AmericAshis 1 Birmingham, Michigan.
Birmingham, Michigan.
October 3, 2009
It is a pleasure to visit the USA again. For me it is as a break from Africa, enjoying a fast Internet connection, meeting friends and family, talking about Darfur and looking for opportunities for work in the future. This tour of the USA started in the state of Michigan. It is clear that the recession has hit hard in this automobile factory land. New factories (Volkswagen) opened shop in Tennessee while local factories closed shop. The power of the trade unions makes this state less competitive in many ways. It does not help either when the previous mayor of Detroit pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and agreed to serve three months in jail for attempting, as part of an $8.4 million lawsuit settlement, to cover up an extramarital affair with his chief of staff.
Right now the mayor of Detroit is a former basket ball player, Mr Bing with no experience of political office. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/us/06detroit.html . Motown proper had 1,849,568 inhabitants in 1950 and that number has dropped to 912,062 by 2008. Even if the Detroit Metro area has grown in the same period from 3,219,256 to 4,425,110 it is likely the only city in the USA to have grown above one million and then fallen back below.
If you like art the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Institute_of_Arts is an amazing museum to visit and I adore the painting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Industry by Don Diego Rivera. There is enough to see and enjoy.
Over the last days I have rested and today I hit the path of talks on Darfur. The first talk of this tour was in a catholic primary school called Holy Name in Birmingham. About 300 5-12 year olds were present at a duo presentation by Dr Tim Page, one of the founding members of the Michigan Save Darfur Coalition and a good friend of mine. He had just returned from Kenya where his skills as an ophthalmologist were tried. In 4 days his team of 5 doctors saw about 1100 patients and did surgery on many of them. The presentation lasted about 45 minutes and they kept their attention 100% all the time. Also the questions they asked were spot on.
Tonight I joined a humanistic Jewish Temple for Shabbat celebration. About 50 people came and I enjoyed a very fine celebration. At one point the rabbi’s daughter was dancing on the stage. Native American songs and prayers were spoken and lighting of candles was done. For me celebrating life and looking at other religions shows openness of the heart. Most people were well informed about Darfur and after the talk we shared lots of sweet tea and food. Also the stories of the people themselves were amazing. It seems when tragedy hits a group of people some crash and burn but there are also people that soar and give hope to humanity. Hope that you can laugh, live and excel after a disaster that genocide is.
Namaskar,
Ashis
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