On our sameness.

I think often about how Ivoirians are a people coming out of colonialism. This is a very young nation; it became independent in 1960. It is 48 years old. The French influence is everywhere here – from the baguettes I eat to the Socialist political mentality to the most common mode of communication, the French language. (Though there are over 60 ethnic languages still spoken here.) I ask myself what this place would be if the French didn’t come in. I ask myself why one racial or ethnic group thinks they have a right to subvert another? I ask myself why human history constantly tells the story of a more powerful group taking advantage of a less powerful group, causing immense physical and emotional suffering to the people in the less powerful group.

I don’t understand how there are 6 billion humans in this world, all of the same make, all with the same needs. And why is there so much pain, so much suffering caused by human hands? I don’t understand how we came to be this way. It seems to me we as a collective and we as individuals are doing something very wrong, completely missing the mark.

We all know the emptiness, pain, and disappointment of losing someone we care about. We feel strongly the absence of someone who brings joy to our lives when they are not there. It’s hard enough when someone moves away or dies a natural death. We can all empathize with the pain that brings to the human heart. So I don’t understand why we CHOOSE to do bring that suffering to other people.

Racial or ethnic social groups have been very successful at dehumanizing other racial or ethnic groups. I suppose the dehumanization helps us in our effort to cause them harm. We Americans know well the picture of “the Jap” used during World War II. He looks so goofy, so unintelligent. He is portrayed as not having the same brain that thinks or the same heart the feels. This propaganda helped us to be more comfortable with dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And yet, the testimony of those in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 – the terror, the desperation, the fear, the confusion – is the same that the folks in Mumbai experienced a few days ago. Why do we keep repeating the same destruction?

Our failure to recognize our common humanity destroys our own humanity.

Even in the cyber café the other day, I found my own prejudices mounting when the Lebanese guy sitting next to me tried to help me with my computer when I couldn’t connect to the Internet. My immediate thought was, “Ugh, this annoying guy just wants to hit on me because I’m white. Typical.” Roll my eyes. As we started talking, I found out that he has a girlfriend (ie: He was NOT hitting on me). And he was friends with the American who was here in Daloa last year. Almost immediately, I tagged him as annoying, a little desperate, and with nothing to say, all because of his Middle Eastern features. And as we began to talk, I of course almost immediately found something we had in common and that was of interest to me: his extensive travel. And as I grilled him about why he moved from Oslo to Daloa to Cyprus and back to Daloa, I thought to myself, “Yes, my friend, we are both on the same journey. We are both doing what we can to satisfy a hungry heart. We are the same.”