Africa.

The internet works here; I stream Nicholas Kristof’s sequence of short videos about sex trafficking in Cambodia while I fold my freshly laundered university sweatshirt and hang my button-down from J Crew up to dry. Kristof provides names, which, due to the finiteness of memory, I will ultimately boil down to statistics—even though witnessing a one-eyed teenage girl cry as you hear the litany of sexual abuses done onto her is supposed to personalize it. Should I get a Swatch or Skagen? I don’t like gold bands. I want a black leather band or another all chrome one. Maybe I’ll just get two faux-fancy ones from Timex. I watch another video about forced drug-addiction in southeast Asian brothels as a way to break girls’ spirits and create unbreakable dependency. My requisite irritation and head-shaking “fuck that” under my breath works like clockwork: the clock rouses me with a single resounding gong at 1, but is followed by silence and the separation of knits and delicates. I notice a “suggested video” about Nicki Minaj. I click, watch, and after the minute-long video of one of her photo-shoots I look her up on Wikipedia. She’s from Trinidad and considers herself bisexual. Well, she claims not to date men or women, so she’s says not technically bisexual—she doesn’t like getting labeled. Shit, too bad that cardigan at Express didn’t fit. I really wanted to be able to pull one of those off.

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I am applying to study abroad in Kenya next year. If in the small likelihood I am awarded the scholarship to go abroad I would study

Mombasa, Kenya.

Swahili and intern at a human rights or economic development NGO. The acquisition of Swahili is intended to, as USAID trumpets, inculcate and perpetuate a tradition of “Kenyans working for Kenya.” My role in that solidarity will forever be imperfect, but speaking a native tongue will allow me to get as close as humanly possible. I, as I said in my leadership interview for Global Outreach, “don’t need to save the world…I just want to be able to help someone who doesn’t have any resources to help themselves.”

My mind wanders to the thought of one of the most vile and intense crimes being committed in the world today—rape as a weapon of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I go through a mental rolodex of my friends, a good portion of which are women. Then I think about the 3^rd grade girls I tutor; and then the kindergarten girls and how innocent they look; and how the rebels would think the same thing.

It is widely believed that the DRC is the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman; sexual abuses are astronomical and incalculable. There are clinics set up in the eastern DRC, where the ongoing conflict is most concentrated, where they try and treat rape victims. But without systemic change it doesn’t really matter. It’ll just happen again. And again.

DRC's Kivu Provinces.

I could never live with myself if I allowed these atrocities against women to happen to my friends. Knowing that these women are innocent victims of their birthplaces and not inherently useless or deserving of these crimes, how can I not work for it, in some way, to be different? Dude, check yourself. I don’t think you’re being reasonable…NO. How can I, as an adoptee and a direct benefactor of relocation to a privileged region away from a less equitable one, not commiserate? What if my parents adopted a Congolese girl instead of a Korean boy? I could have become just another faceless statistic of poverty—because of my surroundings and not because I deserved it.Where’s that $20,000 scholarship now? You wouldn’t even know what $20,000 was.

Movies like Blood Diamond and The Constant Gardner (which I enjoyed to varying degrees) at one time or another echo a similar sentiment: what’s the use if you can only help one? The intention is obviously the opposite—a moral turn that is sentimentalized with a neat and tidy ending—but I still scoff. I think that I am better than that; I think about my desire to hopefully one day work at a clinic in the DRC even if I can only help a few women. But then I withhold a donation to a prospective borrower on Kiva or Global Giving and search for a rationale: what’s the point if I’m only helping one? You asshole.

*****

I am terrified of being inadequate, terrified that you’ve stopped reading three paragraphs ago because my writing and convictions are garbage. I am not terrified of being unable to “save the world,” but rather, terrified that I am unworthy and inadequate of such an opportunity. My privileged upbringing– not in the traditional forms of excessive wealth or familial loyalty– allows me to dither between Fossil and Timex and fret about my shirt’s collar not being fully ironed. How can you reconcile subscribing to Gentlemen’s Quarterly, where advertisements for $300 watches are commonplace, when you devote your time to countries where most civilians make less than $300 a year? An advisor told me that it would be unreasonable to expect myself to be able to detach myself from the luxuries of American society. And to stop being so hard on myself. Morally, I refuse to acquiesce, to admit that societal advantages excuse me from being globally conscious, but of course I do—I’m going to buy a nice watch.

I read and read and read about it. I want to study there. I want to live there. I want to work in solidarity there. But I won’t stay in Africa. Eventually I’ll move back to the United States and start a family, buy a white-picket fence and coach my son’s Little League team. I am terrified that no matter how hard I try to learn, live, and love whatever foreign conflict I dive into my work will be incomplete, marred by my ability/ certainty of inevitable abdication.

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I love my Invisible Children shirt. It looks and fits great and all of its proceeds go to a worthy cause; it cost $20 USD. If it cost $40 I would not have bought it. I probably would have spent the difference on $8 beers downtown. That shirt reminds me, hopefully they have decent sales at the outlets next week. Gotta pick up some new stuff from BR.

She screams for help. I hear her. But I’m not there. I’ve been standing next to her for years but I’ve never been able to stand with her. The Fossil says time’s up– my flight back to New York leaves in an hour. And I’m worried that I never even left.