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Ed,
Your first paragraph captures exactly what I was
referring to, in my earlier post, when I stated "I was raised in poverty and
knew about hunger and class marginalization as a child and bear that
psychological imprint as an adult." These are the "hidden injuries of
class" referred to in an older study, and they are intergenerational and part of
the emotional histories of families, regardless of material circumstance.
Of course, they do get mediated differently by different individuals. On
this list, I can see where it is being mediated in the social interests
many of us have. What can be more fundamental to working class people
than their dependency upon income - or the fear of its absence. It goes
beyond Marx's epistemology of work as human essence, although I think both Marx
and Freud may have been onto something in stating the importance of work
(including artwork/thinkwork/ etc...) to human happiness. I was
attracted to this list because of the contextual tighter coupling of
schooling with work, narrowly defined, in our society and the way it is
shaping the curriculum in schools.
Bob
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 8:30
AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] (no
subject)
Thomas, I sometimes feel that poverty is a state of
mind as much as a reality. I'm not poor now, but when I was a child my
family was very poor. The feeling of being poor is still there in the
background. It has alway been a little inhibitory - like I can't do or
expect something because that's for rich people, and beyond my
class.
A peculiarity is that I've always had trouble with
toast. When I was a little kid just starting school the teacher would
sometimes ask what we had for breakfast. The rich kids, or the kids who
I thought were rich, would always say they had toast. I never had
toast. That was for the rich kids.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 2:13
AM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] (no
subject)
Thomas:
After just writing my sardonic piece on my
poor childhood, I am shamed at realizing how far I am from true poverty and
I apologize to the Universe and to you who read this for my
arrogance.
Thanks for sharing Harry,
Thomas
Lunde
----------
From: "Harry Pollard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To:
"\"Futurework\" <"<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:
[Futurework] (no subject)
Date: Mon, Dec 15, 2003, 3:37 PM
Hi!
Here is another letter from Zimbabwe.
Looks bad there.
Should we get ready to invade before the
Fedayeen get too powerful?
Naaaaaaaa!
We’ll pass a strong
resolution at the UN.
After all, we have Christmas to enjoy and
Africa is none of our business.
Incidentally, a naartjie is a
tangerine.
Harry
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Irrigating nothing
Dear Family and Friends,
It has been a diabolical week for Zimbabwe. The
Abuja decision to
renew our suspension from the
Commonwealth caused a tidal wave of
recriminatory statements, propaganda and threats.
First
President Mugabe pulled Zimbabwe out
of the Commonwealth
altogether and then he, his
wife and two dozen officials went to a UN
Information Summit
in Geneva. President Mugabe used this world forum
to
publicly slate his critics saying that the email and internet were
being used to destroy Zimbabwe and recolonise the Third World.
Meanwhile back at home Zanu PF turned up the temperature.
First they
pushed through Parliament a ratification of
the decision to leave the
Commonwealth. Then a Zanu PF
caucus meeting resolved to expel the
foreign diplomats of Britain, Canada, Australia and New
Zealand from
Zimbabwe. Finally, having used the fear
factor to the limits, Foreign
Minister Stan Mudenge
announced that the diplomats would not
be
expelled "at this time."
Sitting on the edges of
our seats and praying for sanity, wisdom or
just
plain common sense, these are extremely
worrying days for
Zimbabwe. The consequences of
statements and decisions made in anger
and to try and
soothe hurt pride, are almost too awful to contemplate
and
describe. And, through it all, the lives of ordinary Zimbabweans,
just plummet ever downwards.
One night this week the
usually pitch black view from my window was
disturbed by a brilliant but un-natural spotlight. The light came
from
the direction of a nearby cemetery and I didn't stay to
inspect it,
rapidly closing the curtains and praying
that the light was in fact
coming from further
away.
Goose bumps covered my arms as I thought about the latest
horror story
in Zimbabwe. At night grave robbers are descending on
cemeteries and
digging up newly filled graves. They
are removing the corpses and
taking
the empty coffins for resale. I don't know if this
appalling
practice is being conducted by money making
entrepreneurs or just by
desperate people trying to
get enough money to stay alive.
With unemployment now at
well over 70% in Zimbabwe, people
are
resorting to desperate means in order to feed
themselves and their
families and stay alive.
Zimbabwe has now entered the fourth growing
season
in a row without any sort of
decent agriculture being
practiced. Every half
hour, 72 times a day, our state radio churns out
the latest
propaganda jingle telling us that "Our
Land is our
prosperity".
The government
have seized 11 million hectares of prime agricultural
land and yet, for the fourth year in a row, half of
our population
needs world food aid and people are
starving and digging up coffins
for re-sale. The
majority of the seized farms have not been ploughed,
the
resettled people have no seed, no chemicals, no fertilizer and no
money with which to buy the inputs they need to grow food.
A recent overseas visitor to my home walked around my small garden
and
said it felt like looking at something from World War
Two. In every
flower bed, between daisies and
lilies, there are vegetables: onions,
carrots, cabbages,
beetrots and spinach. Along one wall, standing tall
and about to
blossom are sunflowers which I am growing in order
to
supplement the feed I give to my half a dozen chickens.
In flower pots are chillies, strawberries and climbing beans.
Up and
down my driveway my six laying hens patrol and
scratch, crop the lawn,
dig out worms and beetles, feast on flying
ants and eat weeds.
From my kitchen pelmets hang great heavy
strings of home grown onions
cropped from one small bed in
the corner of the garden. In my pantry
cupboard are
two dozen jars of home-made marmalade, jelly, jam
and
chutney made from the jealously guarded single naartjie
and paw paw
trees in my back garden. In the
fridge is home-made butter and in the
deep freeze home grown
chickens.
You have to be extremely hard working in order to
survive in Zimbabwe
these days but mostly, you have to have
access to a small piece of
land and learn
to become very inventive. This is the ironical tragedy
of
Zimbabwe's so called agricultural revolution.
With so much land
having apparently been given to the people, why the
hell are
we all starving? Why are people digging coffins out of newly
filled graves? Why are young boys sitting in filthy rags on
pavements,
starving and begging? Why are people living in
cardboard boxes in shop
doorways? Why are families of four or six
living in one room with
neither
toilet or kitchen and without even a window in which to put a
flower pot and grow one strawberry or tomato plant ?
The
biggest tragedy of all is that we are wasting the fourth
growing
season in a row. In Marondera we have already had
8 inches of rain
this season and yet it is
irrigating nothing. It is tragically clear
for
anyone who cares to see, that
this supposed agricultural
revolution has
turned Zimbabwe into a nation of beggars,
thieves,
racketeers and grave robbers. These are the
realities of our daily
lives here and as
we struggle to cope with them it is hard to look at
the
bigger picture and to concentrate on caucus meetings,
diplomatic
decisions and UN Summits.
Until next
week, with love, cathy.
Copyright
cathy buckle
13th
December
2003.
http://africantears.netfirms.com
My
books on the Zimbabwean crisis, "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears"
are now available outside Africa from: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ;
www.africabookcentre.com ; www.amazon.co.uk ; in
Australia and New
Zealand: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ;
Africa: www.kalahari.net
www.exclusivebooks.com
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