"We are (-n't) the world...."

[DFW]

My elder daughter is up here on Cape Cod with three of her friends who live in New York City. She speaks her flawless German to my wife, and her flawless English to everyone else here.

One of her three friends is half Argentine, half German, speaks fluent Spanish, English, German, and some Italian.

Another is full-blooded Argentine, speaks fluent Spanish, English, some Italian.

The third is from Singapore, speaks fluent English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and some local dialect of Chinese spoken in Singapore.

My younger daughter is in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania. I just spoke to her on some temporary cell phone number she has there. She was at a seaside bar with some old and new friends, debating whether to go up to Zanzibar tomorrow, up to Mombasa in Kenya, or over to Arusha for a mini safari. Zanzibar is reachable by ferry, the other two are 8 hours by bus.

It's difficult to imagine, with the world seeming so cosmopolitain and modern, that conflicts are raging with armed fanatics touting a religion practiced peacefully in Tanzania, blowing up people in the name of Allah, while we do the same in the name of Jesus, or other religious wars next door in Sudan starving out 2 million people, and at a distance far closer to her than we are, or even her old/new home in Germany.

When I was their age, it was definitely not possible to just text your parents in North America and then talk to them two minutes later by cell phone from Dar-es-Salaam.

"Curiouser and curiouser," as Lewis Carroll might have said..........

[alcibiades_mystery]

1. Must be nice...

:wow:

[DFW]

2. Must be nice to be 25 again

She (the younger one) starts work in Germany in a month because she couldn't find work in her
field in the USA. A trip to Tanzania from the States would have been a major undertaking. From
Germany, it was closer than a flight to Dallas.

[malaise]

4. Yes there is a big wide world

with lots of opportunities for those who are willing to abandon 'exceptionalism' and learn how to use new technologies.
You clearly did something right. :hi:

[DFW]

6. One of our greatest prides

Both our daughters have friends from all sorts of countries and cultures, and love the diversity.
The younger one lived with a Hindu woman while she was serving with the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal
in Sierra Leone 2 years ago, and didn't even complain about the lack of running water or electricity.
Most of her African friends there were Muslim, but as no one in Sierra Leone much cares to make a
big deal of religion, it's not an issue there. Zanzibar is mostly Muslim, of course. We'll be
interested to hear what she has to say about the situation there. She has friends in Dar, but
doesn't know anyone (yet) in Zanzibar. I taught her what Swahili I know (not much), but she picks
that stuff up pretty easily.

[malaise]

7. You are great parents

:grouphug:

[DFW]

10. We did what we could

At some point, they have to make their own way. So far, they are.

The most important thing to us was that they grow up with open eyes and an open mind.

[rug]

3. It's class. I doubt you'll find many Taliban or GIs with that circle or those funds.

[DFW]

5. Actually, my daughter in Africa said the place was full of ex-pats

Including drop-outs from all corners of the earth, who just wanted to leave it all behind.

Not much in the way of funds needed to live in Dar-es-Salaam, so why not some ex-GIs?
Considering their armaments, and their opium harvest the Taliban appear to be way
better-funded than she ever will be.

[rug]

8. That may be but the cause of wars is more likely scarce resources than lack of cell phones.

[DFW]

9. In much of Africa it is old tribal rivalries exacerbated by economics

The colonial powers in Africa, as with the middle east, drew borders with no regard to historical ethnic
boundaries. Putting rival tribes into one artificial country was no more logical in Africa than it was in
Iraq. The result was just about as successful, too. Find diamonds in Sierra Leone and the tribes will spar
over them. Find oil in Iraq, and those ethnic groups where the oil isn't will try to grab some of the wealth
from those who live where it is.

The stories my younger daughter was allowed to reveal were out of a horror film. We can only imagine the
ones she was not allowed to talk about (oath of silence as an officer of the court). Her report from
Tanzania so far is much more encouraging. Kikwete seems to be a vast improvement over the Nyerere days.