The Frezh Press

Insights and ramblings from a development intern in Nepal. All views here are 100% my own and do not reflect any organisations I work with.

[dfrezh]

Not Dead, Part II

Hello folks.

I'm still not dead.

I've been back in the U.S. since February, and back in New York City since March. The past eight months I've been spending time with family and friends, in addition to completing a gig at an NGO in NYC. While I generally agree with the aims of said-NGO, I'm an unpaid intern at an organization based in midtown-Manhattan with an annual endowment of tens of millions of dollars, but not a penny for me.

As an exploited worker (tongue-in-cheek), I've finally realized that the hierarchical, ineffective, and bureaucratic behemoth that is international development is flawed in countless ways. Shocker. From contractors who are based in D.C. but work on strategies for water resources in Kenya to project managers in Uzbekistan, graduates of Harvard Kennedy, but still totally lacking in respect for local cultures and customs, I'm donezo. It's been a great journey. I've learned a lot. I've traveled a lot. But working in an office, unpaid-- whether in New York, Cairo, or Kathmandu-- and as a component of a machine that takes trillions of dollars to keep the rich afloat and workers exploited in developing countries, all in the name of an increase in annual GDP to benefit Western economies?

Eat me on Friday, motherfuckers.

21 October I'm flying to Bangkok. One way. While I am toying with the idea of graduate school next Fall, I am essentially showing up-- in somewhat of a cliche manner, I admit-- in Southeast Asia to see what happens next. Maybe I'll freelance. Maybe I'll get pregnant. Maybe I'll eat Pad Thai on a bunch and get sick.

Who knows?

Stay tuned.

[dfrezh]

Not dead!

Just been out and about and to and fro. Now back in NYC, before that I was in Boston, and now I am fielding an itch to get back to the Indian-Pakistani border this summer... or a return to Masr. 

I hope to get back to posting regularly soon.

Hope everyone is well.

[dfrezh]

America = malai man pardaine.

[dfrezh]

I've been jet lagged every 2 weeks since the beginning of December. #nomore

[dfrezh]

London to Vegas. #VS043

[dfrezh]

Sunday

Back to the US for the first time since last year.

#dislike

[dfrezh]

Kathmandu - Abu Dhabi - London

[dfrezh]

$$$ from American Evangelicals funds antigay movement in Uganda

ivia The New York Times:

Raised in Pennsylvania, I grew up in the black church. My father was a religious leader in the community, and my sister is a pastor. I went to church every Sunday and sang in the choir. But for all that the church gave me — for all that it represented belonging, love and community — it also shut its doors to me as a gay person. That experience left me with the lifelong desire to explore the power of religion to transform lives or destroy them. I became interested in Uganda, an intensely religious country that attracts many American missionaries and much funding from United States faith-based organizations. The American evangelical movement in Africa does valuable work in helping the poor. But as you’ll see in this Op-Doc video, some of their efforts and money feed a dangerous ideology that seeks to demonize L.G.B.T. people and intensifies religious rhetoric until it results in violence. It is important for American congregations to hold their churches accountable for what their money does in Africa...

Damaging and frightening. Religious colonialism has really never ceased in Africa. It reminds me of what is happening in Nepal. Missionaries come here illegally-- usually under the pretenses of a student visa-- and take goods and supplies up into remote mountain villages where they gain converts by coercion. It's appalling, considering the very unique and syncretic blend of Hinduism and Buddhism that has existed here for centuries. 

Just. Stop.

[kawrage-deactivated20160618]

Just finished re-reading Lila Abu-Lughod’s (essential) essay, ‘Dialects of Women’s Empowerment : The International Circuitry of the Arab Human Development Report’. Abu-Lughod posed 3 main questions about the report:

Does it lend itself to appropriation?

How does the paper’s “cosmopolitan or...

[dfrezh]

Worth the read. Insightful.

[dfrezh]

London-Doha-Kathmandu.

[dfrezh]

Hate hate hate "inshallah" and "ke garne" fatalism. Inshallah like when the pilot missed the runway at Heathrow last night and said we would land "inshallah". "Ke garne" (which means "what to do?" in Nepali) from the bus driver on Friday about not crashing off a Himalayan hillside. No no. Not it god wills or what to do. Land the damn plane and watch your driving. The end.

[dfrezh]

Pakistan’s transgender community caught between worlds

I didn't realize that India, Nepal, and Pakistan allowed Transgender folks to register as third gender or "other" on IDs. Parts of South Asia seem to be much more progressive in this regard than many of their Central Asian, Middle Eastern, and even Southeast Asian neighbours.

via Washington Post

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — Dressed up in elaborate, feminine outfits and artfully applied makeup, they are showered with money while dancing at all-male wedding parties. But the lives of transgender people in Pakistan are also marked by harassment, rejection and poverty.

Transgender people live in a tenuous position in conservative Pakistan, where the roles of the sexes are traditionally starkly drawn. Families often push them out of the home when they’re young, forcing many to prostitute themselves to earn a living.

One role where they are tolerated is as dancers at weddings and other celebrations at which men and women are strictly segregated. In between the dancing and showers of rupee notes, they must fend off groping from drunken guests.

“I don’t understand why people feel it is their duty to tease and taunt us,” said one transgender Pakistani who goes by the name Symbal. Many in the transgender community pick a name for themselves and do not use their last name to protect their family.

Others beg on the streets or earn money by blessing newborn babies. The blessings reflect a widespread belief in Pakistan and other South Asian nations that God answers the prayers of someone who was born underprivileged, said Iqbal Hussain, a Pakistani researcher who has studied the transgender community. But he cautioned that didn’t mean people were ready to give them equal rights.

In recent years the community has gained some government protection. A Supreme Court ruling in 2011 allowed them to get national identity cards recognizing them as a separate identity — neither male or female — and allowing them to vote. In neighboring India, the election commission ruled in 2009 that transgender people could register to vote as “other,” rather than male or female.

In other parts of the region and Muslim world, the attitude toward transgenders is also complex. In Thailand, the community is very visible and broadly tolerated. Transgender people are regularly seen on TV soap operas, working at department store cosmetics counters or popular restaurants and walking the runways in numerous transgender beauty pageants.

Many transgender Indonesians publicly wear women’s clothes and makeup and work as singers. But societal disdain still runs deep. They have taken a much lower profile in recent years, following a series of attacks by Muslim hard-liners.

In Malaysia, Muslim men who wear women’s clothes can be prosecuted in Islamic courts.

In the Arab world, there is little opportunity for transgender people to openly show their identity in public. In 2007, Kuwait made “imitating members of the opposite sex” a crime, leading to the arrest of hundreds of transgender women, Human Rights Watch said. In Iraq, extremists have targeted and killed people perceived of being gay or effeminate.

[dfrezh]

opaquehope replied to your post:Of course the "royal" thugs in Saudi allowed Idi Amin to live out his exile in Jeddah.

Oh yeah. He was good friends with them. Even went on Hajj with the Royal Family.

Can't say I'm surprised. -_-

[dfrezh]

seventoinfinity replied to your post:UK to end financial aid to India by 2015

It’s about time. I think it’s a good decision by the UK. Also, in a government as corrupted as India, the money probably doesn’t completely go to the “poorest of the poor”.

"The corruption that needs to be stamped out is the corruption of public officials." - Dambisa Moyo

[dfrezh]

UK to end financial aid to India by 2015

Good or bad? Thoughts? 

Having spent time in India, I think that this is definitely called for. The Indian government has enough financial assets to take care of its own people; if it fails to do so because of bureaucracy and corruption, that is an Indian problem that only Indians can solve.

Criticisms thus far have argued that foreign aid monies go to the poorest of the poor. India, it's time to take care of your own poor. If 60+ years of post-independence development programming can't make the democratic system work, then India deserves to watch itself get torn apart by income inequality until it wakes up. What else will work? My argument here is à la Dambisa Moyo in Dead Aid. 

I am not being harsh, I say the same thing for the U.S. and any other country that doesn't provide for those with less financial means.

(Doesn't seem India cares too much: India will shed few tears over the end of UK aid.)

via BBC

The UK is to end financial aid to India by 2015, international development secretary Justine Greening has said.

Support will gradually be phased out between now and 2015, saving £200m ($319m), and the UK's focus will then shift to offering technical assistance.

Ms Greening said the move, which will be popular with Tory MPs, reflected India's economic progress and status.

Giving his reaction, India's foreign minister Salman Khurshid said: "Aid is the past and trade is the future."

The UK's financial support to India, one of the world's fastest-growing economies, has been a cause of concern among Conservative MPs amid suggestions that funding had ended up supporting prestige projects such as India's space programme.

Ministers have defended the level of financial help in the past on the basis of the extreme poverty persisting in rural areas and historic colonial ties between the two countries.

Ms Greening has been conducting a review of all financial aid budgets since taking over the role in September and visited India earlier in the week to discuss existing arrangements.

'Changing place'

She said the visit confirmed the "tremendous progress" that India was making and reinforced her view that the basis of the UK's support needed to shift from direct aid to technical assistance in future.

"After reviewing the programme and holding discussions with the government of India, we agreed that now is the time to move to a relationship focusing on skillsharing rather than aid," she said.

"India is successfully developing and our own bilateral relationship has to keep up with 21st Century India...It is time to recognise India's changing place in the world."

Although all existing financial grants awarded will be honoured, the UK will not sign off any new programmes from now on.

By focusing post-2015 support on trade, skills, health and private sector anti-poverty projects which can generate a return on investment, the UK estimates its overall contribution will be one-tenth of the current £280m budget.

In making the decision, the UK is citing the progress India has made in tackling poverty in recent years. It says 60 million people have been lifted out of poverty as a result of the doubling of spending on health and education since 2006.

The UK also says bilateral trade between the two countries is flourishing, growing 20% in 2010.

From 2015, development experts will continue to work alongside the Foreign Office and UK Trade and Investment but focused on sharing advice on poverty reduction, facilitating private sector projects and global partnerships in food security, climate change and health prevention.

The BBC's political correspondent Carol Walker said this was an important step that was seen by the government as part of efforts to focus its aid budget on countries most in need.

The government is increasing the overall overseas development budget to help meet a longstanding international commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on aid.

[dfrezh]

indianajosh replied to your post:Can you talk about your time in Egypt?

All of a sudden, memories of living in Zamalek in 2009 and meeting more gay men than ever before in my life. I still don’t quite know how it happened, but at one point I was shirtless on one of their beds getting a massage. Ah, Zamalek.

God dammit, and all I got were condescending lectures from 50-year-old British Egyptologists at rooftop parties in Dokki. 

[dfrezh]

Can you talk about your time in Egypt?

Of course.

I was in Egypt trying to find development work. While I found a short-term gig in Cairo, most of my time was spent exploring the city rather than working. Post-2011 Egypt is a different place. The tension is palpable as folks wait to see how the political situation evolves, especially in terms of the Muslim Brotherhood and what they accomplish now that they have power.

I think it is so much easier to play the martyr in Egyptian politics, especially given the history of the MB (being banned under various secular autocrats for last four+ decades), that now actually implementing a post-Mubarak agenda is proving difficult and almost impossible AKA spending time on possibly banning pornography in-country rather than dealing with massive unemployment and a foreign policy in dire need of restructuring and fast, given the volatile neighborhood. Those are just two of an endless list of priorities... I think it's safe to say that Egyptians are fed up with extremists on both sides at this point.

One of the most fascinating parts of my time spent in Egypt was interacting with the Cairene LGBT population. Cairo is, literally, one of the gayest cities I've ever lived in. Given the amount of stereotypes about the Middle East, the fetishization/over-sexualization of Middle Eastern men, the misconceptions about homosexuality and Islam, etc. etc., the gay community in Cairo is not "hidden" by any means. There are massive regular parties, a lot of people are out to their families, and certain neighborhoods (especially Zamalek, where I lived) are known to be gay-friendly as opposed to others. Does this mean Egypt is ready for Pride 2013? No. But the tide is definitely turning, whether political factions-- libs/Islamists/etc.-- like it or not.

A few other condensed observations:

- Zamalek, island in the Nile ten minutes from downtown where I lived, is a bubble and can feel almost like Europe rather than Egypt.

- Definitely much more expensive than I expected.

- Lots and lots of Americans, mostly working for the US government. Definitely was never my intention to work for the Americans abroad so did not interact with these folks too much. Many of them were a bit vague and formal in their interactions with other expats at parties. Perhaps due to some clandestine operations on their part?

- Became so tired of talking about Islam with Ivy-educated, pretentious assholes who did a summer Arabic intensive. -_-

- Was so tired of talking about Israel-Palestine with Ivy-educated, pretentious assholes who did a summer Arabic intensive. -_-

- Definitely met my fair share of stereotypical Khalijis who overindulged in alcohol, smoked way too much pot, and wanted to have the raunchiest of gay sex before departing the next day for the flight from Cairo back to Riyadh. Ramadan holidays ended too soon, they'd sigh...

- Egyptian people: Mostly very friendly, had good food, and a general hope that the political situation will stabilize in the near future. I think Egyptians are tired of other people speaking for them-- whether development workers, foreign states, or tumblr bloggers-- and want to pursue the rebuilding of their country and its institutions as they would prefer.