Thoughts of an insomniac

I must admit that no matter how much I abhor words like “deadline” and “assignments” there is something really refreshing about going back to student life. The solidarity that you feel with your classmates/colleagues transcends age and race and that’s truly something.

I thought by coming here I’d stumble across the reasons on why the world is how it is today and to gain the “skills and knowledge” necessary to be “effective agents of change”…needless to say that with each passing day, I’m left with a heavy heart as there are no answers but a lot of problems but I refuse to shut my eyes from this ugliness that has taken over the world.

It’s not from the books that I’ve been forced to consume since my arrival that I have obtained the seeds of knowledge to my query, rather it’s from the everyday conversations of people whose rich background experience can never compare to the theoretical concepts alive only between the pages of the book that contains them. Listening to heated debates about Latin America – one cannot help but feel solidarity with these people of a foreign place who’ve led revolutions of passion to enhance their lives and I pray they will continue to do so. It’s my wish that in Africa, we had such revolutions of passion…

Before, words like ‘ignorance’ and ‘oppression’ were mainly used when talking about the ‘developing world’, yet my stay here has revealed that the “developed world” doesn’t possess that much knowledge either..they may resources but they have the illusion of freedom. I don’t know which is worst, knowing that you don’t have freedom or believing that you do?

It’s interesting to see how different governments operate in different ways to control their people, here in the west it seems that people (not all) are governed by what their media tells them whereas in the south, the population has had a long history of disbelieving what any national newspaper or media outlet has to say…

At the end of the day, we are all oppressed.