Kenya, My Kenya

The situation in Kenya has lost all sense and civilization. I am heartbroken to read today that the ethnic warfare has taken on a life of its own, pitting the Kikuyu, the tribe of business and power, against everyone else. It seems that no lesson was learned from the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 when up to a million Tutsis lost their lives at the hands of the Hutus. Can you imagine 750,000 Latino-Americans being slaughtered on the streets of Los Angeles and then swept into the La Brea tar pits? What about 1,000,000 African-Americans mass-murdered in New York City, dumped into sanitation trucks and buried in the Staten Island waste fill? Kenya was supposed to be a bastion of peace and stability, where the numerous tribes forged together as the economic engine that powered East Africa. And yet today I read it was all just a myth. That ethnic tensions had been simmering all along. That the tranquility I saw eleven years ago in Nairobi was just a facade. Indeed, the pictures of Kibera, the slum where I taught math, show that nothing has improved for the poor. Discontent is rearing a head with blood in its eyes. Where once there were arms that stood to welcome me, now there are only hands wielding machetes. How could it all have been such an illusion? No one who looks at me--a picture of health and strength--would ever think that I harbor a deadly virus within my bloodstream, one that's been forced into remission for the moment but waits silently within my brain and organs to strike. I look into the mirror today and see the failure of Kenya and humanity.

"Dilly-Dalai"ing On the Way to Higher Moral Ground

Bush has tea with the Dalai Lama in the White House today. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is in Egypt enlisting that country's support for a Palestinian-Israeli peace conference in Anapolis at the end of the year. The House of Representatives will soon vote on a resolution branding as "genocide" Turkey's massacre of Armenians from 1915-17. The things America will do to reach that mythical place called Higher Moral Ground. Never mind that it has sold 23 million Taiwanese to China for the price of doing business in Shanghai. Never mind that it is still destabilizing Iraq and searching for imaginary weapons of mass destruction in an effort to consolidate oil rights. Never mind that Rwanda was too poor and too black for anyone to give a damn. But the politicians are absolutely right when they say there's nothing wrong with America's Moral Compass--the dollar bill and missile that serve as its needles are functioning perfectly fine, thank you.

Is there a moral obligation to find a cure for HIV? Or is the hunt for a vaccine driven by the egos of philanthropists and scientists? What does it matter as long as I'm alive? What does it matter if I die without any answers?