learned from my own mother (even if she might not realise it herself). I strive to be a little bit of every woman I've met in my life. The images below are first of all the Kanjari women leading the dance at Nawaratia festival, reinventing themselves as carefree and wise, living their historical dream of being the dancers for the Maharajas in Rajasthan. The traditional dances have been passed down for generations and are incredibly intense. Sunita, our protegé who's 16 and married off to a village 3 hours away from her family. She wants to be a teacher. Githabai, Sunita's mother and the village leader. She has 10 children and insist on sending them all to school - the boys have all gone to government schools at some point whilst the girls come to us. And lastly, myself and Kalawati, hte younger daughter of Githabai. She attends school regularly and is one of the strongest resources amongst the children.

And while we're talking about women and dancing. Yesterday we attended a wedding in JP. I guess somehow this image speaks for itself. I was coaxed into dancing with this granny who taught me some Indian moves. Earlier in the day, Nanna and I had gone to Meenakshi's Beauty Parlour to prepare, and when I told Meenakshi that I was wearing a traditional Rajasthani lahenga, she styled me up the Indian way. Very glamorous was I. Agreeing to dance with the women in front of the entire wedding party is also part of me learning about them. The only thing really necessary in this situation is the ability to block out the crowd and cameras that follow me whatever move I make. But I seemed to be quite popular - and maybe they laughed, but who cares, Aunty called me the winner of the IDEX team and I had a great time :-)

Reporting from Indian reality

2007-11-08T21:42:00.000+01:00

Every morning. I now have the womderful opportunity to flick through yesterday's English newspaper, the Indian Times. Every morning, I learn something new and mind-boogling about Indian society.

Sometimes I learn some interesting facts aout the political system and how a repulic of this size actually functions bureaucratically (or how it fails).

One morning, I learned about Indian nationalism (not to be msitaken for the so-called Hindu nationalism), curiously in the sports pages. The story of a cricket match contained the story of an Asutralian player who had accused the public of shouting racial slurs and making monkey sounds at him during the game. The newspaper portrayed the player as being childish and unintelligent, and further mocked him for not playing well in the match. It had been proven that the public did in fact shout racial slurs and imitate monkey sounds (and one wonders who's looking the fool) after which the newspaper defended these practices as part of the game (!!). Many things in these reports fascinated me. For instance, how easily a claim of blatant racism towards a sportsman was ignored. It got me thinking about tolerance levels in a society with a clear and sharp social division based among other things on the colour of skin. Or how a supposedly respected newspaper engages in the same kind of childish arguing that fanclubs would about the team's performance. It got me thinking about how different it is to study such things in countries where institutional racism has been suppressed, or where there is at least a high elvel of awareness about such injustices - and then to live these differences every day of your life, having it ingrained in your social education and creation of your identity. Such differences. They make me feel humble.

Another morning, I learned about different categorisation mechanisms in institutional India. In the 1947 constitution, the founding fathers made an effort to protect and promote the rights of the 'untouchables', now the Dalits, a term that in my ears sound just as degrading. According to Wikipedia, it means "'held under check', 'suppressed', or 'crushed', or, in a looser sense, 'oppressed'". Great word. The constitution identifies and grants special status to groups of these and termed them as either Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes. As commendable as this move seems, it signifies the defeat of the nation. By granting a group special status, their special-ness is stressed and thus, this special-ness - rather than their equal-ness to other groups in society or society as a whole - is made the object of institutionalisation. It is cemented for decades to come and the institutional structures do nothing to deconstruct the devastation and debilitating social order. But granted, some groups in this society are so underprivileged that upwars social mobility is impossible without the help of institutional sturctures. In a society where some ethnic and cultural minorities are labelled OBCs, that is the Other Backward Classes, by the relevant authorities, there are buond to be a feeling of injustice running so deep that it seems to be the very spine of the nation. My obstinate self wants to ask who has the right to call other people backwards? Who if not those who have held the powerful poisitions for generations, and thus have no interest in sharing their privileges with others?

What I learn every single morning is that this is a society of violence in every thinkable and unthinkable shape and disguise. I am made painfully aware of physical violence in reports of police brutality (often leading to deaths) with no consequences whatsoever; in the accounts of political groups blasting bombs to make a point; in the stories of abducted, molested and mutilated children and women. I see the violence on the television where fathers and mothers slap and beat their adult children in frustration over failed marriages; I see how my Indian friends do not even frown, how they make fun of the infamous 'stick' of the Indian school system. I learn of young students tortured by their peers in hostels on university grounds, hung by their feet and made to drink kerosene, of how a day care worker made a 3-year-old drink urine. The child had wet herself during nap time. I guess I'm moer sensitive to these issues because I come from a society where violence is not accepted at any level, especially against children, the most vulnerable humans and the ones most in need of protection. It seems I should harden up and get used to reading these things. But I fear that my own sense of humanity - however over-sensitive it might be - will suffer from it.

So I choose to be apalled every morning. This morning I learned that Naxalites (violent Maoists) had blasted a bomb near a bus full of innocent humans. The report included the gory details of the bomber's fate: "his severed head was found some way off the road and the remains of his mangled body was stuck to the outside of the bus! (Indian Times, 01 November, 2007). How can I not be apalled, both when learning of this disgraceful attack on innocent people and when reading the less-than-human portrayal of the death of another human being? How can I not?

Confused the Indian way

2007-11-08T21:00:00.000+01:00

My blogging seems rather sporadic. If only I could write everything I'm thinking... I'm currently confined to the head office of the organisation I'm working with. Jaipur is an amazing palce but I've had little time to enjoy it due to the famous Indian stomach flu. It's a curious feeling to be so helpless - all I wanted was my mother. The good thing about these things is that recovery is fast. Yesterday's visit to a proper Indian beauty parlour certainly helped, and today I'm almost at 100 per cent.

Coming to Jaipur this time has been an experience I will not soon forget. The purpose of our visit has been to sort out some organisational problems with the head office and also to try to speed up the process involving the release of our passports. Because yes, in the end the police decided to obstruct our work by making us worry about our right to stay here. Suffice it to say here that the intention of the police is clear, and to a certain extent they got what they wanted. We haven't been to the villages since last week. Here in Jaipur we've met with the right people and they're expecting to release our passports on Monday. I know these notes don't make much sense to an outsider because I can't write everything that has been going on in a public blog for everyone to read. The lesson I've learned is that Indian bureaucracy is best left to the Indians and diplomacy has many aspects.

The Story of Saura

2007-10-26T04:40:00.000+02:00

I now know the names of all the children in the village. Or at least the ones that come to school. Today, we taught the children about families - brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers. We got them to draw their own families on paper (they thought they could wipe the colour off since they have probably never seen crayons before :-S) and tell us all the names. Each family exists of 6-12 siblings, the older ones married off to villages (if they're women) or living in the village with their own family (if they're men).

Some of this I knew from the extensive family and population survey we've been carrying out since we got here. We walked from house to house and heard the story of each individual family. Our cook and mother-like figure here, Saroji lovingly called Auntyji (the 'ji' signifying the respect we have for her), told me the story of Saura, a less than 2-year old boy who we've been noticing these past weeks. He wanders the village alone with a stick in his hand, stuffing dirt in his mouth and a protruding abdomen like I've never seen before.

Saura's mother suffers from tuberculosis and hence left Jarel to spend her last days in the care of her parents in another village. She did not bring Saura since her parents wouldn't be able to take care of them both. Saura was left in the care of his father, who at the age of 26 took a new wife - aged 13. The caretaker of Saura is in reality his grandmother who lives with the family.

Saura's father drinks heavily and is involved in criminal activities such as the illegal liquor production that is the main source of income for the community, and possibly roadside robberies. Thus, these days he's hiding in the jungle far from the village and his responsibility towards Saura. The grandmother has been absent every day since we arrived. Allegedly, she feeds Saura in the morning and leaves to go to the market - possibly selling things, but most probably to beg or steal from unattending shopkeepers.

Last week, on a rare 'visit' to his house, the father beat up his young wife so badly that she left Jarel to go back to her parents. Saura wanders the dusty paths of Jarel in his own little world - not that his stepmother has any sort of duty to take care of him since the father has rejected that responsibility, and the social logic then puts the task in the hands of other family = the grandmother who is also absent. Saura has no one.

When I picked him up yesterday, he refused eye contact with me and seemed unable to make any sounds at all - not even whimpering, crying or grumpy noises. He sat as a doll on my arm while I tried to reason with the women of the town - with our guide obviously. They argued that he's not their responsibility since he's not their son. I argued that it's not the fault of the child that his mother is dying. They said he's a bad investment because he will grow up and owe his livelihood to his real parents, not the ones that incidentally gave him affection and care. I argued that not all efforts in our lives have to give a reward. I argued that a motherless child is the responsibility of all mothers (I never said I stopped being an idealist, did I...?). Saura sat paralysed through this conversation, as if he was painfully unused to being picked up and held.

We left the women and took Saura to the water pump where we gave him a thorough wash. Still he didn't make a sound - he whimpered a tiny bit when he got soap in his eyes but not a cry, not a scream. The whole time, he never looked up at us, never once did we catch his eye. I talked to him, asked him questions like you would do to any child of that age and got no reaction from him. When he was all dry, all fresh and clean I carried him to a spot in the sun and held him cradled like an infant for a while as he soaked up the warmth from me and the sun. tickled him a little - and suddenly, he opened his eyes wide, looked up at my face and smiled a crooked and heartfelt smile. As much as his story broke my heart, did that smile restore my faith in humanity. He's not lost for eternity - he's merely 1½ years old and needs affection, laughter and to be touched by a human hand. I promised myself that I will hug him every day until we leave - and I will make one of my older pupils do the same to have him integrated into their games and lives. I asked the women to find him some clothes and after much bickering, they gave him a pair of small pants and a dress. Even in this community it is considered disgraceful to walk around naked - even for children - so it seemed very important to find him something to wear to get him integrated.

Today, I worried that they might have taken the clothes from him again. That someone else needed it. But I happily saw this morning that one of our regular girls brought Saura to school, wearing the dress and a big smile (and a repulsively running nose, but you can't win all your battles, eh...?). Lalita sat him down and Premchand played with him and made sure he was fed when children's services came with lunch for them (something new that we don't exactly know why happens...).

Saura is the ultimate victim of everything endimically problematic about the Kanjari community's existence. He represents everything that we are fighting against. Did we win a victory? Morten told me that the change was visible. Judge for yourselves.

Real life

2007-10-20T08:39:00.000+02:00

This week has presented many challenges as we get deeper into the project and especially in the community empowerment aspect of our work. The villagers prove difficult to convince of hygenic and health improvements and some of us have felt the first disappointment in connection to this. This experience fell on the same day that the police decided to show up in Chandiya Kheri while we were having our lunch break. As we sat there in the scorching heat of mid-day sun, the officers stepped out of their jeep in full uniform and asked to see our papers. They asked if the Kanjars misbehave around us. They rolled out their power symbols with their heavy boots and knotted faces and told us without speaking that they call the shots in this area.

One officer, the higher ranking, smiled at us. He took off his baret and said "Kanjar habitual criminals. Mentality not good" and this kind of stuff. The leader of Chandiya Kheri, Umraobai, smiled cynically and said in a peaceful voice that it was too late to save her generation but the children are the hope for the future. The officer spoke in a husky voice to her, smiled and they looked like they agreed. We didn't understand much. But the one thing that is never to be mistaken is the intimidation, the trademark of representatives of power in secluded areas where no one can pierce the foggy wall of bureacracy and institutionalism.

It might seem harsh to judge 'the system' like this. It is however based on my own observations in this particular town. Alongside these views of the authorities in town, I everyday realise new truths about the Kanjars. We've known form the beginning that some of them are criminals. However, it has been difficult to figure out what kind of crimes they commit. When we ask the police they say 'habitual'. I wonder what that means. We have so far held ourselves neutral in interactions with the police, merely frowning at their statements that all Kanjars are criminals, and their accusations against the children we teach in school. But since it looks like we're going to have regular run-ins with the authorities, it is high time that we have a realistic discussion with the adults in the villages about the extra-legal activities. To know what we're dealing with. To know what to defend and what to attack. To know who and how to protect the children. And from what.

We were given the impression that their crimes are theft, fraud and liquor production. In the night, they sneak up to the main road and crawl unto trucks parked by the side of the road for the night. They move like scavenge hunters through the merchandise in the vehicles. In the pitch black night, there's no chance of knowing what you are stealing. In the morning, we meet children with bracelets made of tiny metal rings. They have an endless amount of these rings that seem to be material for fences or something similar. Entirely useless things.

Somehow, meeting the police and hearing them talk about a 'mentality change' in the Kanjari communities seems unreal. The olde saying proves true - you teach what you most of all need to learn. This is a fact of the situation here. The police do not recognise that the mentality cannot change unless they prove themselves to be excellent examples, not using the Kanjar men and children as scapegoats in every unsolvable case they get. They too are habitual criminals. The crux of the matter here is that the mentality which needs changing is the social mentality of interaction between Kanjar communities and everyone outside it. It has very little to do with the crimes committed by either side. It has absolutely everything to do with a society that grows larger distance between rich and poor by the second; a society that allows for history to set its irreversible mark on every new human brought into a particular group. This is the true tragedy of the Kanjars and the Jhalra Pattan population - for they both lose important wisdom by not knowing each other. It is a tragedy that is replayed all over India every single moment a child gets born. Change is coming but I feel it could really need a severe push by now...

Brilliant Sunday

2007-10-15T01:57:00.000+02:00

Today was one of the best days for me personally since I got here. I know it might seem superficial to have enjoyed this so much when my purpose here is so much more important - but still. I think my reaction today shows something about me, that even I, the superhuman perfectionist is human.

The day started at 5:20 AM in the dark. I got up, put on my hat and socks for the first time since I got here and met Hans in the kitchen. We then walked through the small streets of the town behind our house and up the hill. On the hill, there is an old fort with a temple safely placed within the protection of the walls. Hans and I sat down at the main gate facing east and waited for the sun to rise. Hans is an excellent photographer and while he took pictures, I meditated while watching the light over the Jhalawar district turn from purple, to pink, to a cold white-bluish shade that lingered until the blood-red sun started crawling above the horizon. It was an extremely peaceful experience and an absolutely excellent way to start a Sunday; the only thing that could've made it better was the presence of my love.

Minor setback for top grades on this Sunday was the encounter with a rat in the kitchen when we got back. Hans, my hero, carried the trash out to the container in the street (which is in desperate need of improvement AND emptying) and we watch the rat speedily run into garbage heaven... I went back upstairs and slept for another hour or so, had the nicest dream and felt properly Sunday-warm when I woke up. Sanjeev had prepared an exquisite breakfast - omelettes, toast and a perfect chai :-) After the slow togetherness over morning tea, and after reading an incredible email from an incredible person, Nanna, Hans and I ventured into a political discussion - just to get the brain started for the day. An hour later, Nanna, Sanjeev and I left the house to visit our friends in Jhalawar. They are actually our tailors, a couple with three children that always welcome us and make us feel at home even if we can't verbally communicate.

There's no point in addingup the endless amounts of delicious sweets and interesting salty dishes that were put before us at the home of Rosham, Hamid, Tabasum, Anju and Wasim. All that really matters is that these are truly great people, modest and warm and smiling and friendly - and not pushy as their neighbours were, but calm and down-to-earth about us being white. This might seem like a weird comment but it was a true blessing to be invited into their home so unpretetiously and with such enthusiasm stemming from them liking us, not just finding us interesting. Rosham gave us both bangles, earrings and a Rajasthani scarf as gifts for coming to celebrate Eid with them - and told us that we were her first friends. Nanna and I agreed after the visit that we could now officially call the Tailor family our first Indian friends (apart from our guides and the staff obviously, but they don't count since we didn't have to make an effort to meet them :-)).

Brilliant Sunday will now continue with me reading my book.

Sandal full of soy beans

2007-10-13T23:40:00.000+02:00

It's hard to update the blog about everything that happens here. It seems like something new and challenging happens everyday and I'm always scatter-brained when I come home. I have a hard time collecting my thoughts.

I am however very aware that at least half my thoughts are other places than here. With my family, my love and the friends I haven't heard from since I got here. I think about them often, and always feel like I owe it to them and to myself to explain the situation here, explain my purpose with being here.

But some days that purpose evades me. I meditate in the jeep or bus every morning to find myself strengthened by inner peace when I enter the silent chaos that is their lives. I watch as we take our morning stroll around the village to gather the children, how they struggle to find a peaceful spot to comb their hair, how they apologise for having obligations towards their family and not able to come to school. I watch as they shield themselves from the stick of their teacher who wants the best for them, and yet treat them as if it was their own choice to live this life.

I know that we have already made a difference here. Maybe not in the long run but we've given these children three weeks of our lives (so far) where our main purpose has been to sustain their interest through games and fun - in something as rudimentary as going to school. More than once, the day has ended with me feeling awful and my initiative completely burned out by failed efforts, and more than once the children and India end up saving my day.

The children can save by their endless farewell greetings. "Saradidi, namaste! Namaste, Nanadid! Mortin, bye bye!" echoes all the way to the bus stop and it always reminds of their innocence. The reason why we're here. Their innocence.

Wednesday's ride home from Jarel was also a mood saver. I had my first thrilling experience of riding home on top of this year's wheat harvest with my friends and some workers from the fields. For the first time, I had a laughing fit (or whatever it's called when you can't stop), unable to speak and unable to think of anything at all but the feeling of the wind through my hair and the wheat grain between my toes. The success was repeated yesterday when we caught a soy bean tractor. The image that stuck in my mind after this trip was one of 10 men in a passing tractor, all wearing turbans in different colours. I'll be sure to post it when it has been resized for upload :-)

Greeting the police

2007-10-08T06:35:00.000+02:00

After returning home from the lovely relaxing time in Kotah, the five of us were summoned to report at the police station. The police has by now understood that we are here for a while and that we are working with the Kanjars, their favourite target whenever anything goes wrong in the area or crimes are committed in the district.

We sat down with pounding hearts in front of the police chief and tried to answer his questions without lying too much. He asked why we had chosen the Kanjars in particular. Basically, he's worried that we will uncover their scheming against the Kanjars and report to the police in Jaipur that five Western tourists have seen abuse of power and mistreatment by the local police. So he showed off his intimidating talents and called in the chief of police in the whole district to tell us that 'show of power is the only way to maintain law and order'. We were in fact intimidated and tried our best to keep up diplomatic appearances; the hardest thing was having to listen to the same old routine from one of the highest autorities in the town - Jarel houses the worst criminals of Jhalawar, they are all criminals and then the characteristic laugh when we say we are teaching the children math and English. Stine felt like throwing up. I felt like challenging the image. But we all kept the charade.

Then he showed us their 'mug shot' book - an ordinary photo album with 50 pictures of men from Chandiya Kheri (the second village) and Jarel. We said we didn't recognise them, that there has only ever been women present when we're at the villages. At last, he asked which of us were in Jarel. Me, Morten and Nanna put up our hands. He pulled out his mobile phone and showed us a picture of Rakesh, 12-year-old smart kid with proper clothes and a knack for math. We haven't seen him in school for the past week. Now we know why. He's being hunted by the police because he's a criminal. We told the police that we had never seen this child before. Were we mistaken in our judgment? Should we have argued instead...? I'll think about that when I go to sleep tonight.

Being British

2007-10-08T06:20:00.000+02:00

This weekend offered the opportunity for our first tourist visit in the vicinity of Jhalara Pattan. Stine, Nanna and I took a bus to the neighbouring district of Kotah, the main city abundant with ornamented palaces and legacies from the British Empire. We stayed at the old British residence on the bank of the river Chambal, a luxurious hotel (hence the luxury tax of 8 per cent) that bears the signs of a past with English women in big sun hats and servants en masse. The contrast to our current everyday surroundings was stark - but despite the guilt in the back of our minds, we enjoyed one night of peaceful relaxation, a nice dinner (with meat, wooohooo) and coffee in the drawing room.

A blog of Danes in India - in Danish

2007-10-06T02:15:00.000+02:00

For anyone who reads Danish, Nanna and Hans, two of my fellow travellers in India are maintaining a blog at http://hansognanna.blogspot.com. They have very nice pictures and a detailed description of the food we eat here :-)

What we're dealing with here is...

2007-10-06T02:00:00.000+02:00

On September 18, I left Denmark to try my talents out there in the real world. The object of my passion is a socially marginalised group in the very south of Rajasthan, India. The Kanjars. My latest blogpost is the more philosophical impression my first meeting with these people left me with. Here's a bit more practicalities.

The trip and work is facilitated by the Danish NGO Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke - in international settings known as the Danish Association for International Cooperation. Every year they send hundreds of young Danes to all kinds of countries in the world - as volunteers, mainly working as teachers in basic English and Math.

The Kanjar Project I'm a part of is their latest invention. The Kanjars, as you might have understood from the previous blogpost, are extremely isolated and marginalised and their social existence is restricted to 16 villages where no 'respectable citizen' ever set their feet. I'm having a hard time describing these villages. Jarel, where I work, has about 40 houses all inhabited by 5-9 persons in about 8-10 square meters. They usually have one bed, a huge barrel for grain and a few pots and pans + a small fireplace made out of cow dung (saw one in the making today, very fascinating). Most of the children here have enlarged abdomens and nightblindness due to lack of vitamins and in general proper nourishment.

The Kanjars make a living through random farm work and liquor production. They drink much of the liquor themselves, mostly to drown out the sounds of desperate childrens' cries or the voices in their heads, worrying about their sons and husbands who have disappeared to jail. We've heard of boys as young as 10 being dragged off by the police - who we've seen in action twice by now, it's not a pretty sight. They swarm the village with threatening behaviour and large sticks with which they most definitely beat the women who argue with them - just not while we are there. However, they still take innocent men as their suspects for any crime committed in the area.

India - challenging my humanity

2007-10-01T08:16:00.000+02:00

An exiled Indian friend of mine told me that Kanjar means fraud or theft. Kanjar is a common Word used to denominate someone who lies, cheats or tricks other people with the intention to do so. Probably with an economic gain in sight.
I learned early in my Indian experience that this popular meaning of the word corresponds in actual life to the usual response when people of Jhalra Pattan, my home town for the next three months, hear that me and my four fellow travellers are working with the Kanjar communities. Their villages are scattered around the Jhalawar district, tiny dots in people’s consciousness and non-existent on the more rudimentary map of the world. However, two of these villages are my world now.
The townspeople stop their cars, bikes or bicycles to ask our Indian guide what white people might be doing in the vicinity of Jhalra Pattan. He tells them we are working with the Kanjars. The townspeople repeat in wonderment. Kanjars. Why teach them - they cannot learn. Why work with them - they’ll only rip you off and steal your valuables. Why care about their frequent run-ins with the police - nobody else does. I read these beliefs and opinions on people’s faces and later hear them translated by our guide; there is no doubt that the reality of the Kanjari lifestyle is created by social stratification and total exclusion. When I hear these beliefs I am amazed by the way the townspeople offer the answers to their own questions while they themselves are entirely ignorant to the irony and the basic misunderstandings that govern the interaction between them and the Kanjars.
So what is a Kanjari community member to me? A human being. A person. A life, a story, a dream, a hope and endless mind-blowing desperation. A mother’s solitary suffering. The bright eyes of a child that tells you about possibilities, opportunities, a life to be lived in constant struggle. A life that deserves better than what the future holds as it is at the moment. The smiles of the fifty Kanjari children that beamed up at us that very first day in Jarel seemed fragile and ghostly in my memory - and yet they are the most viable and sustainable resource to work with. The very livelihood of a child whose mother is too weak to carry him, whose spirit is broken by continuous disappointment, whose love is insufficient to console him for the harsh conditions he lives under - a love too simple, for a mother’s love for her child is the simplest thing in the world, to protect him from the ignorance of the society that surrounds him. A love incapable of shielding him from police brutality, harassment and social depravity.
In the eyes of the perpetrators of these stupefying and plainly common human crimes of the social mind, the Kanjars have brought their suffering on themselves. They have stolen from the collective dignity of the townspeople and made their way through theft, prostitution and fraud; they have dishonoured their own communities and lowered themselves into the gutter of humanity. They deserve nothing better than what they have. It is what they have learned and what they teach; they have guarded their communities against the outside world creating a mental, emotional and physical barrier between themselves and the world on the outside. The cocoon in which they lived for years served as a protective and strengthening nest; inside its walls they could not be harmed, they could prepare for unwanted visitors - any visitors that is - and they could build a community, strong and self-sufficient, sustainable only through isolation. When cut off from all surroundings, the cocoon’s world became the protection, the resurrection, the construction of a reality that was theirs - at least most of the time - to build on, build in, survive in. With the cocoon serving as the framework for their everyday lives, the Kanjars created the vision that they could protect themselves and their offspring against the malevolence of humanity outside. They consolidated their placement outside humanity, consolidating the firm beliefs of the townspeople - that the Kanjari people are less than worthy, less than citizens, less than human.
A human being does not need to be aware of her own humanity to be human. Humanity is ingrained in the very fabric of existence, intertwined with the illusions and barricaded dreams of mankind. A human being can lived in the ideas of others, be stripped of the basic dignity that all humans deserve by the very thoughts of others.

me

2007-07-14T12:19:00.000+02:00

i am not the person who is singing
i am the silent one inside
i am not the one who laughs at people's jokes
i just pacify their egos

i am not my house or my car or my songs
they are only stops along my way
i am like winter
i'm a dark cold female
with a golden ring of wisdom in my cave

and it is me who is my enemy
me who beats me up
me who makes the monsters
me who strips my confidence

i am carrying my voice
i am carrying my heart
i am carrying my rhythm
i am carrying my prayers
but you can't kill my spirit
it's soaring and it's strong
like a mountain i go on and on
but when my wings are folded
the brightly colored moth
blends into the dirt into the ground

and it's me who's too weak
and it's me who's too shy
to ask for the thing i love
and it's me who's too weak
and it's me who's too shy
to ask for the thing i love
that i love

i am walking on the bridge
i am over the water
and i'm scared as hell
but i know there's something better
yes i know there's something
yes i know, i know, yes i know
that i love

paula cole

Reminded of dreams

2007-06-10T21:07:00.000+02:00

I used to dream about a house
and things and feelings of home
of wholeness and spirit and living in the city

This morning I walked the streets of Aarhus on my way to work. The weather is awesome, the park I traverse before I reach the city is spectacular, the amount of birds chirping, flying below the tree tops making their way to their new offspring, just learning how to fly.

I was reminded of a time when I was less of an adult and how I used to imagine myself, living an independent life, owning my own house, taking care of a garden, sipping cold red wine under a huge tree, reading books about life in a hammock. I had this vision of a house close to the water, so I could take my bike out there and take a swim in the morning.

It is funny how dreams change. When I thought of it this morning and felt a slight cramp around my heart - because it was so easy to dream back then. I miss dreaming of those kinds of things, peace and quiet and me in a hammock. Nowadays my dreams seem more complicated, more unattainable - it is like I forgot to work for the small things, even if I never forget to notice them.

I pledged to myself this morning to keep an open mind to dreaming. Remind myself to dream of simpler things. Now, here, when I am at work, I dream of an hour in the park with my book as soon as the work day is over.

Favourite poem in Danish

2007-06-10T05:39:00.000+02:00

Der er to mænd i verden
der bestandig krydser min vej.
Den ene er ham, jeg elsker,
den anden elsker mig.

Den ene er i en natlig drøm
der bor i mit mørke sind.
Den anden står ved mit hjertes dør,
jeg lukker ham aldrig ind.

Den ene gav mig vårligt pust
af lykke, der snart for hen.
Den anden gav mig sit hele liv,
fik aldrig en time igen.

Den ene bruser i blodet sang
hvor elskov er ren og fri.
Den anden er ét med den triste dag,
som drømmene drukner i.

Hver en kvinde står mellem disse to
forelsket, elsket og ren.
En gang hvert hundred år kan det ske
de smelter sammen til en.

Tove Ditlevsen

Quotes of the day

2007-05-31T18:59:00.000+02:00

Put your backbone where your wishbone is.

Raj Seth, Uncle of Vikram Seth in "Two Lives"

-----------------------------------------------

Generellt sett är generaliseringar praktiska
Men generellt sett felaktiga

(Generally speaking, generalisations are practical
but generally speaking, they are mistaken)

Timbuktu

Quote of the day

2007-05-30T05:19:00.000+02:00

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies
but the silence of our friends

Martin Luther King Jr.
(many thanks to Teresa for teaching me these wise words...)

Today's quote

2007-05-28T09:19:00.000+02:00

We must strive to be like the moon

Ishmael Beah
http://www.alongwaygone.com/

Quote of the day

2007-05-25T22:16:00.000+02:00

You have to be scared to be brave

grand fathers

2007-05-15T08:19:00.000+02:00

My mother's father

My father's father

Prayer for dreams

2007-05-10T19:50:00.000+02:00

Beyond the limits of consciousness
we find ourselves, beautiful & free, uninhibited by our expectations & aspirations,
shaping our world as we go along, without the censorship of selfperception.

Beyond our human borders of consciousness lies the utter liberation of humanity.

May fest

2007-05-08T18:24:00.000+02:00

Just sharing a few photos from this weekend's annual May fest in the so-called Huset - a house in my 'old' neighbourhood owned by a bunch of great people :-)

disappointment

2007-05-07T03:38:00.000+02:00

You make promises
that you can't keep
It's like the lion
within you falls asleep
You used to roar at me
and sharpen your teeth
Now you grunt and snore
and hide what lies beneath

card from a friend

2007-05-04T22:31:00.000+02:00

i beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answers...

Rainer Maria Rilke

going home from work, remembering

2007-05-03T08:50:00.000+02:00

the earth is shaking beneath my feet
deafening the voices in my head, all thoughts that converge in a roar of madness
the earth is calling for my resistance
calling for calm

the wind is laughing at me, walking uphill on a sunny day
blowing the early spring blossoms off the trees
as if to mock the light from which they came
laughing at me because i am not in it, because my earth is rattling

i wish i was wearing different shoes
i wish i had put a pin in my hair
i wish there was something that would make me go faster
think faster, feel faster
but it's still uphill and the wind reminds me of the world outside of myself

i see my little pond, the park where i used to lay on the grass with my shoes off
looking at branches of trees, shimmering and cackling in the wind
i remember when i sat there with my english friend who smoked king's blue
famous danish cigarettes - because he liked the colour of the pack
blue as the sky, blue as my eyes, blue as my favourite t-shirt

the park is downhill and uphill, at the same time
my mood changes when i remind myself of myself in that spot
of the ant that crawled across my striped socks that day
of friends i brought there to feel the calm

today i pass the park, i don't go to lay on the grass
i have things to take care of, bills to pay, food to eat
thoughts to think
but tomorrow, i promise myself, tomorrow
i'll go there and find peace

Quote of the day from Canada

2007-04-17T01:41:00.000+02:00

Those who define you can confine you

Canada - ja, det kan a da!

2007-04-16T04:47:00.000+02:00

Hallelujah, I arrived! Holiday, Canada, chilling like there's no tomorrow :) Currently watching hockey play-offs (the right guys are winning apparently), just beat Yasemin in tavli (backgammon) and keep forgetting that it's been 6 months since we saw each other last, nearly a year since we lived together. It's like I just popped in to watch the game... Heureka!

The unavoidable End of an Era

2007-04-08T21:30:00.000+02:00

Wednesday I handed in my thesis in the History of Ideas. It carried the title "Who We Are. Researching Ideas of Racism and Difference in Denmark".

I wrote with everything I had in me about the institutionalisation of ethnicism and the injustice that the Danish government is committing against both minorities and majorities in Denmark. I did well and I am proud.

I replied to my calling and went out with a bang. BANG.

Today is Sunday and my first real day off since the event. I'm exhausted and wish I could sleep some more.

With everyday that goes by, I remember little bits and pieces from my history with the History of Ideas. In my thanks for the thesis, I wrote of how I felt like the thesis was a tribute to the people who make the institute what it is today - my supervisor and all the other young people there; a tribtue to a department that has given me room to be me, room for my thoughts about the world - and has applauded me for them and embraced me. I wanted to thank the department for that. I don't think enough people tell them how great they are. I tried to make up for it.

I'm tired. Wish I felt like doing stuff, going places, celebrating my new freedom. But all I wanna do is hang out at my parents' house in comfortable pants and without showering.

Åh Frihed...

Veni, vedi, vinci...

Peace out :-)

a gift

2007-04-06T00:52:00.000+02:00

At livet det er livet værd
på trods af tvivl og stort besvær
på trods af det der smerter,
og kærligheden er og blir
og hvad end hele verden si'r,
så har den vore hjerter.

Jens Rosendal

Between theory and practice

2007-03-29T22:37:00.000+02:00

My life is a polarised matter.
I spend on average 10 hours a day on my thesis which is due on 4 April. On that day, my life as a student is over, my identity as an academic is challenged to the core. I have studied for 6½ years now and will hold to Master Degrees at the end of it. I have delved into the minds of hundreds of philosophers, analysts, scientists, antagonists. I have become one myself. But today, I have to go to work - my other work, out there in the real world. My work which involves 15 girls between the ages of 14 and 18 in one of the most troubled areas of Aarhus.

I believe that the challenges we are ready to take on present themselves exactly at that moment - when we're ready. Through all my years of studies I've thought of myself as an academic and believed that thinking is everything I'm good for in this world, my special talent. I still think it is. But, when this job with the girls landed in my world, I was ready for the challenge. And I took it on, insecure and vulnerable, worried whether I would be good enough, be anything at all. And I went home crying more than once. But I learned. So incredibly much. I learned that the world is not as square as I thought it was. I realised that there has been a valid purpose with my academic work, with challenging commonsense perceptions of cultural identities, because the world is not simple - but it is not as complicated as we often think either. Most importantly, I realised that the way the world looks today, the way this society looks today, I am needed out there.

I've spent nearly 7 years learning about the world, discovering the way we make sense of it and how this sometimes leads to conflicts. Conflicts that we don't understand because our theory doesn't fit the world. Now it is time for me to take the challenge seriously and make it my mission to be in the world of practice and not of theory. One does nothing without the other. Neither do I. World, bring it on!

Every chance that you get is a chance you take.

Quote of the day - again...

2007-03-25T01:23:00.000+01:00

If you try, you risk failure
If you don't, you ensure it

Quote of the day

2007-03-21T23:49:00.000+01:00

Omnia vincit amor
Amor vincit omnia

Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 BC)

Quote of the day

2007-03-13T05:25:00.000+01:00

"After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West made Islam the new enemy. How do you launch a missile against a religion?"

Jan Guillou

Reminder

2007-03-06T07:19:00.000+01:00

Dear all, please check out Greg's blog about the homophobia campaign in Warsaw - it's fascinating, horrifying, worrying and extremely important! And this is me looking up to him...

Citizenship test

2007-03-05T19:35:00.000+01:00

So, it finally arrived, the Danish citizenship test.

I studied it, I passed it and I read countless comments that people made about the nature of the questions in it. I didn't find it hard at all - but my daily task in this world right now is to study the government's version of Danish history so it wasn't surprising. I had 3 wrong answers, two about art (no surprise there either) and one about who can attend official hearings in Court.

This morning I listened to the Danish Minister of (dis)Integration, Ms. Rikke Hvilshøj, on geek radio's morning show. And, notwithstanding all my intentions of not getting upset, I am angrily trembling right now. Minister says the test is to give the foreigners (udlændinge) the opportunity to show that 'this is where I belong'; she says it is not too much to ask of people who want to exchange their citizenship - and by that token acquire rights to vote for parliament; she says the test questions are made to give a broad overview of Danish history, societal development and culture. She says the test doesn't entail a specific interpretation of what it means to be Danish, of what Danishness is. She says we (who?!) are entitled to make demands on new citizens, and this - THIS??! - is what she wants to ask for??! This is not asking, this is making a statement.

I suggest we make a 'welcome test' to be distributed among the population, asking them to answer 28 out of 40 questions right about what it means to live in a globalised world, the historical development of humanity, and how to take responsibility for the society of which you are a part. I suggest that we (who?!) make some claims on the part of the 'indigenous Danes' to show that 'this is where they belong'.

The Minister says that this is not (another) expression of the assimilationist aspirations of the current government. Hun er fuld af lort, for at sige det på RIGTIGT dansk [lit. she's full of shit to put it in REAL Danish]. As the last caller in the radio programme said (with an accent) what's next? You will test me on my ability to eat pork and fly the Danish flag - or my ability to be white?

Hurra

2007-03-04T08:12:00.000+01:00

Nik & Jay vandt absolut INGEN Danish Music Awards i år! Der skal lyde et overordentligt rungende HURRA herfra!

Stand up for your rights! - continued...

2007-03-04T07:57:00.000+01:00

Look at this guy! Isn't he gorgeous?! Campaign strategy: first week large billboard posters with no image just the text "What are you staring at, faggot (or lesbo)".
The next week, G appears on this poster with the text "Faggot. I hear it everyday. Hate hurts". Who would want to hurt this fantastic Prince of Warsaw??! Check his blog in my links section...

The lady on the radio

2007-03-04T07:35:00.000+01:00

I love the voice of the lady who reads the news on Danish geek radio P1
She sounds comforting, like a sweet dame who would make you tea+biscuits and tell you the ways of the world
Because she knows them, for sure
She even knows how to pronounce the name of the President of Iran
and "Reclaim the streets", the slogan of a demonstration in Cph tonight
She sounds reliable, never pushes the wrong buttons like the 'news' readers on P3, little brother, pop-culture
I wonder what she looks like...

How exciting my life is ;-)

Quote of the day

2007-02-27T20:48:00.000+01:00

"Racism is a weapon of mass destruction"

Faithless

Stand up for your rights!

2007-02-25T23:30:00.000+01:00

I have a friend who is gay and lives in Poland. You might know why that can't always be easy. A couple of days ago he sent me (and our other friends) an email about a new campaign his NGO has launched against homophobia. The campaign is supposed to make people 'put themselves in others' shoes' so to speak, to make them realise how much intolerant hate due to sexual orientation hurts.

I wanted to salute this friend. For his courage and stubbornness. When they couldn't find someone to model for the poster - they didn't want a model but someone who had experienced homophobia in their own lives - he ended up being the front man. With his picture on 150 posters across Warsaw. My favourite G, thinking he might as well 'walk the walk' and come out to everyone who don't know already.

G, if you see this please know that I am full of admiration for you! Not just your courage - anyone can imagine how hard it must be to make this decision - but for the way you are in the world. The way you thought about your life in relation to the campaign, as you wrote about in the email. The way you decided to f*** it and take on the challenge. That is truly inspiring. Truly liberating. Truly fascinating. Like Margaret Mead said "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has" - and G, you're the perfect example!

P.S. I will be posting the poster as soon as it's out in Poland - for now the NGO is still in the process of launching it.

A note from a friend

2007-02-18T21:13:00.000+01:00

Beware the sling + arrows of outrageous fortune
They find in man a range of being
From the stoic altitude of quiet fortitude
to the siren song of the muse set forth

Who's to shout of life's joys + cruelties
who of the mortal world of thought
To write or not to write; that is the question
To answer involves a leap of faith

Who is brave enough to place soul on paper
To render bare what all must hide
Humanity revealed, in black + white, on paper
Testament to mans quest for self

So wherewithal this writing business
this note in life's impartial eye
Feed me now what food can't nourish
Those stirrings of my mentor's minds

I place these words for your perusal
in answer to your honest self
I wish you every 'fate's' indulgence
So you may gain your 'chosen' life

Beware! indulgence is an utter folly
what bounds, know not human conceit
I bid you check your sense perspective
Ensure it's point is you, your life!

For as you know perspective is everything
From where we look determines life
A book is surely one of man's great wonders
A chance to 'see' through another's eyes

- Draighnean, my friend, where does your heart find its pleasures now?

Dream

2007-02-18T08:34:00.000+01:00

She appeared in a dream, this afternoon, after many many months, years of absence. Even so in the dream, I knew she'd been away for a long time.
With her usual expression - strong, confident, fulfilled - she stepped in from my hallway, on my birthday. Someone was playing a simple tune on a guitar and she sang "You're not alone, so don't you dare..." with a clear and cogent voice, carried by some life of earlier times. Like her mother always told us, draw strength and vitality from what went before.
And she embraced me while she sang, came towards me and held me in her arms, my head on her shoulder og tears streaming down my face into her hair. I felt joy and happiness, there were more people and someone had arranged this - for me.
I awake, crying, my throat contracted into a painful knot. I hold onto the image from the dream, I think of her, miss her beyond any feeling I can verbalise, and I think of all the people that I knew with her.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. She told me once when I never even imagined such a thing, such undivided hope in the future. I feel like she needs to know now. I don't know why. She was calling me in the dream - but where is she now?

(you know who you are)

2007-02-18T08:13:00.000+01:00

so many thoughts, not organised
i am not organised
i like my couch and the ache it brings to my neck when i sit there too long
like today

for all the poetry in the world
i wish i could give you words of relief
of strength and remembrance
of yourself
for all the love i have for you
there are still no words to transport myself to you
to your pain and devastation
to your mild kindness and frictions in mind
to your love

i know you do well without me (there)
you must think of me but not as i think of you
how can you? you are not thinking of you
i only ever wanted to be a good friend
to you and everyone else that crossed my path
i only ever wanted for my love to be received, to be treasured
but i have insulated it, given it only to few and hardly any that understood
i have absoluted it and absolved myself for its failings
it is me

i know you receive me the way that i am
but i still feel at a loss, i am not there to help you
i wish i could carry some of your burden for you
i wish i could carry your heart in my hands, just for a couple of hours
so you could get some rest

Request

2007-01-18T21:01:00.000+01:00

"I only ask of God
He won't let me be indifferent to the suffering
That the very dried up death doesn't find me
empty and without having given my everything"

Outlandish

For Swedish readers or eager learners...

2007-01-15T05:29:00.000+01:00

Yasemin, my Turkish-Canadian roomie from Greece introduced me to this song by Timbuktu, a Swedish rapper with a powerful energy and a funky sound. Most impressive if you listen to it and understand Swedish is the immensely thick Southern Swedish accent he carries... I assume Yase didn't understand much of it but she nevertheless enjoyed it and made me love it too (gratefulness should also be directed at Didzis who originally played this for her - thanks, man!)...

For those who appreciate, the website is www.timbuk.nu - enjoy! Here's the song that makes Yase put on her funky walk down the street - and me put on my crazy before exam tomorrow! It's called 'Now' and here's the quick translation:
In this country there's people from everywhere and we're repeating history with segregation and marginalisation. We all have a responsibility to get the powers to listen. Nobody can do it alone - we have to stand together. We have to erase the distance between us, so talk to your neighbour, we'll change the beat of this country together...

Nu
I det lilla landet där vi lever, kommer det folk från överallt
Från Kiruna i norr till Trelleborg, från mitten i Södermalm
här har vi svart man gul man brun o vit
här har vi fattig man medelman o superrik
vi har taxichaufförer, bankdirektörer
nån tjänar klöver men andra står över
men det vi behöver är mer av varandra
vi cirklar i samma förlegade anlag
så närma dig någon o ge din hand
närma dig någon, nu e din chans
så snacka med din granne
så byter vi takterna i landet
om inte makten tar sig samman så måste vi tappert stå tillsammans

För det spelar ingen roll varifrån du kommer det handlar om var du är
oavsett vad som hänt förut nu handlar det om vad som sker
det händer nu, inte sen, vi suddar ut ett problem
för vi går runt och runt så upprepar sig på nytt historien
men det spelar ingen roll hur du ser ut du är ju byggd av blod och ben
vi suddar ut ett problem, ja det e nu, inte sen
vi suddar ut ett problem, ja det e nu, inte sen

För det är inget sätt att leva, med bostadsmarknad segregerad
när inkomstskillnaden separerar, försvinner viljan att integrera
när till och med skolan blir uppdelad, och många personer isoleras
kommer våran tro att tolereras, kommer våra toner ens få spelas
jag tycker att röster borde höjas, en hel del saker måste sägas

men det är snart för svårt att väja, med det är klart man hoppas
heja sverige du gamla du nya, där vissa är fångar och andra är fria
sverige med varmare kyla, hur kan vi låta den marknaden styra
sverige vi kan inte lipa och skrika, för vi är mer lika än vi är unika
men vi måste ändra det med världen, att man dömer människan efter färgen

För det spelar ingen roll varifrån du kommer det handlar om var du är
Och det kvittar väll hur du ser ut, du är ju samma blod och ben
Det händer nu inte sen, vi suddar ut ett problem
Och jag sa nu inte sen, vi suddar ut ett problem

Albaner, syrianer, greker, afghaner, sydkoreaner, kineser, japaner
Palestinier, irakier, perser, turkar, rumäner kroater och serber
Peruaner, chilenare, spanjorer, tyskar, finnar, italienare, fransoser, ryssar
Engelsmän och australier etiopier och somalier
svennar och blattar, långa och korta, männen i hattar är många och ofta
vi missförstår, vi bara skyndar på, missar så mycket så, vi inte lyssnar på

För ingen kan klara det ensam, vi måste ta tag i det gemensamt
För ingen kan klara det ensam, vi måste ta tag i det gemensamt

För det spelar ingen roll varifrån du kommer det handlar om var du är
oavsett vad som hänt förut nu handlar det om vad som sker
det händer nu, inte sen, vi suddar ut ett problem
för vi går runt och runt så upprepar sig på nytt historien
men det spelar ingen roll hur du ser ut du är ju byggd av blod och ben
vi suddar ut ett problem, ja det e nu, inte sen
vi suddar ut ett problem, ja det e nu, inte sen

To start with...

2007-01-03T20:27:00.000+01:00

I came to the year 2007
through my friends
in a state of confusion
but not the apathetic kind
the usual kind that is
not the kind where life is sucked out of me
in my lack of understanding

I arrived here
remembering
a bus, a smile, an argument
in Greek
faces, hands, hearts
I arrived with a sense of
accomplishment
confused by the ways of the world
the impact of my worldliness
and that of others

I came to the year 2007
in a silent contentment with
my life

Winter

2006-11-03T09:37:00.000+01:00

I had forgotten the subtlety with which Danish winter arrives
the messiness of it all
looking at the trees turning red, gold and brown
grasping the colours while they shed their leaves
the destructive expression, wind shaking the branches, eating the colours

I had forgotten the greyness of it all
the days that never fully become days
the hard rain which the wind forcefully impresses on my face
how it instills a feeling of being alive, of existence
while the viewed darkness will leave me forgotten in the opposite, oblivion

I had forgotten winter coats in November
and waking up on a Wednesday, pulling the curtains and seeing fresh white snow outside
I had forgotten how liberating it is to freeze my fingers, thinking they will fall off
only to remember that they won't, they will warm up holding a cup of tea

I had forgotten how scared I am of riding my bike in this weather
the wind taking control, trying to persuade me to loose my patience
the ice on the path, turning me into a paranoid freak imagining my scull cracked open on the asphalt

I had forgotten the beauty of the freezing sun
that envelopes my space, warms my back and highlights the children running past my house on their way home from school
and the plethora of colours that their hats and scarves present to the world
They do not shed their leaves, these children,
they do not abandon the colours

I had forgotten what I admitted to myself earlier this year
There's something about the weather in this part of the world,
it affects people's minds, makes them stay inside, isolated and private
Just when all I want is to welcome the world
There's something about the weather that makes constructive thinking implausible
something that makes it hard to see the splendour of everyday tasks
something that makes it harder to be stubborn, harder to breathe

I had indeniably forgotten how strong humans can be in the hopeless natural conditions of this country, this 'edge' of the world, my world
I had forgotten that candles can be lit, tea can be made, long hot showers and woollen blankets were invented for reasons
I had forgotten the joy of the combination of couch and book, a phone call and coffee

I had forgotten that it's just the weather and you simply have to deal with it...

A treasure

2006-11-02T00:46:00.000+01:00

Today is the 26th birthday of my friend Anette whom it is hard to describe in words.

If I had words for the strength of her friendship I would write them...
If I had words for her beauty I would describe it...
If I had words for my love for her I would tell her...

let me pause in a pleasure

2006-10-13T22:36:00.000+02:00

wednesday night i had the immense pleasure of enjoying my birthday present in the company of my good friends Lars and Anette and some of their friends. Jurassic 5 sold out Store Vega in Copenhagen - and well-deserved! It was a concert filled with good vibes and boogie, smiling faces and hands in the air... Anette and I fell in (very possibly unrequited) love with Chali 2na, the tall dude with the very husky bass rapping voice, and decided to kidnap him to have him sit in a corner and just talk. When we saw how nice they were to the fans after the concert, we reconsidered and decided he probably needed a night off.

If you are in the vicinity of anywhere they are playing, go see them, hear them, feel the love and get down to the groove that is the virtue of the J5 crew...

wherever we turn, there we will be...

2006-10-13T22:22:00.000+02:00

in this small country where we pay 40 per cent of our earnings in tax, where my grandmother gets to choose between two different dishes for supper at the hospital these days, where you get fined for crossing the road when the light is red, where anyone who conforms to the rules - both written and unwritten are the good guys and anyone who doesn't are so incredibly bad, where drunken youth make it their mission to have fun at someone else's expense; in this small country, i am reduced to tears by frustration...

yesterday, i listened to an enraged woman, a theatre director who ranted about danish society and the way suffering is made insignificant. i was enraged by her. i don't do that, the recognition of suffering is part of why i do what i do. someone else told me that when we try to understand other people's prejudices, we make ourselves guilty of the same dichotomy between 'us' and 'them', the good and the bad. we point fingers and forget that even the people with other views than 'us' are humans with reasons for thinking like they do. we forget.

so what is the issue, really? we should be enraged by ourselves, how we take this 'welfare society' for granted. at the meeting yesterday, there were mostly people a good deal older than me, people that as i see it represent 'old-school social democrats' with the war, the 70s and their children behind them. people who have created the society we have today.

when the enraged woman talked vividly about wars, about guts hanging out and eyes closed in excruciating death, these people cringe and whisper "she's a bit much, isn't she?" why? if she hadn't been directing her ammunition at 'them', the ignorant politicians and self-righteous upper-class, she would have made a brilliant point.

wherever we turn, there we will be...

'Tis a song, a sigh of the weary

2006-10-09T09:05:00.000+02:00

Hard times come again no more by Stephen C. Foster

Let us pause in life's pleasures
to count its many tears
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There's a song that will linger
forever in our ears
Oh hard times come again no more

'Tis a song, a sigh of the weary
Hard times, hard times,
come again no more
Many days you have lingered
around my cabin door
Oh hard times, come again no more

While we seek mirth and beauty
and music light and gay
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
Though their voices are silent
Their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times come again no more

'Tis a sigh that is wafted
across the troubled wave
'Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore
'Tis a dirge that is murmured
around the lowly grave
Oh hard times, come again no more

My passion for books

2006-10-08T01:15:00.000+02:00

Ah, books... Most people who know me, know that I don't shop clothes or shoes, or make-up or hardly ever music and films. But books, ah... I don't shop books often, in fact almost only when I visit my brother in London since taxes and fees on books in Denmark are too high for my cheap spender's mentality, or when the yearly book sales kick in here in February. But when I do shop books, I do it properly. My grandmother once, when I was in dire economic straits, asked me what I'd done with all the money from my student loan. I answered by pointing to my book shelf.

Last year, a friend of mine lent me her copy of Monica Ali's Brick Lane. It is great story of a woman who's married off from Bangladesh to a man of similar origin settled in London's East End. She lives her new life in Brick Lane, the main street of the East End, from her window with worries about her sister back in her home country and a disinterested contentment with her husband and children. Now, I hardly remember the specifics of that book because its significance relates to another one. Brick Lane inspired me, or more plainly made me curious about the East End. So I went to walk up and down real life Brick Lane when I visited London last year. And guess what? There's a bookstore... A lovely little one, old-fashioned one might say, with wooden book shelves and a cat on the counter. And there I found Salaam Brick Lane by Tarquin Hall (www.tarquinhall.com), a portrait of both the author, an 'indigenous' English man forced to live in the East End by his monetary situation, and the people whom he befriends. This is a must-read!

I've tried to explain the brilliance of this book to many of my friends but never seem to convince them properly which is mainly due to my unbridled enthusiasm with it. I read it in two days while walking the streets of London, and when realising that I was at the end of it simply opened on first page again and started over. How much of it is fiction and how much is real doesn't really interest me - the point is that it is authentic and could be real even if it isn't.

Among the people the author meets are the last of the Jews who orignally inhabited the East End in the 1940s and 50s, a charming group of elders who behind their proclaimed distance to society of today aptly represents it through its history; the Indians, many of them descending from seamen coerced to work on colonial ships and still carry the burden of colonialism with them; the Bangladeshis who share much of the Indians' history but are now the most dominant community in the East End; the refugees and asylum seekers from the Balkans, rejected and desolate in their search for better lives.

These stories are told through individuals which is the ultimate strength of the book. It outlines a history of poverty and disillusion, of shame and emotional chaos, of pride and the wish for a better life. To me, it tells the story of a modern humanity, surviving identities in a world of financial destitution and personal anger. Even if the stories, the persons aren't real they could be. And Hall tells these stories with empathy and realism, distance and compassion - and in the vernacular of the individuals described. With a global perspective manifested in the radically local, he tells the stories that we should listen to, the stories of individuals who are caught up in circumstances, who worsen those circumstances by making uninformed and sometimes even downright stupid decisions. I am always, when reading this book which I've done 3 times now, certain passages more than that, overcome by the urgency of humanity. We need to listen, I need to listen to these stories, these lives. I need to listen because these stories are human. Maybe others should too.

There's an abundance of literature about the East End, my favourites being the above mentioned and also Jack London's People of the Abyss. And there's still more to read...

Back in the game

2006-10-08T00:36:00.000+02:00

Busy these days, trying to get an overview of prominent human rights theorists in order to finish a long awaited paper at the History of Ideas.
This past week, we have witnessed an interesting development in the Danish People's Party. This is the 3rd largest political party in Denmark, currently in coalition with the government and eager defenders of so-called Danishness, the topic of my E.Ma Thesis. While I have my ideological differences with this party, every 6th Dane votes for them and thus, their democratic legitimacy is not to be questioned. However, some of the party's own members chose to question the policies of the leadership and subsequently faced 'exclusion' i.e. a letter saying 'you are no longer to consider yourself a member of the Danish People's Party'. These members had publicly stated discontentment with the leadership and made remarks that were not consistent with the official party line. So, exclusion.
The Danish media focus on the excluded members' account of the events. Apparently, freedom of expression is not allowed within the party. One is tempted to conclude that freedom of expression is a fighting creed for the party rather than a substantial freedom granted the utmost respect by its leaders and prominent members. As one stated, it is granted only when you say something about 'the muhamedans' [sic.], not when questioning the motives and work ethics of the party leaders. A figthing creed for what then? I wonder whether we are actually witnessing the implosion of this party - and if so, my guess is that this can be counted as a result of a incoherent political profile. A party with one issue on its agenda - the exclusion and marginalisation of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers in general and muslims in particular - is bound to have some difficulties when push comes to shove. So now, freedom of expression is under siege from disgruntled party members who wanted to put other issues on the agenda. Or comment on the structure of the party itself. Not allowed, agree with party line or leave. Aha. Sounds totalitarian to me...

Thanks to the abundance of free newspapers being delivered every night around 3 am on my doorstep, I was enlightened today about by Nyhedsavisen. They covered an interesting marketing initiative developed by two young Danes, both members (or previous, I couldn't figure it out) of the Danish People's Party. I haven't entirely formed a qualified opinion about the project yet but first impression is definitely 'interesting' and 'worth following'. Under the name Defending denmark - purposely written like this - these two guys are trying to brand Denmark - or denmark - in a new fashion.
As much as I despise branding and other marketing-type concepts stretched to cover simply all areas of life into the infinite, this has a point. Simply because the Danish state has embraced this method of promotion as well. Løgstrup (Danish theologian, very cool, will write about him some other day) once taught me that if you want to reach people, you have to speak a language they understand and are willing to listen to. So, branding language seems appropriate since the Danish Prime Minister has commissioned a commission, as it so often happens in these egalitarian democracies up here, to develop the new brand of Denmark (written in the traditional sense). The intention by Defending denmark to brand from a different perspective is therefore highly relevant and, on first impression, seems a lot more attractive than the government's strategy.
What caught my admiration first off was the attempt to defend Danishness from a realistic identity perspective. Building on investigations and (as far as I've seen so far) poignant observations about the Danish national idetity, it seems to represent a more realistic image - although still an image like all national identities are - of its core components. Also, I sensed a visionary intention to discuss these 'core components' and a willingness to scrutinize whether they really exist. Anyway, they write in English on their website so check it out and form a more qualified opinion than me, please... Address is www.defendingdenmark.com.

Tribute and Congratulations to my fellow Masteroni

2006-09-27T23:05:00.000+02:00

The year ended. With anxiety, stress, overwhleming joy and too many familiar faces in the corridors of Monastero di San Nicolò, Venezia Lido.

It ended with a bang - a shocking decision by the Executive Committee, a bang that could barely be heard in the clutter of future masteroni and yet overpowering the sounds of relief in many of those emotional Venice moments.

It ended with a sigh, passing slowly over our heads in the fish market that night, a sigh ending in tears signalling the end, the now, the beginning of all things, the presence of all loves.

It ended the way it started. With overwhelming experiences meeting people, with nervousness and unease, with excitement and promise.

It might have ended differently had I not been me, you not been you - and all others not been exactly the ones they are...

I wish to thank all of you for cotributing to this incredible year,
I wish to thank you for making up an amazing group of individuals who do not need to be anyone but who they are...

Peace out...

Nemesis and hubris

2006-09-19T23:50:00.000+02:00

Today I passed two 6-year-olds on the street on my way home from the university.

"Did your dad never tell you what nemesis is?"

"Uhm, no..."

"It's like when you think you can do everything and you can't do nothing at all... Like if I said I could beat you up like four times and then started and found out that I couldn't, and then you beat me up like five times first - then I was being nemesis and then, you beating me up was like the punishment, my hubris it's called. When you think you can do everything and you forget that you are just a person. Then you get beat up..."

Priceless...

Tribute to a friend

2006-09-12T22:29:00.000+02:00

Phenomenal woman

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them
They think I'm telling lies
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my steps,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's in the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing of my waist,
And the joy of my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
The palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me

Maya Angelou

Rendez-vous with a drunk

2006-09-12T10:13:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, as I was biking home from downtown Aarhus, I decided to stop by my favourite spot in the forest. It has benches and a great view of the beach below, the beach to the south (Moesgaard, my childhood wilderness), the marina and the incomparable container port or whatever those things are called. I sat down and stared into space.

A man walked up and sat next to me. He told me he was born in Italy and moved to Aarhus when he was 1. He said "I know this forest better than my own pocket, if I had any pockets". He told me he was a drunk and had made a complete mess of himself the night before. He told me he was 52, double my age and proceeded to ask what kind of person I was. I told him I was the kind of person who enjoys a spot like this one. He talked about studying philosophy, learning martial arts and drinking all your money away. He said he had no cigarettes left and that he once climbed to the top of the crane at the nearby construction site. When he came down he called the company that owned it and asked how high it was. 50 meters.

An older man came by and said that if he - the drunk - was considering to take the giant leap from a crane, he should let his hair grow first so that he would be landing on something soft. And maybe bring a pillow. Then he looked at my bike and said he wanted to steal it. His family standing a few steps away frowned on the whole thing. The old man said that they should put different screws on bikes even if it's more expensive. He said he liked its colour (it's bright and fancy green). The old man and his family walked off. The drunk told me he had written a personal add for the local newspaper.

"Ice cold psychopath with no sense of humour seeks woman for mutual blaming"

We laughed. He told me he had studied communication for 13 years. He used to study philosophy in university but got annoyed with the never-ending reading. Later, it turned out he had been involved with Scientology and that's where he learned about communication. In his opinion, a new dictionary for academics - called Blue Language as in blue collar/white collar distinctions - was the saviour of all the snot-nosed kids at the universities. He said that his soldier friend tried to communicate in wars. That wars begin when communication stops.

He told me I was a nice person and that on top of that I even look nice. He asked me to check out his window when passing by as it has a skull with a crystal inside - and when he turns on the light in the room (lamp made out of posters), the eyes of the skull light up. Next to the skull, he said, is a statue of Lenin. It looks weird, he said.

On my way home I wondered why I never met such people before...

Portugal and stuff

2006-09-12T09:33:00.000+02:00

Fled from the safety of home for a while, visited friends in different places. I realised that my future is not here but out there. I realised that the year in Venice and Thessaloniki was merely the start of my 'foreign affairs'. Gotta go. Gotta see. Gotta do. And I'm better at it somewhere else. Plan now is to rush through this study business at 'home' and get my lazy butt out of here... Anyone wants a visit?!

On a poetic note

2006-08-23T21:02:00.000+02:00

"Strip away the layers and reveal your soul
Got to give yourself up and then you become whole
You're a slave to yourself and you don't even know
You want to live the fast life but your brain moves slow
If you're trying to stay high then you're bound to stay low
You want God but you couldn't deflate your ego
If you're already there then there's nowhere to go
If you're cup's already full then its bound to overflow"

...I'm not religious, everybody knows that - but this part of Matisyahu's King Without a Crown always gets everything in me moving. Yasemin has born witness to that countless times in Thessaloniki when I first discovered the song. The important sentence for me is precisely the one with God mentioned - but I understand 'God' as any measure of Happiness we try to achieve in our lives. Such acievements require us to give up ourselves - I know it sounds corny, but still it's true for me. You have to give yourself up to find that which you hold in higher respect than your mere existence. For some, that is God, for others it is love, for me it is Life itself...

Betryggende

2006-08-23T05:54:00.000+02:00

Dansk Folkeparti ekskluderede igår 8 lokalformænd og en bestyrelsessekretær for deres utilstedelige adfærd i forbindelse med optagelsen af nye medlemmer med højreekstrenustiske sympatier. Idag siger partiets sekretær, at der vil blive afholdt kurser i partiets linie for lokalformænd og andre personer med autoritet i partiet. Interessant. Meget interessant endda, at man er nødt til at undervise medlemmerne af eget parti i, hvad dette står for. Betryggende at vide, at der faktisk er retningslinier for hvor meget til højre, man må være for at kunne optages som medlem. Iøvrigt sagde den fantastiske Peter Skaarup igår, at det var meget udansk at have radikale holdninger hældende mod højre. Nå. Jeg troede egentlig, at et "varmt nationalt sindelag", som de kalder deres politiske platform på deres hjemmeside, var ganske mod højre. Og for nogle uger siden pev flere medlemmer af partiet over at blive 'singlet ud' på deres arbejdsplads for deres politiske holdning. Hvor forfærdeligt! Tænk at blive udpeget som problematisk for det, man tror på. Jeg forstår helt ærligt ikke, hvordan disse mennesker kan sove om natten. Det absurde vil jo ingen ende tage! De piver over noget, de selv praktiserer endda med politisk magt bag; at være genstand for offentlig hetz er tydeligvis meget ubehageligt for dem selv, men der er ingen grænser for, hvor 'rationelt', 'realistisk' og 'hudløst ærligt' det er, når de gør det samme mod muslimer eller indvandrere generelt. Helt ærligt...

Boats to Europe

2006-08-22T19:43:00.000+02:00

This morning, I noticed the talk of so-called 'boat refugees' on the radio and just now I read an article in the newspaper (Politiken) about the issue. There are a few things in the article that caught my attention - especially considering the newspaper's usual left of centre angle on issues of this sort...
The article reports that a European network of sorts has been established to patrol the waters that divide - or connect depending on how you look at it - Europe and Africa. There is much praise for this operation because it helps 'everyone': the European countries are relieved of the burden of 'Afrcians' (yes, that is the term used in the article) on their soil and the 'Africans' are saved from a horrible death in the water. Or...? The 'boat refugees' - who are not in any juridical sense refugees - are often called illegal immigrants because they arrive in the receiving country without documents, without the proper paperwork in order for them to be allowed to live in a European country.
In Thessaloniki, Yan and also Fitti, Yasemin's boyfriend, taught me a few things about this. First, there is no such thing as an 'illegal immigrant'. An immigrant is someone who has a permanent residence permit or citizenship in the state concerned. Furthermore, calling people - persons, individuals, humans like me and my neighbour - illegal signals a lack of understanding for their situation. Respect for human dignity, the main principle of human rights work, should be the guiding light when talking about a very difficult situation like this one. 'Illegal' refers to the crime they are committing - but we don't call murderers illegal persons, do we? Thus, the proper term is (economic) migrants.

Second, Yan wrote an entire thesis on the issue, asking the question: why do economic migrants, i.e. people who try to escape an unbearable situation which is caused by economic relations in the country, why do they not have the option to seek for a better life somewhere else? I'm not sure how Yan answered the question, but I know how she asked it. She pointed to the power of the European countries and their money, she pointed to the fact the developmental aid and programmes actually create more migrants instead of decreasing the number. And she pointed to the Eurocentrism inherent in so-called 'strict border control', the protective rhetoric towards the nation-state. She argued (in 80 pages) that economic migrants have a right to respect for their human rights too, just like everybody else - and that the problem is not only in the influx of 'Africans' but also in the actions of European states towards less privileged countries. Okay, maybe what I just wrote is not that clear - it was just to say that the issue is not simple, and that the 'boat refugees' are also human and should be treated as such.

Next wonderment is the fact that the article does not teach me anything about what happens to these people when the 'water border patrol' stops them. Do they just send the little boats back? Do they block their way in the water and look upon these people with no sense of compassion, with hard eyes because the people in the boat are doing something illegal? What is the function of these patrols is what I want to know...
And lastly, did it ever occur to anyone that the people who got on the boats already considered the risk of dying a helpless death in the water? I mean, the article calls these deaths a tragedy - but I would say the real tragedy is the situation that makes people take this risk, the situation in their 'African' homelands which make them put so little value in their own lives that the risk of not making it to the other shore is a risk worth taking.

An event of Happiness

2006-08-22T02:18:00.000+02:00

This weekend, my friend Ditte and her male companion Jesper said their "I do's" in front of God and the congregation - a repeat of promises they made to each other on 15 July last year in all secrecy. It was an emotional day for me - friendships are also moved and touched by marriages. My congratulations to Ditte and Jesper in winning their battles on this one, having a relaxed and undramatic wedding celebration. I was grateful for the task of following Ditte from the beginning of the day - breakfast and coffee at the hairdresser and putting on the dress at Jesper's grandmother's house. All of it a very special experience for me, Ditte being one of my very closest friends. How fascinating to bear witness to a love so strong...

'Drawing Danishness' moving into the world

2006-08-15T15:26:00.000+02:00

I've had the incredible fortune of getting Mr. Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, former big shot politician in DK, to read my thesis. Although he is retired from politics now, his opinion is still valued in public debates here. As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, he encouraged the current government i.e. the same party he was leader of some years ago, to commission a proper investigation of discursive practices in DK. I sent him my thesis and got a positive and fruitful response this Sunday. He encouraged me to write a feature article for one of Denmark's liberal newspapers (not Jyllands-Posten) and forwarded my name to the editor...... (!!) So now, I'm struggling to put my fingers where my mouth is (??) and produce something fairly coherent and in Danish about this thesis. It ain't easy, I tell you. It's scary knowing that many people will possibly read it, my name will be in a newspaper next to something I have written and have to defend. Oh, the pressure... For the first time since I finished, I sat down today and started reading the bloody old thing. Some passages I still have to skip because I'm too embarrassed of the generalisations I'm making or the obvious political stance, I'm trying to hide. Honestly, my favourite parts are my thank you's and the title page...

Comment in Danish

2006-08-12T05:49:00.000+02:00

Kommentar til udtalelser i Politiken 10. august 2006

”Vi har ikke lavet klassedannelse, men blot et morgenmøde i grupperne hver morgen”
Ruth Hagen, skoleleder på Vesterbro Ny Skole

Interessant er det, at man for at afholde såkaldt ”danske forældre” fra at flytte deres børn til skoler med en mindre procentdel tosprogede elever, vælger segregering som løsningsmodel. Om noget cementerer det skellet mellem de ”rigtige” og de ”forkerte” danskere. Man vælger altså at imødekomme en frygt hos disse ”danske” forældre – en frygt, der som oftest bygger på det forskruede og problematiske billede, medier og politikere tegner af minoriteter indenfor landets grænser. Et fornuftigt skridt i skole-sagen ville være at indkalde de ”danske” forældre til integrationsmøde og lære dem, hvordan situationen faktisk forholder sig i dette dagens Danmark. Hvordan skal denne opdeling af skolens morgenstund modvirke parallelsamfundsdannelse, der til daglig bekymrer den danske befolkning? Hvordan skal den lære forældre, der er indvandrede for år tilbage, at deres børn er lige dele danske og lige dele ”anden etnisk herkomst”?

Haarders udtalelser om, at ”ændre nogle centrale formuleringer” i skolens skriftlige forslag, så opdelingen kan ”erklæres lovlig” signalerer en fuldstændig ligegyldig omgang med generelle principper om lighed og mod diskrimination. At Haarder kan forestille sig at modificere ordlyden af et forskelsbehandlende forslag, så det kan legitimeres i juridisk forstand, er en indrømmelse af dets særdeles problematiske indhold. Denne praksis, der finder sted i alle hjørner af Danmarks sociale og offentlige sfære, illustrerer den fordomsfuldhed og i dens ekstreme form racisme, der påtales af internationale organisationer særligt i denne tid. Hvis det, der bliver sagt, kan anklages for at være diskriminerende eller racistisk, så kalder vi det bare noget andet – hensyntagen til borgerne, beskyttelse af ”danske” værdier eller nytænkning indenfor integrationsinitiativer (!).

I øvrigt fratager forslaget de ”danske” børn muligheden for at danne sig indtryk af og have oplevelser med de danskere, der ikke nødvendigvis ligner dem selv, og det er derfor også en begrænsning af deres frihed til at lære deres samfund at kende i en fordomsfri atmosfære. Danmark er ikke kun befolket af ”rigtige” danskere med familiære rødder solidt plantet i den historiske danske muld, men også de (tilsyneladende neutralt) benævnte nydanskere, der i bedste fald bliver portrætteret som ”forkerte” danskere, i værste fald som udlændinge, der slet ikke hører til i Danmark. Den mangfoldige struktur i den danske befolkning ændrer sig ikke, inden disse børn bliver voksne og bevidste deltagere i samfundet. Man kunne da håbe og ønske sig, at de blev givet en realistisk chance for selv at danne sig et indtryk af, hvilke perspektiver der er i mangfoldigheden – både de problematiske og de mulighedsfyldte. Oplyste borgere forholder sig til et realistisk – om end altid subjektivt – billede af det samfund, de lever i, og denne skoles intention om en opdeling ”i det små” så at sige, altså en opdeling, der tilsyneladende ikke har videre konsekvenser, er præget af en hegemonisk kunstighed. Det er en opdeling, der på ingen måde præsenterer disse børn for et realistisk billede af dagens og fremtidens Danmark, og den er endnu et forsøg på at manifestere de ”rigtige” danskeres kulturelle og politiske magt over de danskere, der af flertallet betragtes som hørende til andetsteds.

Denmark and racism

2006-08-12T05:35:00.000+02:00

In these days, several Danish ministries are presenting this year’s report on their actions in relation to the Convention for the Elimination of All forms of Racial Discrimination to the so-called treaty body of the UN, the Commission for the Elimination of All forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). After reading the article in Politiken yesterday, stating that Danish society is up for “another exam on racism” in front of an international organisation, I felt something was missing. The article mentioned several reports dating back to 2004 in which the legal and institutional practices of the Danish government in this field have been criticised. However, the article does not specify the differences between the institutions that are researching, commenting and criticising. Earlier this year, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) published a highly critical report on Denmark, and the Danish Prime Minister rejected the findings of the Commission outright due to the plethora of ‘factual inconsistencies’ of the report. He was talking about numbers and figures. The nature of the ECRI’s criticism is fundamentally different from what will come out of the meeting with the CERD, and in my opinion this is a crucial point to make when talking about the monitoring activities of the different organisations.

The ECRI is a commission under the Council of Europe (Europarådet), the primary human rights organisation of Europe. The Council of Europe was established shortly after the Second World War with the prime purpose to secure human rights in its Member States which presently counts 46 including both Turkey and Russia which might not normally be understood as ‘European’. The Council of Europe is frequently misunderstood to be linked to the European Union but despite the cooperation in many fields of politics, the two organisations are distinct and profoundly different organisations. The difference is especially seen in the focus of their work. It was the Council of Europe that drafted and adopted the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) in 1951; the European Union has no such document although it is currently trying to adopt a Constitution which incorporates the ECHR as a separate part of the document. The Council of Europe has proven to the most effective regional human rights system in the world (compared with American and African counter-parts who have similar functions but fail to achieve success in creating institutional and legal stability so to speak in the field of human rights). This is mainly due to the refined workings of the Court which has consistently improved its legal practices through a steady development of case-law in relation to the changing make-up of Europe and its controversial issues. The ECRI was established in 1997 as a response to the ‘right-turn’ of European politics in general and the acceptance in European populations of prejudiced and racist discourse in the public sphere. The ECRI is not a monitoring body as such – it is an expert commission which tries to disentangle the institutional, economic and social dynamics that cause, create or justify hostility towards minorities.

The CERD on the other hand is a UN monitoring body, and the subject of its monitoring is the implementation of the Convention for the Elimination of All forms of Racial Discrimination. This convention was also drafted and adopted after the Second World War, but has a narrow scope towards racial discrimination i.e. it does not provide a fixed framework within which to deal with discrimination based on for example religion. It monitors the effect of the legally binding convention signed by the Member States of the UN and issues recommendations to the governments of these states. The material up for discussion in the CERD is reports provided by the governments themselves, or their specialised institutions in the field of discrimination. States are obligated to submit reports every 3-4 years. Thus, what is up for discussion this week in the CERD is the Danish government’s self-image. This is not to say that the CERD blindly takes the word of the governments as truth; it is a critical body of experts who questions the account provided by the institutional representatives. However, it is focused on the institutional practices of a state and does not deal with the wider context of a more social and popular nature. Discussions concern new legislation, policy changes and the general ‘philosophy’ behind the political agenda.

The point of all this was to emphasise the differences between the activities of organisations dealing with racism and discrimination on an international level. When the ECRI published its third report on Denmark in May, it created uproar in the Danish public on both sides of the ideological gap. The ECRI has the authority to be a lot more critical than the CERD and it has a wider basis for criticism due to the nature of its research (including NGOs for example). Furthermore, it is directly linked to the activities of the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights, hence the power of its recommendations have direct influence on the political make-up of Europe as opposed to the CERD which centralised functions may be important but not sufficiently linked to a political authority with implementational power.

Finding home

2006-08-11T20:20:00.000+02:00

...................Wow! What a different life, returning to solitary living and a flat that brings back both good and bad memories............

I have since I got home completely destroyed my flat, broken down kitchen cupboards, violently torn out screws from walls and bathroom fittings from pipes. After deconstruction comes reconstruction, and I painted both ceilings and walls of my so-called 'natural habitat' - all by myself... Oh well, what I meant to say was that I spent the last week and a half as 'interior-decorate-zilla' and am now all out of physical umpf. Half-done is annoying, but I just can't muster anymore strentgh to finish. Completely unwarranted, my brain started working again - on its own, thinking critical theories and sour replies to Danish politics.

What is home to me now? Many thoughts and ideas, among them my beautiful friend and her son and the forthcoming celebration of their family life (a wedding), my other friend and his insightful contributions to world order, my third friend, currently visiting Venice and her vigilant encouragements to whatever project I'm involved in, my fourth friend who got herself a boyfriend, my fifth friend who will be an aunt sometime next year, my parents coming by for coffee... Actually, probably, maybe, home is now somewhere inside me where all these magnificent people have room all the time, wherever I am. The phrase 'Home is where the heart is' can for me now be turned around: The heart is where my home is... Like I missed the people here, I miss the people there, and as Yasemin told me many times it is so hard to get used to missing people. It is however part of the human condition when humans live the kind of life I live.

What joy

2006-07-22T13:45:00.000+02:00

Vacation is going great so far. I've done absolutely nothing, tried to look at my thesis yesterday but really couldn't. Keep falling asleep everywhere in the house and on the balcony. This morning, Jonas (my brother) and I drove down to the lake/river and took a swim at 8 o'clock. How great is that? Future can wait to be planned until tomorrow, right...?!

...home...

2006-07-21T14:25:00.000+02:00

It's done. Finished, printed and sent off. Done.

I've been chasing my own tail for months now, the last week and a half included, but now - it's done. I'm back in Scandinavia after 3 days in beautiful Istanbul with Yasemin, her family and Fitti. I'm almost speechless as I have been for the past days.

I am tired. I want vacation. Hence my current location: turn right on the highway just after Middle of Nowhere, then a left turn after the small town Silence and keep your eye out for me when you've entered the village Endless Sleep and No Mentioning of Work in any Form, Shape or Size. Hope to see you there...

Thesis fatigue

2006-07-05T13:12:00.000+02:00

I have not properly been out of my house for about ten days. Grocery shopping and raiding the video store doesn't count. Days become nights and nights become days while I sit faithfully at my desk, pounding on the keyboard, bending my capabilities of thought... What is nationalism? How does it relate to racism? What is racism? And if the concept of race is not important, as a bunch of smart people have agreed, then what is it exactly that constitutes racism? And can I argue that it exists in Denmark, are my thoughts backed by references? Ayayay, having a thesis identity crisis...

On top of everything going on in my own head I've got two amazing flatmates, Yan and Yasemin who also have imploding heads and need to share. The flat is a jungle of thoughts... How do we conceptualise irregular migrants? Where is the underlying logic of strict border control? What exactly is going on in the new policy implemented by Sarkozy in France? -- How can we educate people, especially children about human rights? Where is the proof that educational programs work? What if we devised programs built on the creativity of music, could we then catch the attention of the generation of tomorrow to get involved in human rights work? There' s proof that it works - but how to argue that music might be the most effective tool to promote human rights...?

Although I have never felt as academically blessed as I have in the process of this thesis, I am tired now, exhausted from thinking, reading and trying to formulate everything in (understandable) English. My supervisor is waiting for my final draft so that he can comment on it before I make the final adjustments and submit it. But I just can't think anymore. Or rather, I am so tired of thinking that the speed with which I do think is just not acceptable... But finished I will be... Later today...

My mother's daughter

2006-06-22T19:44:00.000+02:00

I just recovered from a wonderful 4 days with my mother here in Salonika. My first official visitor! The temperatures climbed above 35 degrees and the ice cream melted before you could say "mums" (yum in Danish). We spent a lot of down time together, walking the city or lying on my bed and couch just sorting out the business of running the world. A few really nice dinners and one night at the Electra Palace, complete with luxurious room, 2 swimming pools, hammam, sauna, jacuzzi and massage... Mmmm, well-deserved after last weeks fight against time to finish my first thesis draft.

My mom bought me a beautiful tavli board (backgammon) which will forever remind me of all those hours Yase and I spent on the balcony (Dr. B2) swearing and cursing, trying to change the luck of the game... It was a pleasure having her here, showing her around time, introducing her to Yan and Yase, Giorgos and Jenny (my Greek family) and all their hippie friends - and it was a pleasure for me to pretend to be on holiday for a couple of days. Enjoying a good dinner on the roof of the Electra Palace made me feel like I regained some part of me that I had lost for a while - and since I have now become extraordinarily good at directing my mind i.e. turning it off from thesis work and stress, it is actually possible to let the mind be empty, especially when floating around in a swimming pool all alone while listening to Mozart.

This is a job for... SuperSara!

2006-06-13T11:17:00.000+02:00

Just as I thought I couldn't feel more isolated in my research work / thesis production, Uffe steps in and saves the day. A great thanks to Lars who on his blog made a comment about it.

In the Sunday edition of Berlingske Tidende, Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, former Minister of Foregin Affairs for Venstre (the Liberal Party) said that an impartial scientific study should be carried out in order to establish the real character of the infamous 'tone' in the Danish debate about 'foreigners'. What a blessing! It was basically a confirmation of my right to do what I'm doing - and that I'm not alone in thinking this is necessary for the future of Denmark. There are way too many easy labels to put on people - I particularly don't like the frequent and indiscriminate use of 'racist', 'hatred against foreigners' (fremmedhad) for the one side and 'idealist' (used as a bad word), left-wing radicals and so forth about people who think something is kind of 'rotten in the State of Denmark'. I insist on my right to be tolerant towards people who live their lives differently than me - but I retain my right to be against any expression of prejudice (whether it be committed by 'proper Danes' against 'foreigners' or by Pakistani-Danish men against the women in their families), violence (whether it be committed by white supremacists in Beligum or by brothers of sisters who love someone they are not supposed to) and ignorance. Yes, the last one might be my primary focus of action. Einstein once said

"There are only two things that are infinite - the Universe and ignorance. But I'm not sure about the first one"

I like it. Therefore, I am currently fighting my own ignorance about the deeper meaning of what is being said in the Danish public discourse but also trying to make a small contribution to eliminating some of the general Danish ignorance about our primary 'others'. It is not about calling people racists - it is about learning how to live together, about the Danish people realising the power they exercise against their minorities through producing a social truth every single day in the newspapers. I want to change that truth. But first I have to show that it is bad for Denmark.

So, right, where was I. Oh yes, Uffe was quoted in the newspaper. I was uplifted and got so excited that I couldn't even explaing it properly to my mother on the phone. Because, my friends, it shows that sticking to your guns (I want to study History of Ideas, I want to focus on Human Rights, I think there is a need for people to work on how Danish people think) can actually be validated - even if just by the opposition it meets (cf. the hectic debate in the newspaper about whether such a study should actually be carried out). So this time, I have to thank myself even though it sounds kind of silly. Thank myself for following my academic instinct through all the years. Bravo, me!

Oh, the happiness of drinking...

2006-06-08T16:57:00.000+02:00

What better to do when you're busy with your thesis than to spend a Tuesday night with two Danish KFOR soldiers (who you thought were never going to call because you made a perfect arse of yourself when you met them) in the tempting bars of Salonika? My two new friends respectively from the South of Denmark and the East had a couple of hours off when they came here to pick up cleaning stuff for their Danish friends in Kosovo, and they decided to invite me out. First though, they followed me to watch my woman, Yasemin, do her much talked about Afro-Brazilian dance performance which we all enjoyed. A perfect sunny eve to watch Brazilian lovelies capoeira away and Yasemin and her friends shake their thang to the sound of drums.

I have been blessed with encounters these past months; I have been given the opportunity to make unlikely friends and meet remarkable people. These two Danes are no exception. Even though I was close to dying yesterday from the hangover this night incurred, I had a warm and fuzzy feelings about being in this place and having these rendez-vous with people I would never have befriended under 'normal' circumstances. Again, I feel thankful.

What is more, I have the unbelievable joy of welcoming my mother to Salonika next weekend! She is arriving the day after I have to submit the first draft of my thesis to my supervisor, and I'm counting on a few days total relaxation and coffee drinking while soaking up some gentle mamma-love. Who is luckier than me?!

Kosova under my skin

2006-06-04T02:30:00.000+02:00

When I went to Kosova with my Master's programme in January, I had the incredible fortune of meeting a generous and good-natured family, the Kastratis, where I and 3 other E.MA girls spent a week occupying 2 of the 4 rooms in the house. They normally live 7 people there - mother and father, father's mother and the 4 children Katrina, Fisnik, Visar and Loriku. Since Thessaloniki is only 4½ hours by train to Skopje and another 2 hours on bus, I promised I would come back to visit them before I leave this part of Europe. So I went.

I saw a very different Kosova this time, partly because the place doesn’t look so utterly hopeless in the spring time (or whatever it is we are having now) and partly because I had the time for the type of conversations that really teach you something. The family arranged an outing Friday evening to the forest near the city – it was like coming home, for some reason the vegetation is similar to that of ‘my forest’ back home in Aarhus. We walked and talked and listened to the birds – and turned a corner and found the former most luxurious hotel in the area in ruins. Apparently the hotel had been occupied by the Serbs, and NATO targetted it as one of their first 'enemy dwellings'. I have never seen anything like it in my life. In the dusk it looked like a pile of bricks – but with clear signs of life reminding me that people died in there. Now, being the sentimental and very protected geek that I am, it obviously made a big impression on me. Whoever these people were, they died a horrible death in there. I’ve never really understood ‘horrible death’ before but it came to me in that forest right then, and I was very afraid (of death and horrible things that can happen to you before you die, but mostly of the people who can do such things to other humans) and panicked.

The day after, I went up to Mitrovicë to have a look around with the oldest son in the family. Had an embarrassing experience with the Danish KFOR up there and am sure they’re laughing at me at least for the next month. I was lucky enough to meet some relatives of the family in Pristinë; they had fled the town in 1999 on foot, walking all the way from Mitrovicë to Albania! Bajram, the father of the family, started talking – and talking and talking and talking. He had been filming events of Kosova since 1987 so he had some incredible footage of demonstrations by miners in the north walking all the way to Pristinë to join an even bigger demonstration and also of the 38 Albanian conscripts to the Yugoslav army who were sent back to their families in coffins, apparently having committed suicide. The footage showed their mangled and beat up faces and a couple of them had been loosely stitched together after someone had stolen their organs!

On my way back on Sunday, I got stuck in Skopje, honestly an extremely desolate and hopeless place, for a bunch of hours without Macedonian money (so I couldn't go to the bathroom before I figured out how to get some). The experience turned from *argh* to *sob* when I met two of the kindest French military police officers. They both work in Kosova (at least for a little while still, being employed by the UN Mission to Kosovo means going home at the end of the month for many of the police officers). These two fellas told me stories about their work, about their lives and engaged in all my wonderments with enthusiasm. I asked and asked, and they elaborated and spoke with such humanity that it's hard to describe. I admire these humans that spend their days saving girls from prostitution through human trafficking and constantly try to improve the workings of the UN and international cooperation in general. We spent some 7 hours together in the train station and on the train and by the end of the night, my ears were ringing and my brain was blowing steam out of my ears to try to process all this new information.

As I will probably never see these two again, and I need to direct my thankful thoughts somewhere, a heart-felt gratitude goes out to all those humans out there being human, working for a better world, neglecting themselves and sacrificing other life privileges still finding it useful and worthwhile to do the jobs they do.

Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of Peace must be constructed
(from the UNESCO Constitution)

Peace out....

Understanding

2006-06-03T22:36:00.000+02:00

I haven't been blogging for a while, mainly because I always start thinking too much before writing and then never get around to it. This morning, I read a very sad story in the Danish newspaper, a story I've heard about before but not known the specifics of.

Apparently last year, Slagelse, a provinsial kind of town about an hour from Copenhagen, became the scene of a so-called 'honour killing'. A Danish-Pakistani girl was murdered by her brother because she fell in love with and eventually married the wrong man (who was also originally from Pakistan). How can someone kill their own little sister? As much as I try to advocate in my work and general doings that respect and understanding are the building blocks of co-existence of different (cultural) groups in society, I don't understand this - or rather, I really don't want to understand.

It is wrong to kill a person, it's so tragic when it's someone the perpetrator knows - but it is outright sickening and utterly hopeless to kill your own family whether your wife, lover, partner or children, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. I really don't understand how someone can do such a thing. Like I don't understand how two children in Tønder, DK were 'rented out' by their parents - yes, you heard me, their PARENTS - to strange men in their 50s and 60s who had a tendency to enjoy certain carnal pleasures with children. Aaaarrgh, what in Gods name is wrong with these people??!

And now an interesting point that popped up in my head; the 'honour killing' of the Danish-Pakistani girl was used by different voices in the media to highlight the problems with integration and letting people be 'allowed' to practice their own cultural traditions. I dig. Doesn't make sense to allow people to kill their sisters because some tradition tells them so BUT apparently, Danish traditions tells us to prositute our children (if we are to follow the logic of generalising from one instance to entire cultures) so in actual fact, 'we' shouldn't even be allowed to sustain 'our own' culture in Denmark. You see what I mean?

Another little trip

2006-05-23T20:36:00.000+02:00

Well well, I kind of went into hiding after last week's publishing of this report. My thesis topic is now backed up by so many organisations that I'm worried I won't be able to say anything of interest. The most interesting thing about this is the fact that before the report, I thought I was a genius :-) Anyway, the work is progressing - especially after I spent this weekend in Ioannina where my supervisor lives. He's very good at getting me to structure my thoughts and he's got just as many ideas as me, so by the time we finished working on Saturday we had enough material for a PhD thesis...
This place, Ioannina, was a much needed getaway for me (even though I have hardly been here the past month, hmm...). The city is in the North West of Greece fairly close to the border to Albania and the sea (which I obviously forgot the name of but it is - surprise surprise - on the west coast of Greece), and it's located in a sort of hole in between the mountains leaving room for a huge lake. Really, this place is as beautiful as I have ever seen one... Sunday I spent working for some hours and then venturing out to explore in the afternoon. I soon realised that I had not left my stereotypes and Northern European ideas at the hotel when I walked around the city's castle in search of what I thought was the 'main church' of the city - and found two open-air museums, one around the mosque (not church, me felt ignorant) of Ali Pasha who ruled the city in the 18th century, and another around the Its Kale Citadel which has been in use since 1084 (!!!) as fortress of the city. This place was amazing, showing signs of all kinds of people - Christian, Muslim, kings and queens... I must admit it was a great experience for me for the first time to see remnants of the Ottoman Empire.

I also made friends with the man running the ferry from the city to its little island where according to the local youngsters "we don't have television and make sex to our wives every day"... Hmm, that sort of fits a few stereotypes of mine about Greek men and testosterone... The island is peaceful and quiet which I very much appreciated, and it houses 6 monasteries scattered along the shoreline. I couldn't find any information about these places - but that didn't stop me from enjoying the utter bliss of being all alone walking from one spectacular monastery to the next, feeling the serenity of people who used to get closer to God here. This is the first time I have seen simple and modest buildings of religion in Greece - they are usually ornamented into obscurities and not awe inspiring at all.

Anyway, I just felt like sharing a bit of this soul's journey that brought me well-deserved peace of mind, sitting in the shadow of a big tree, listening to the wind moving them and looking out over the magnitude of the mountains and the lake. For once the constant challenges of my brain was silenced by the fact that I couldn't really think of anything to think of. Skønne timer var det...

Thought I had no words left...

2006-05-16T20:51:00.000+02:00

I am so ashamed. And sad. I really felt my whole being drop to the floor when I read the new report from the ECRI about the situation of racism and intolerance in Denmark. How the f*** did we let this happen to our beautiful country? How did we let this government and their companions through everything, the Danish People’s Party, undermine and castrate the entire belief system that served as the foundation under our constitution? I am so ashamed. Of my own ignorance and apathy. Of the silent majority. Of the total lack of compassion reflected in the report, regardless of the fact that it is not representative of the population as a whole. Of not being able to do anything. Of being tired of fighting the same stereotypes, battling with a machine of a “welfare” system supposedly based on the idea of equality, struggling to convince myself that there is still good and will left in the Danish people to rage against the machine. Of wanting to change my citizenship thereby relinquishing my heritage as a Dane. I am ashamed of the way I let myself get upset about this. I am ashamed of wanting to stay away. I don’t care about a fragment of the Muslim population being fundamentalists (but not necessarily terrorists). I don’t give a rat’s ass about the so-called ‘crime of ethnic youth’. In perspective, I would probably react the same way if I was living in a country where it is publicly justified to engage in verbal abuse of people you don’t know and gross generalisations that guard the fortress of the liberal and so incredibly self-f******-righteous traditions and ‘culture’ (what a laugh!). Denmark has become a mockery of its ideals, it has become the rotten state that it was once feared it would become. Call me a traitor, tell me that I’m not being civilised in my rage and that arguments which include swearing and uncontrolled rants are not valid in a political discussion. I don’t care. I haven’t heard a single intelligent uttering on this issue from our government in the past 5 years. I’m so immensely and fundamentally ANGRY about what has happened to the country I call my Fatherland. Of what we – all of us – have let happen to it. Where is Grundtvig, where is Kierkegaard, where are the people that invented LEGO? Where is our pride? What is left to be proud of? If this is the Danish-ness we are supposed to protect, I’m signing out, giving up all my social benefits, erasing my CPR. number, changing my mother tongue. I do not want part in this anymore, not even by linguistic association.