all i meant to say

9:05pm Friday, Sep 21

Yesterday I caused an international incident!

On Thursday our CWY group met up to discuss international development. Our supervisor split us up into pairs, and assigned us each a topic to research like neoliberalism, marxism, export led growth, etc. Mine and Francis had to read an essay by a certain Ivan Illich called "To hell with good intentions" look it up online to read the entire article, but i'll give a summary.

Illich basically argues that oversea volunteer programmes are not a good thing. he sees programmes like Peace Corps, CWY, Youth Challenge International, etc. as middle-class exporting programmes. Where middle-class people go into poor countries, trying to save the poor, but are only (consciously or not) promoting middle class values. Teaching the poor that in order to be happy they must be like us. They must embrace the capitilistic machine. And by going there we are re-affirming the status quo, in the ever increasing divide between the rich and the poor.

Illich calls these overseas volunteer projects "mission-vacations". the majority of volunteers are not capable of helping, because we don't have the proper training, we most likely cannot speak the language, and the only people we will meet are middle class people like us. In fact, we are making more problems than we are solving by being there.

That's the gist of what i was going to present to the group. Although a controversial string of thought, not necessarily something the chinese in our group would get upset over. Unfortunately i chose to lead our presentation with a skit. Unfortunately i chose to use China as the example developing country. Unfortunately, the chinese did not understand the concept of satire.

In my skit, francis and i played the ignorant and idealistic overseas volunteer who have come to rural china to save them from poverty. we said things like "wow, china is so poor! And how lucky they are that we are here to help!" I chose to present ourselves as exagerated caricatures of the kind of people Illich was railing against. Unfortunately, the chinese people assumed that this was mine and Francis' personal opinion. They got pissed. They interruped with comments like "China is NOT poor!" and they got extremely defensive. one of the chinese girls started crying!

woah! i tried to explain myself, but they were not in the mood to listen. Then they started blaming Ben for even giving this topic for us to research. And Ben said he refused to apologize for discussing criticisms of volunteer projects like CWY.

The stupid thing is, that if i had chosen ANY other country besides China to use in our skit, there wouldn't have been a problem. It was a blow to their nationalistic pride. The chinese people do not see themselves as poor. They do not seem to understand the concept of a developing country. They think Chairman Mao was a good leader. They do not think the government censors them.

We're all getting ready to go home, and Summer (the chinese girl who cried) stays behind to argue with Ben. And I go outside and see some other chinese people arguing with some canadians. No one is in the mood for listening. Only arguing and believing what they want to believe.

I go home, and i'm eating dinner with my host family. and my counterpart amy does not say a word throughout dinner. Then at the end she looks at me and asks "karen, can i ask you a question?" I say "yes" Then she says, "Why do you hate China?"

Two hours later, Amy understands what i was trying to say. And tonight i saw a bunch of the other chinese people and they seem to have calmed down. But summer still gives us canadian cut eye. the girl with the best english out of all the chinese is the one who refuses to listen.

there is so much more to say, but that will have to wait for another day. there is a lot of good that CWY does, but it is not a perfect programme. A realization that has been nagging me from day one.