Super MoidiB

 Let me introduce one of my students. She is beloved “MoidiB”. Please be careful! She like to spell her name ending with a capital “B”, this is her taste:))) So she is pretty MoidiB. And she is so pretty! And she is very pretty! And she is rather pretty! And she is pretty pretty! And she is super pretty! The reason why she is so pretty is that she is so pretty! Well, for this time you might get disgusted with me but I can’t help saying that she is pretty anyway. By the way “Super” in the title means “Super Pretty MoidiB”. I call her “Super MoidiB” in my mind because she is super-duper pretty.

Well, my adorable MoidiB currently studies in JHS-1, and according to her, she “seems” 19 years old. In one occasion, she wrote “22 years old” in her writing so I asked which was true, and she replied smiling “Oh, it’s a mistake, he, he, he:)” Some deaf children make mistakes even on spelling their name and age. Many children come to school behind age because parents don’t send their “deaf” children to school at the right age. Some colleagues say it’s “domestic discrimination” because those parents let “other” children go to school at the right age. In fact, majority of children are brought to the school behind age. In addition to the lack of sound in life, being deaf is subject to such an abrupt treatment by anyone in life, which brings them much harder life as a whole.

I like going to market to see local people there. In my impression, Ghanaians, even grown-ups, are very innocent, compared to people in Japan. When I talk to old people, sometimes I feel that they’re 100% pure without a stain in their heart and feel like being purified by taking to them. Normally innocence is lost by aging; the more age, the less innocence. Yet when you think about it, only 100% of purity should be called “innocence” because if there’s a stain in heart, it might no longer innocent; 99% of purity doesn’t exist, does it? Innocence in adulthood is practically rare. It sounds “miracle” to me that the whole atmosphere in market is filled with kindness created by innocence of people.

Let’s get back to my Super MoidiB. It was in June last year when children was working on sowing seeds of maize. I was taking photos of children and found Super MoidiB sitting alone on soil. When I get closer to her, surprisingly I witnessed that she was doing “playing house” alone with a bowl like a 3 years old girl. She was talking to herself, “Here, food is ready! Eat! Umm, it’s so yummy! No, it’s not true. I can’t eat it because it’s soil, he, he, he:)))” I got stunned. She lives in Dream at the age of 19. Perhaps, some might say that it’s just “childish”; some might say that it’s just “stupid”; some might say that it’s just “ridiculous” to do it at the age of 19. Yet I would rather ask you “how many people at the age of 19 can do playing house alone all over the world?” All grown-ups were once children. I say that she has “Child-ness”, which is different from “childish” in my definition. I define that childish means “immature” while Child-ness does “innocent”. It’d be better to have a “Child” in your heart to live life lively. My Super Pretty MoidiB preserve a child at the age of 3 years in her heart, that’s why her prettiness is so pure and innocent that I can’t help adding the prefix “Super”.

A couple of years ago, my adorable French teacher, Madame Queyroux wrote me an email saying:

« Bonjour D@igo,  Tel le Petit Prince de ST Exupéry tu vas de planéte en planéte, tu voila donc en Afrique! (Hello D@igo, like the Little Prince of St. Exupéry, you travel from planet to plane. Yes! You are now in Africa!) »

 The Little Prince in my heart might have brought me to Africa! Thank you, my little Prince!

Toutes les grandes personnes ont d’abord été des enfants. (Mais peu d’entre elles s’en souviennent.) - All grown-ups were once children (but few of them remember it.)

Being Deaf

As you know, I work in a deaf school, so it would be better to talk about “Deafness” to understand things better when you read my words on the deaf. Before I was assigned to this volunteer work, I had been, in fact, illiterate in audiology, which is the science and medicine that deals with the sense of hearing. So I went to book shops to get books about this study, but it was too tough to get them and I could find only one book. This fact would be showing people’s interests on Deafness in society. However today life is very convenient; I went to “Amazon.com” and got more than 30 books so easily by just “clicking” from all over Japan, and they were delivered in a couple of days. And what’s more, their prices were so cheap. What a life! It is true that we live in a dreamy world today indeed. 

The deaf means people who have problem with hearing and basically can’t “talk”. Although many students “utter” voice in everyday life, it doesn’t follow the system of language. Therefore they can’t talk in this definition. There are some students who can somehow “talk”, this is because of the age that hearing was lost. If it is from the birth, you do have problem with hearing and utterance; if it happened by some accident like disease or side-effects of medicine at a certain age, you might be able to keep some level of talking ability. Many of the deaf are “hard of hearing” who can hear large sound and “complete deaf” seems rather rare. But in developing countries, since they don’t learn language systematically due to deafness, they don’t know how to “talk”, while the deaf can learn it with the help of hearing aid, FM hearing system, artificial internal ear etc. in developed countries.

Language consists of “form” and “meaning” and these 2 elements must be connected in order to acquire language. First of all, child memorizes language as sound (form) through passive communication with mother (primary child carer). And he/she adds meanings of each word through non-linguistic communication (gestures or facial expressions). Then importantly, the ability of language can, in truth, affect the ability of thinking. In the next phase, child recognizes what he/she utters by ears and “Bone conduction”, and by looking at the reactions of people around him/her, child judges and corrects the meaning of what he/she utters if it’s proper or improper, and then acquires the ability of thinking and of control oneself, which is called “Feedback”. In one’s infancy, deaf baby utters sounds but the baby stops utterance itself because of the lack of Feedback. In sum, deafness influences the total ability of human, and it is said that the deaf have difficulty to grasp “abstract concept” such as English grammar. In fact, my students have quite low ability in English.

 However I’d say that their lives are very rich, thanks to communication through “sign language”. Of the books that I read in Japan, I got to know an African American, A. J. Foster, who contributed to establish more than 30 deaf schools in Central and West Africa from 1960s to 80s, and founded his first deaf school in Accra in 1965. On the contrary, it was the time of “the Dark Ages” for the deaf living in “developed” countries because sign language had been banned for a long time based on the idea of “Oralism”. Even if the deaf train to talk, they can’t be perfect and communicate with hearing people fluently. Nevertheless society forced them to follow that stupid idea and the deaf had suffered form it. Helen Keller, who was blind and deaf, once said, “If I could remove one of my disabilities, I’d surely choose ‘hearing’, because I could communicate with people.” Her words would imply that Communication is the most important thing for human beings. Thanks to A. J. Foster and sign language, today our school is full of smiles of children, which is the symbol of richness.  

The Giving Tree 

There is a book called “The Giving Tree” by an American picture book writer, Shel Silverstein. When I was high school student, a friend gave me this book, yet I didn’t really understand what the author was trying to say in the book, because it sounded strange to me then. In the story, a boy and tree are friends and always play together like gathering leaves and making them into crowns, climbing up her trunk and swing from her branch, eating apples, playing “hide-and-go-seek”, etc., and the Tree is happy. And time goes by, the boy starts demanding things: money to buy things, a house to live with family, and a boat to sail away and each time the Tree give apples to get some money, branches to build a house, and to make a boat, saying “And the Tree was happy”, yet it wasn’t true… And after long time the boy comes back to the Tree when he becomes an old man and “I don’t need very much now, just a quiet place to sit down and rest. I am very tired.” says the boy. The Tree, which is actually now a “stump” by the acts of the boy, says, “Well, an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down. Sit down and rest.” And the Tree was happy. The End

When I saw the news on an example of “Neo-colonialism”, I was really surprised and disappointed. In 2008, the president of Madagascar made contract with a Korean company to lend some land “for free of charge for 99 years”. And its scale of land is outrageous: the half of cultivated acreage in Madagascar, which is as big as the size of half land of territory of Bergin. It was about to be lent to “a” Korean company “for free” by the contract. Is it acceptable in your country? However as a natural counteraction, citizens of Madagascar got furious and made a demonstration, in which 135 people were killed, in order to demand the resignation of the president. You could say, in an indirect way, that some abrupt Koreans robbed the lives of 135 people in Madagascar. This kind of indirect exploitation is called “Neo-colonialism”. The thing is, Japan has one end of responsibility indirectly.

As a background, we must think why these Koreans could do this violent act. There are two factors to make it happen: “character” to do it and “ability” to do it. The former, character, is seen in the Vietnam War: countless cases of cruel rape by Korean soldiers; the latter, ability, is the matter of money to bribe people into doing injustice. Some examples are seen in the World Cup Soccer in 2002, Kim Yuna in figure Skating in Vancouver, and the recent controversy of Wrestling in Olympic Games, in which referees, judges, and even the IOC are controlled by Korean money. The former can’t be touched because it’s their nature, but why does Korea has power in money now?

In the annexation of the Korean peninsula for 35 years, Japan developed the whole country and “gave” Korea social infrastructures: built roads, ports, railways, founded hospitals and public health offices and educated the notion of hygiene and medical treatment, planted trees on bald mountains, established schools, even a university, and taught Korean alphabet, formed police organs for public peace, made up industries, and so on. Japan “gave” Korea everything for modernization in fact. As a result, the average of life, 22, 3 years old at the end of 19^th century became about 50-year old during the Japan’s rule of the peninsula. You could say that the prosperity of Korea today is given by Japan. But they misuse their power, money, in the wrong way that Japan didn’t intended and predicted.

I name this blog “The Giving Three”, stemming from “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein. I am a volunteer who “gives” something, but to “Give” is not very easy because we can’t see what will happen after giving in future. I want to think about it in this writing for my blog on this occasion.

The essential is “Visible” to the eyes.

Firstly, let me borrow some lines from the book named “THREE CHEERS FOR GHANA!” by Robert Peprah-Gyamfi, published by iUniverse, Inc., New York in 2008:

“As I drove through the city of Accra during the first few days of my stay, it appeared to me as though the first and third worlds had literally crashed together on the streets of the nation’s capital; the fallout from the unusual collision was everywhere apparent!”

Today if you go to any corners of “third countries”, you’d be overwhelmed by full of things, goods, materials, and especially in capital cities, you can get almost everything you want as long as you pay money. However it is true that there’re people in poverty and some places so-called “slum”, yet it doesn’t mean that they can’t eat. As far as Ghana is concerned, people are fleshy, well-fed, and chubby, and their expressions are lively, cheerful, joyful, and smiles are everywhere as many as people living life in peace, and above all, I don’t see “beggars”, except Romany, here in Ghana unlike European countries, which are the “first countries” ironically. It is just simple that there’s “the third country” in a developed country while there’s “the first country” in a developing country. You may regard India as a developing country but it is said that 10% of population is “extraordinary rich” in India, as many as population of Japan. It appears to me that contradictions in the first countries are rather serious and insolvable than ones in the third, which would become “the first” one day. 

Nevertheless, there is a big difference between the first and the third counties in terms of environment: it is social infrastructure such as roads, ports, water supply, electricity supply, public transportations, Yes, as the word “Develop” shows, this categorization just tells us the degree of “physical development” of countries, which is tangible (you can touch), which doesn’t describe people’s happiness, which is intangible (you can’t touch). My main focus is always people and their lives and levels of modernization have no meaning to me. Well, here is a question: Why do you develop your country? To seek for happiness? Yes, human beings “thought” that it would bring us happiness. As a matter of fact, the irony and contradiction above occurred in “the first countries”. 

I jus recalled a question at 10 years old, which I asked my teacher when he mentioned that Japan’s economy had been picking up since 1960s: “So what will happen after Development? He got stunned because he seemed never to have thought of it. Which would you prefer?: it’s developing in terms of social infrastructure, but you’re happy in terms of life, or it’s developed in terms of physical environment, but you’re deserted in terms of happiness. Well it’s very true that social infrastructure is necessary for us to sustain human life in safe and peace; I never say it’s not important. My point is that it’s just useful, but it doesn’t automatically bring us happiness. Why do we need to develop our county? To have homeless and beggars on streets? The essential is happiness of people.

So please do not judge people and countries by the level of social infrastructure, which has nothing to do with people’s happiness, but by the contents of people and the degree of happiness. I know that you have a question in your mind. As I mentioned, happiness is intangible, which you can’t touch or see, so how do you measure it? In truth, there is no “scientific” way to measure it but I “subjectively” visualize happiness by the degree of Smile. If your smile is naturally developing, you’re developed by happiness, while if your smile is artificially developed, you’re developing happiness. With the measure of Smile, it’d be: L’essentiel est visible pour les yeux. - The essential is “visible” to the eyes.

International Development

One of the reasons that I couldn’t start writing about my life in Ghana is that I hadn’t found the theme of this series. It’s not very easy for me to put efforts on writing without destination and purpose. To tell the truth, I have a blog in Japanese on the Internet, because I am a representative of Japan as I said and working on it as public relations of JICA. We, volunteers, should devote ourselves to the 3 pillars of JICA volunteer: 1. Contribute to economy and development or reconstruction of society in developing countries, 2. Promote friendship and mutual understanding between Japan and these countries, 3. Return experiences to Japanese society. Thus the 3^rd one pushed me to bring back my experiences in Ghana to my Japanese friends through my blog.

By the way, the United States has the volunteer organization called “Peace Corps”, which has longer history than JICA does. And according to JICA, they seem to have similar mottos like JICA (in fact, JICA would have copied from it) and the 1^st and 2^nd ones seem almost the same in meanings but the 3^rd one seems to say: “Propagate (or Do public relations for)” the United States of America. Namely if people think and feel through Peace Corps volunteers: “America is a great country!”, “We love America!”, “Americans are very generous!”, their volunteer work would be successful. Actually there is a Peace Corps volunteer for the subject “Creative Art” in our school, and on one occasion, she unconsciously slipped from her lips: “You have to get donations to be a good volunteer.” I felt “Ummm?! Donation???” In my understanding, volunteer work has nothing to do with donation.

And she has been working on painting walls in some classrooms with pictures related to some subjects. According to her, it is very hard to get funds (= money) or materials for it, calling to companies, writing emails to NGOs, and going to talk about it etc. I do admire her efforts on it. However the idea “painting walls” is, in truth, mine. When I talked about “creativity”, I advised her as an example of being “creative” that she could “teach creativity” to students in the process of painting walls, but she just copied things from textbooks or some magazines and painted all walls by herself, except base painting, which is boring and tiring and students did. The contents of painting are not very creative and the method is not creative either. She would have misunderstood what I meant, “maybe”. But as a matter of fact, she donated some “beautiful” paintings to the school. So she is a good volunteer in her definition and her acts would leave some good impression of the United States in Ghanaians, which must meet the one of requirements of the Peace Corps.

And at the end of this term, she distributed marker pens to upper primary students without reasons. Yes, she just “gave” the pens, this is the problem “for me”. I named my blog as “The Giving Three”, which is parodied from the picture book called “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein and whose theme is to Give. For I want to think about what I give, how I give, and why I give to others as a volunteer who represents Japan, and I think what volunteers do is basically to Give. However “To Give” is not easy and simple, because if you give something without consideration, this act “can” destroy something like balance, mentality, future, even life itself. Firstly, you need reasons to give, and then what you give: expensive or reasonable things? And you must think of how you give it. If I can't take responsibility, I won’t give anything. Donors must think of not only their own profit, reputation, good impression but also receivers’ benefits, affects, side-effects because it’s a matter of responsibility. I can’t be irresponsible in the name of Japan. So what is International Development?