What I Learned in the Peace Corps in Africa: Trump Is Right

Started by Solar, January 26, 2018, 02:19:12 PM

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Solar

If you do nothing else today, at least read this short article.

Three weeks after college, I flew to Senegal, West Africa, to run a community center in a rural town.  Life was placid, with no danger, except to your health.  That danger was considerable, because it was, in the words of the Peace Corps doctor, "a fecalized environment."

In plain English: s--- is everywhere.  People defecate on the open ground, and the feces is blown with the dust – onto you, your clothes, your food, the water.  He warned us the first day of training: do not even touch water.  Human feces carries parasites that bore through your skin and cause organ failure.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that a few decades later, liberals would be pushing the lie that Western civilization is no better than a third-world country.  Or would teach two generations of our kids that loving your own culture and wanting to preserve it are racism.

Last time I was in Paris, I saw a beautiful African woman in a grand boubou have her child defecate on the sidewalk next to Notre Dame Cathedral.  The French police officer, ten steps from her, turned his head not to see.

I have seen.  I am not turning my head and pretending unpleasant things are not true.

Senegal was not a hellhole.  Very poor people can lead happy, meaningful lives in their own cultures' terms.  But they are not our terms.  The excrement is the least of it.  Our basic ideas of human relations, right and wrong, are incompatible.

As a twenty-one-year-old starting out in the Peace Corps, I loved Senegal.  In fact, I was euphoric.  I quickly made friends and had an adopted family.  I relished the feeling of the brotherhood of man.  People were open, willing to share their lives and, after they knew you, their innermost thoughts.

The longer I lived there, the more I understood: it became blindingly obvious that the Senegalese are not the same as us.  The truths we hold to be self-evident are not evident to the Senegalese.  How could they be?  Their reality is totally different.  You can't understand anything in Senegal using American terms.

Take something as basic as family.  Family was a few hundred people, extending out to second and third cousins.  All the men in one generation were called "father."  Senegalese are Muslim, with up to four wives.  Girls had their clitorises cut off at puberty.  (I witnessed this, at what I thought was going to be a nice coming-of-age ceremony, like a bat mitzvah or confirmation.)  Sex, I was told, did not include kissing.  Love and friendship in marriage were Western ideas.  Fidelity was not a thing.  Married women would have sex for a few cents to have cash for the market.

What I did witness every day was that women were worked half to death.  Wives raised the food and fed their own children, did the heavy labor of walking miles to gather wood for the fire, drew water from the well or public faucet, pounded grain with heavy hand-held pestles, lived in their own huts, and had conjugal visits from their husbands on a rotating basis with their co-wives.  Their husbands lazed in the shade of the trees.

The rest~~~

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/01/what_i_learned_in_peace_corps_in_africa_trump_is_right.html

Adjusted font link size.
walks
Official Trump Cult Member

#WWG1WGA

Q PATRIOT!!!

walkstall

Quote from: Solar on January 26, 2018, 02:19:12 PM
If you do nothing else today, at least read this short article.

Three weeks after college, I flew to Senegal, West Africa, to run a community center in a rural town.  Life was placid, with no danger, except to your health.  That danger was considerable, because it was, in the words of the Peace Corps doctor, "a fecalized environment."

In plain English: s--- is everywhere.  People defecate on the open ground, and the feces is blown with the dust – onto you, your clothes, your food, the water.  He warned us the first day of training: do not even touch water.  Human feces carries parasites that bore through your skin and cause organ failure.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that a few decades later, liberals would be pushing the lie that Western civilization is no better than a third-world country.  Or would teach two generations of our kids that loving your own culture and wanting to preserve it are racism.

Last time I was in Paris, I saw a beautiful African woman in a grand boubou have her child defecate on the sidewalk next to Notre Dame Cathedral.  The French police officer, ten steps from her, turned his head not to see.

I have seen.  I am not turning my head and pretending unpleasant things are not true.

Senegal was not a hellhole.  Very poor people can lead happy, meaningful lives in their own cultures' terms.  But they are not our terms.  The excrement is the least of it.  Our basic ideas of human relations, right and wrong, are incompatible.

As a twenty-one-year-old starting out in the Peace Corps, I loved Senegal.  In fact, I was euphoric.  I quickly made friends and had an adopted family.  I relished the feeling of the brotherhood of man.  People were open, willing to share their lives and, after they knew you, their innermost thoughts.

The longer I lived there, the more I understood: it became blindingly obvious that the Senegalese are not the same as us.  The truths we hold to be self-evident are not evident to the Senegalese.  How could they be?  Their reality is totally different.  You can't understand anything in Senegal using American terms.

Take something as basic as family.  Family was a few hundred people, extending out to second and third cousins.  All the men in one generation were called "father."  Senegalese are Muslim, with up to four wives.  Girls had their clitorises cut off at puberty.  (I witnessed this, at what I thought was going to be a nice coming-of-age ceremony, like a bat mitzvah or confirmation.)  Sex, I was told, did not include kissing.  Love and friendship in marriage were Western ideas.  Fidelity was not a thing.  Married women would have sex for a few cents to have cash for the market.

What I did witness every day was that women were worked half to death.  Wives raised the food and fed their own children, did the heavy labor of walking miles to gather wood for the fire, drew water from the well or public faucet, pounded grain with heavy hand-held pestles, lived in their own huts, and had conjugal visits from their husbands on a rotating basis with their co-wives.  Their husbands lazed in the shade of the trees.

The rest~~~

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/01/what_i_learned_in_peace_corps_in_africa_trump_is_right.html

Adjusted font link size.
walks

It does not sound any different than 60 years ago.  My wife had a friend that was a roommate in college she was in the Peace Corps also.  She also said the same thing when she got back. 
A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.- James Freeman Clarke

Always remember "Feelings Aren't Facts."

Solar

Quote from: walkstall on January 26, 2018, 03:06:41 PM
It does not sound any different than 60 years ago.  My wife had a friend that was a roommate in college she was in the Peace Corps also.  She also said the same thing when she got back.
Yep, and that was the author's point, it's a shithole by nature because they are permanent 3rd world backward culture.
As she pointed out, giving them money only keeps the culture intact. They need to collapse before they can fix their own problems.
Official Trump Cult Member

#WWG1WGA

Q PATRIOT!!!

SueAnn

I would love to know if the Sengalese showed amy interest in coming to America or were they happy where they were?

Billy's bayonet

People fail to realize this is MOST of the third world. All over Asia, a few South American Countries I've been in and some of the giant cat litter box Countries. People just have a different view of things and have different mores and culture. They are raised up like that. No plumbing, no running water, living in a shack you built out of bamboo or stuff you found scrounging thru the garbage near a river that floods quite often. 

Wake up in the morning, go outside squat and do your business, go down to the river and wash your behind.  Throw your garbage out the back and let the scavenging dogs root through it for their meal. Goats tethered to stakes, pigs penned up in makeshift sty's under your raised house....dogs, cats, chickens...be careful where you step. The heat, dust, swarming insects making everything worse.

Kids run naked thru the streets, jump in a muddy ditch swarming with mosquito's Denge fever, Malaria typhus.

Women do most of the work, wash the clothes by hand in a river, haul water back to the house, gather sticks to make a fire. Cook, clean while the men sit around and gamble, drink, talk, sleep, lech on other women. The third world is a man's world.


Evil operates best when under a disguise

WHEN A CRIME GOES UNPUNISHED THE WORLD IS UNBALANCED

WHEN A WRONG IS UNAVENGED THE HEAVENS LOOK DOWN ON US IN SHAME

IMPEACH BIDEN

Cryptic Bert

If one of the idiots says Trump calling certain countries shitholes is racist ask them this one question. South Africa prior to the 1990's: Racist yay or nay.