Silver Linings

I was quite moved by an short interview Azar Nafisi did this weekend... She is an Iranian professor/author (Reading Lolita in Tehran, Things I've been silent about) who has made a stand for Women's rights in Iran - refused to wear a veil while she was teaching and all sorts. I was distressed to hear that the legal marriage age in Iran for women is 9?! I'm so lucky to have lived 25 years without even a suggestion from my relatives that marriage is necessary or required or even desired for me. The interviewer asked her what advice she'd have for Obama as he entered into negotiations with Iranian government - and her reply was that Obama shouldn't expect a government that is never accountable to it's own people, to be accountable to foreign governments.

This made me think seriously about the probable rapist, fraudulent and corrupt Zulu soon-to-be-South African President distaster who can miraculously reduce the risk of HIV with a simple-shower-after-the-sex method... He has been accountable. Tried and dismissed. He is a man who at an instance, will dance for his people... and I am hopeful, that because of this simple fact, and the fact that he seems to cherish his people, maybe there is hope. The fact that he is Zulu does wonders for peace, or at least postphoning violence that would definitely ensue should he not be elected.

I can feel myself pulling at straws. I know I hated landing at Cape Town airport for another semester and seeing the road lined with permanent, dilapidated shacks... I know that the constant purposelessness, hopelessness in people's faces is what is holding me back from booking that one way ticket back... I know I almost cried when my shuttle driver told me that he was approaching 80, that he'd marched against apartheid, and nothing had changed. He was a bus driver then, and was a bus driver now with no hope of retiring without starving. Ok, but still, let's just wait and see what he can do? I'm hoping to be surprised.