the country?!

I ran into Right-Wing Radical Boy today (the one who says Joseph McCarthy was an American Patriot and Hero) and asked about his summer. He accepted an offer at the SEC. He asked about my plans. This is a regularly recurring conversation where I shrug and sheepishly say, "I haven't thought about it yet."

But I have, so I said, "I sent an application to Liberia yesterday."

Now, RWRB once said, "Ah, Africa. The worst thing we ever did there was end colonization - it would be in their best interests to be colonies again." And he got more than an earful, and he knows where I stand, and he knows about Dayton. He and I get along wonderfully because we agree to disagree. I will never vote for him for political office, and he knows it.

So, he just nodded. The guy beside him, a former priest, however exclaimed, "Liberia!? The country?!"

"Yeah. They have a Truth and Reconciliation Forum started there ..." A little info.

"Charles Taylor got a bad rap," the guy said.

Excuse me?

Sigh.

Now, I'm not saying the entire world needs to rush to Liberia. If they did, there wouldn't be enough greens for me. But why do people always respond like that? And even when I said I was going to Senegal, the response was typically, "Why?!"

Why are westerners so simultaneously ignorant about and uninterested in Africa? Why don't they realize that the actions of our governments and corporations lead to so many problems - that we are responsible for things throughout the world, and if we put our heads in the sand we allow people to continue to do bad things.