The Pakistani Political Situation

With President and ex-general Pervez Musharraf growing increasingly unpopular, we plan to monitor the political situation in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. With elections coming in February after being delayed by Musharraf due to internal instability, who will rise to the top? What role will the assassination of Benazir Bhutto play? Will a moderate, pro-American government be elected, or will the growing Islamic fundamentalist factions emerge victorious? We will try to understand what sort of role Pakistan will play (and be able to play) on the world stage in the near future, and whether or not they will defeat their own fundamentalists or be absorbed by them.

My effect on international relations

Let’s begin with a light anecdote to get the ball rolling. During the summer back home, I work at my local zoo’s gift shop/cafe, stocking the store from the warehouse and occasionally  manning one of Aramark’s outflung stands inside the park selling souvenirs. It was a typical day in August, meaning it was hot and humid and ungodly bright, and the 400 pound tortoises behind me were doing what 400 pound tortoises do best, which is make lots of little 2 oz. tortoises very loudly. As I stood there, bored, hawking my wares, two small children of indeterminate sex and their father (wearing a cowboy hat, it should be noted) came into view. “Daddy, Daddy, can we buy something?” one of the two children cried, hope evident in his tone.

That child’s father looked his son/daughter in the eye and said, very calmly, without changing his expression: “No dear. Everything we buy helps to prolong the agony of the Malaysian slave children who have to make it all.”

Many would call me poker-faced, but it took all I had to remain upright, let alone to keep a straight face. When he came nearer, I extended my hand and shook his, glad to be accorded the privilege of meeting a parent so creatively able to tell their son/daughter “No” and succeed with no protests on the part of the little one.

We went out separate ways, but that incident now makes me think: the two of us knew he wasn’t really serious about what he said, but what if he was still right? That’s where I come into things. I am, at this present moment, wearing an extremely comfortable shirt of red cotton, long john style, made in Lesotho for Gap, if the label is assumed to be correct. It’s not Malaysia, but the principle is the same- my shirt came from a small, fairly poor nation, with dubious child work laws. By accepting this gift, I’m helping to pay the wages of someone living in a small country who relies a lot on the export of clothing, according to wikipedia. To quote: “Lesotho has taken advantage of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) to become the largest exporter of garments to the US from sub-Saharan Africa. Exports totaled over $320 million in 2002. Employment reached over 50,000, marking the first time that manufacturing sector workers outnumbered government employees.”

It’s a long way from there to here, but if people like me didn’t buy clothes like the shirt I’m wearing, someone over there could potentially not have a job to feed themself or their family with. By choosing to buy something- nearly anything, these days- I am directly responsible for stimulating the economy of a minimum of two different countries. It’s a small power, but it’s power nonetheless. When millions like me do the same, official foreign policy reflects that. One snowflake starts the avalanche, even if you can’t tell which one it was. Maybe it was me.

And as a P.S., “Significant levels of child labour exist in Lesotho, and the country is in the process of formulating an Action Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (APEC), which is likely to be adopted in the period 2006-2007 (see Child labour in Lesotho).”

- John

Rachel’s Monumental Event

I’ve always had an interest in foreign cultures, in travel, in language. It was in eighth grade that I went on my first mission trip with Habitat for Humanity International. I knew that what I was doing was good, I knew that in helping to build a home for a family in need I was making a difference, but I didn’t feel so changed by the event. Two years later I again joined up with Habitat for Humanity and went on a build in Honduras…still, I knew I was making a difference, but didn’t quite understand how. And so it happened that in February of 2007 I finally had a monumental event that changed my life. Our Habitat Mission Team decided that instead of choosing a new location for our trip, we would venture back to Honduras. I wasn’t exactly thrilled by this idea as I wanted to travel to a new part of the world. Early on in our trip we planned to visit the families whose houses we had helped to build two years before. I figured that this would just be a small out of the way trip to see some ordinary cinder block house and talk with a family that probably had three other teams that had also helped and who would barely remember us. There were only three of us from the original group who had returned to Honduras and so I was pushed to the front of the pack in hopes from the others that we would be recognized. I nervously moved forward not knowing what to expect. A woman peered out at us from her window and came running outside. I was amazed to see her reaction. She quickly flung open the gate and called us onto her porch. My mom pushed me ahead urging me to follow the woman, but I had a hard time simply walking. As I made my way through the gate I was flooded with emotions and memories from the build. She called her children onto the porch to greet us who gave us all hugs and a joyous welcome. This reunion was followed by a tour of the house. A house that I had helped to build. Finally I could see the finished product. I saw the sturdy walls to keep them safe, the kitchen to prepare their meals, the beds to be their nightly comfort. And I saw the pictures. I saw my picture. Strewn about the shelftop were the polaroids that we had taken during the build and given to the family. The time that I spent inside of that concrete house in a small village in Honduras truly changed me forever. It’s not that I’m so radically different from the person that I was before. I volunteered, had an interest in the world, a desire to help others, but I never realized how amazingly rewarding my work could be. I never knew the impact that I could make on someone’s life with my small tasks. When we left that day, it wasn’t for the physical building of the home that we were thanked, it was for our time, for our caring. That is the moment that has made me want to continue to travel to such places and reach out to as many people as possible.

THE Monumental Event in John’s Life

After a great deal of thought, I believe that the event that has shaped my life the most dramatically is my decision, at the age of 14, to join an off-topic discussion forum made up of fellow Americans and others from many other countries like Spain, England, Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia. As trivial as this may sound, it was my first experience with people not from my immediate geographical area and it helped to open my eyes to the world around me. Age probably had something to do with it, as I was young and impressionable, but I maintain that my interest in other countries and other people came as a direct result of joining Outside Discussions. The people I spoke with there often held very different opinions from those people I spoke with in the course of daily life, and I was curious as to why this was the case. Just why this happened to be the case was not obvious at the time, and I distinctly remember my shock once at hearing someone talk about the government discussing trying to ban or limit something that we in the US took completely for granted. Exactly what it was is unimportant (and convenient, since I can’t quite remember what it was just now anyway…) but the shock I felt remains clear. Didn’t they have that particular right guaranteed them as a matter of course? Apparently not. It’s been a long process, and this June I’ll have been a member for five full years, but over that time my eyes have been opened much wider as regards the world outside of the United States of America (and also within, in other regions I’ve never visited). Joining that forum is what helped to spark my interest at traveling overseas- realizing that there were people like me across the Atlantic and the Pacific, down in South America, and even just on the other side of North America too. I’ve become such good friends with some of my fellow forummers there that I’ve even gone out of my way to physically meet some of them during my travels to places like Ireland and Spain. In short, there existed John’s world BEFORE discovering Outside Discussions, which was small and local, and then there was John’s world AFTER discovering Outside Discussions, a much, much bigger place than I could have previously imagined, and filled with an even greater number of fascinating people than I would have thought possible a few years before.

- John Alulis 

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