When i was around ten or eleven , i decided i should be playing a stronger role in saving the word we keda, and consequentially got myself involved in a number of activities to do just that.
I taught myself how to recycle paper and started recycling newspapers (and sometimes even normal paper.. which defeats the purpose!), i started doing research on pollution, the ozone and all that was happenign to it, i started doing research on animals that were becoming instinct and prepared to subscribe as a volunteer to a number of organizations that were fighting hte extinction of such animals, and started buying national geographic regularly at around 13 keda..
I also started paying regular visits to my garden; taking pollen from some flowers and spreading it to others, to ensure their survival we keda.. I also started spreading seads falling from trees around to make sure they don't grow in small spaces and suffocate each other like my biology book said they would (was trying to help encourage all factors my books claimed would increase chances of survival and eliminate all factors that would adversley effect plant survival.
I also started preapring little presentations with my neighbours for my dad, my uncles, my neighbours on how smoking was bad for your health.
Also used the same biology book for pictures, and then used colorful posters to make my own diagrams. Over adn above all this, i tried focusing all my school presentations, and writing assignments in english classes, on envirnomental issues, as well as animal rights, and extinct animals we keda.When a bit older i took el mawdu3 a bit further to ethical issues...what type of make up i would buy, what not (depenign on mokawennat.. a certain mokawwen came from whale fat and people were killing whales for it)what type of food.. certain artifical coloring was cancerous and envrinometally unfriendly..i discovered freon that came out of hte fridge and ac was realy bad for ozone, and so ghedebt 3al talaga for sometime, and had problems accessing water and food at others.. as i tried to economize on teh number of times i opened the fridge. (the kitchen windo was right next to it, which made ozone crime rate by my fridge even higher!) Ofcourse fur was a very sensitive topic 3andy, as well as elephant tusks ..
Here ba2a, things started getting a little messy though.
Things like opening the fridge for eg.things like elephant tusks and certain jewlery... if i realy liked ivory should i stop buying it all together (becuase SOME elephants were killed JUST for that) wala should i buy fake tusks.Wala was it realy worth increasing the demand 3ala the tusks aslan.. real or fake..
when a bit older i took el mawdu3 a bit further to ethical issues...
what type of make up i would buy, what not (depenign on mokawennat.. a certain mokawwen came from whale fat and people were killing whales for it)
what type of food.. certain artifical coloring was cancerous and envrinometally unfriendly..
i discovered freon that came out of hte fridge and ac was realy bad for ozone, and so ghedebt 3al talaga for sometime, and had problems accessing water and food at others.. as i tried to economize on teh number of times i opened the fridge. (the kitchen windo was right next to it)
ofcourse fur was aveyr sensitive topic 3andy, as well as elephant tusks we keda..
things started getting a little messy though.
things like opening the fridge for eg.
things like elephant tusks and certain jewlery... if i realy liked ivory should i stop buying it all together (becuase SOME elephants were killed JUST for that) wala should i buy fake tusks.
wala was it worth encouraging demand 3ala the tusks aslan?
fake tusks was a stupid idea. bas i loved ivory. hte fact that it was alive or part of something alive.
bas i just couldn't bear buying it when i found out the number of elephants that were killed intentionaly for it.
tab do i boycott tuna completely, becuase the way tuna fish were finsehd for (using fishing nets) always led to whales being caught.
the whales get caught in the net and they suffocate as teh net stays inteh water for a long time and they are not able to come up for breath.. and so they even have a painful death.
i don't like tuna tab3an and i LOVE whales and elehphtans they are such BEAUTIFUL animals keda.. they know how to love, they know how to live.. so emtional keda, and GOOD.
fa tab3an it was realy easy for me to avoid tuna, make up and tusks.. (i didn't realy like them aslan).
bas i didn't want to be pretentious.
was i stopping these things, becuase that was the way i could save these animals.. wala was i doign it becaue it was easy for me to stop those things (tuna, jewelry and make up) as htey meant nothing ot me and theni could proudly claim my boycotts.
the thoughts plagued my mind keteer, especially when i was realizing that all these animals, i loved so much, were going to dissappear keda keda as what i was doing was realy not affecting statistics..
during this period i also started doing research on the industries taht used children..
in india and other countries the carpentry, that was brining cancer and lung diseasers, the children that were used in mining, fel ma7ager and how their lungs were hardening... and a few othe rindustries where teh children were dying painful deaths..
bardo, similarily they were all thigns that were easy for me to boytcott..
bas eventually i felt that my deciding to stop buying or encouraging these industries was taking me farther and farther away from the cause..
it's the same way (although they're compleeeetely diff topics) i felt about egyptians denying the existance of teh state of israel, or the whole 'la 2e3teraf' principle.. although my stance when i was younger was much stronger agaisnt israel, based on my palestinian freinds, attitudes at home, and my complete non-exposure to israelis.
i felt that my boytcotting waas a form of avoiding the issue, and evnetually made me forget about.. either ny making me feel i was 'doing' something.. or by taking me far away from it keda.
i felt it was more of a passive initiative rather than an active one.
tuna reminds me of the whales. bas i don't realy eat tuna.
the tusks i still avoid completely.
however i enjoy all our long distance phonecalls, even though i know that the waves that these phonecalls cuase, have made it impossible for whales to communicate in the water using sound waves (as htey always used to across oceans) thus leading to their dperession, lack of mating, and death. death not only by hunters and poachers now, bas lonliness and isolation.
i dropped the child labor issue altogether. i decided i could deifnatley play a stronger role in stopping peopel from using the kids.. somehow.
raising awarness ba2a, workign with children, exploding a carpet factor in india or pakistan, mesh moshkella, something had to be done.
at a certain point i thought boycotting was the least thing i could do. bas after sometime i JUST couldn't feel it anymore.
just like i couldn't feel the hunger strikes people did. my dad and aunt went on quite a few during student political strieks when they were young.. and i just could not understood how it helped. it just felt very weird to me keda...
those were the thoughts and decisions of a twelve year old.
when i went to south africa, i learned that kol el massayeb was finding gold in south africa. it brough teh whole world's attention and led to slavery and bllood shet and colonizationa dn injustice.
injustice was the key word.
and i attended alot of seminars nad documentaries taht emphasized how a minieral like gold, that was suppoed to be a blessing was such a curse to the country.
kol ma2sa talked about that. people that lived in the townships had to come to teh city mazluleen as hte only jobs htey had were working in the mindes.. el este3bad kolo can fiel mines.. the children were made to work in the mines.. the gumboot dancing started in teh mines.. alot of sad songs were made in the mines.. people were killed in the mines.. strongest strikes and protests were attempted by the mine workers, mine workers were made to carry passports in their own countries..
it goes on and on..
all this suddenly reminded me of my thoughts as a child on whether or not i shoulod avoid buying or encouraging products that lead to any kind of injustice in teh world..
and i wondered abotu gold. (Again gold was something i could easily avoid) bas the question came to me again, of whether my avoiding gold would stop the injustice.. and once again i felt it did nothing.
i was glad i was seeing how gold was extracted then.. and i felt responsible to find out more about it and about alternative means to findign Gold..
i'd seen alot of movies about children of mines and cartoons as well when i was young..
all that came back tom e aswell..
i thought about it again wheni was in menya and could no thelp but smile seeing children work with their parents in teh field.. it realy warmed my heart how it was done.. and was very disoriented when teh children i was working with would point and say
"Child labor!!" and start saying kalam inshaa.. it hurt me shwaya that they couldnt' see how happy these children were.. possibly happier than my childrne who were living in urban decay and barely seeing lights at the end of their tunnels..
these children in the green fields we were watching were part of projects being carried out in teh se3eet to ensure chiuldren are beign educated in simple basisc, like reading and writing and mathematics, as well as in agrictulral issues to make sure htey could LEARN and still be able to abide iwth family traiditons of pickng cotton or whatever other agricultural activity they did in th field..
om ayman and om meleik, the two wonderful fala7at i made friens with , loved the projects.. it made them feel proud and secure and children being educated rather than threatened.. and a number of their older childrne had eventually pursued college education as well...
and besides all tha the children looked beautiful and brown in the field.. their giggles echoed through the gheith, as they chased each other through tall crops, and the wind kept giving them away by shaking the trees they hid behind.
true, a beatiful site bas still i knew how the pesiticides in the plants were harming these children and how spendign so much time in teh crops was affecting and limiting their futures.
i was aware howeve rof initiatives taking place to help them, bas STILL it made me sad that the children were blind to how beautiful and happy they looked..
that they had narrow minded perspectives even on right based issues..
7atta dee 7efzuha.
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