Driven by Curiosity…

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Ok… so yesterday finally dragged itself to a close! And it ended up successfully I might add! but what a long day. I was running around like a person with mad cow disease! or bird flue these days!!

When I am preparing a seminar, I don’t maintain that calm pompous dignity with which I face my audience during the seminar! And this IS the problem. I have been becoming aware of how structured and rigid I am. It could be that I come from a business background where time means money and I have to be aware of every minute, or it could be my Arabic thirst to compete and prove myrself and become the best. We all want to be the mudeer, dont we? I definitely don’t think many Europeans need to prove anything, their social system takes care of them. Their health, education and retirement days are taken care of, so many of these people are perfectly happy pushing the same button at work for thirty years, if not more! And unleash the energy in planning their vacations to go to exotic place like hunting in South Africa or backpacking around Europe! and honestly lucky them, i guess this is what makes Europe the great place it is.

Ok picture it… an Arab lady trying to convince two English ladies to do as she wishes, because of course, she is right!…my partners are charming voluptuous Rayenne, who is of French and Brazilian origins but grew up in London, and classy feminine Rahima who is a Bengali and who also grew up here in London. Their methods are loose and unorganized and really don’t get things done! Although very smart and we ended up our seminar with a round of applauds which is not the everyday case. It was hard getting my partners to organize themselves and get down to results without giving them the idea that we Arabs are ruthless, authoritarian, bastards… So I used my best tone that I learnt in social occassions in Amman and used sentences like “I think what you are trying to say is…?” and “if I understood correctly…” replacing sentences like “min 3eini bint 3ammi…” and “tikramou…” or ” inta o2mor…” which are not translatable! I mean if I say you order or from my eye my cousin…i would have got a HA?!!

oh the seminar was about child labour and human rights. … “friends” is on TV, that episode where Brad Pitt is also on the show… does anyone agree that Angelina Jolie is really the one controlling the relationship and he is like a toutou?.. Anyway… mish mawdou3na…

We met one time before, and we agreed to group the class into five categories and have them prepare arguments in their roles. One category is the children, another one is the parents, the third category is the owners of the mine, the fourth category is the government and the fifth one is the international aid workers! And what an interesting contradicting combination of ideas resulted… ifft my head is still swirelling with excitement!

One example I argued , was that the west wants to impose certain ideas on the third world countries, such as democracy, liberty in women clothing and education, which are very nobel but naiive. The west believes that education in the antidote of child labour in the third world, but what about the western children who are targetted as consumers, who are very aware of brands. These children start feeling low self esteem and shame at very early age, because of their families’ inability to buy them stuff like the other kids, so they go work to make little money to be able to afford these things… in this case these children are also forced to work… why is it not considered child labour and is encouraged, while the idea of children who are forced to work because their families will starve otherwise and have absolutely no other way is banned and condemned?? Not that I am defending the idea…but well…

Anyway… I really don’t want to talk about this anymore… I want to make myself a nice warm cup of tea and watch friends… a girl can relax every now and then…. can’t she?

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