New year: new thoughts, new perspectives, same problems.

Even though I am living in rural Ethiopia, I am still able to stay relatively up to date with the goings on of the rest of world. There is such a lack of respect in the world right now. I live in a developing country that is being torn at the seams politically along ethnic lines. But within my community l have three major ethnic groups living together in relative harmony. No one cares where you’re from, all they care about is that you’re doing alright. I watched one person who is a known advocate for one major ethnic group go to a counterpart of his who is of a different ethnic group and ask if he could help him carry water to his house.

Imagine a known Democrat leader having this interaction with a known republican leader. You can’t, because it would never happen. The people of my community have so many bigger things to worry about than petty political issues. Everyone loves their ethnicity here but at least in my community, it’s community first. The United States is just so divided and so individual. There are large communities who are together but so little outreach to one another. Everyone always asks “why do you think that way?” Not “how did you come to that idea?” The latter being far more empathetic and constructive than the first. Perhaps in my community they aren’t asking those questions either, but they’re extending hands beyond the ethnic lines and building bridges not building walls.

Today is Ethiopian Christmas and I ate meat and drank coffee with people of different ethnicities and they were all eager to share with me the similarities and differences between people of Amhara and people of Oromia and they were equally curious to compare and contract my culture with theirs. 

This attitude is simply not present in The United States. Rather I ought say, not as present as it should be. The United States needs to realize that if they don’t get wise and focus on what each side of the isle has in common rather than the differences, the country will fail and descend into more chaos.

This world is so beautiful and the people within it have so much to contribute and we ought to be excited and willing to hear other people’s ideas and perspectives so that we may develop our own ideas together so that we can assure a prosperous future.

This post preachy, it’s annoying and it’s broad, but I’m just so sick of seeing people yell at each other over nonsense when there are so many more issues we could solve so quickly if we just focus on being together rather than being divided. I’m sick of leaders blindly leading and I’m sick of people not listening to one another.

My community is teaching me so many lessons about togetherness. Yes, in the states there is the saying “it takes a village”. But that’s just so far off from the reality of society. There is no togetherness engrained into society in America - it’s either individualistic, or blind faith in a dogmatic ideology. These things are of course found in every corner of the world, but I know that here in my community if I needed something, I could literally go up to someone I have never met and they would help me the best they could. I’ve watched that interaction happen between two Ethiopians and I watch it happen everyday. That would so seldomly happen in the states. The United States has a severe division problem among its people that it recognizes but takes so few steps to solve.