Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Liberian girl. You came and you changed my world.

So, like, I have a question. You know these highly intellectual experts who travel to far off lands to try and make the world a better place by opening microfinancing banks for fishermen in Bangladesh or developing the economies of nations like Uganda or living with bead makers in Ghana? Do you think there's ever an emotional component to their work?

You see, lately, strangely, I've met a few of these folk. More this year than in those past and they all seem to have this purely academic unemotional slightly asocial approach to their work which I don't really get. Having spent days nights weekends living with people in these areas, eating what they eat, sleeping where they sleep, encountering dangers only meagerly deflected by your [insert speciality here] Without Borders membership card... how come you're not affected by what you see? Or are you?

Is it the curse of the highly intellectual to be emotionally divested from and completely objective about your focus? Or is it the other way around and one can only be effective in the field (the actual geographic field rather than the focus of academic and actual efforts) if one removes feeling from reason?

Or do they also scream into their pillows at night when nobody is listening? Is it this that gives them courage and strength and energy to make lives better for those less fortunate?

I wonder how it works.

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