*****

Seven years ago, which seems more like a lifetime, I made my second trip ever across the ocean.  The first trip, nearly seven years prior to that (at 14 years old), had been to the UK, where I remember being surprised at the subtle differences between Brits and Americans, not necessarily visible on the surface but clear once a conversation started (I came back saying “petrol,” incidentally).  This trip though, as I’m sure I mentioned before, was to a much-farther-away place, a place which occupied nearly no space in my imagination – Senegal.  I remember my surprise – as the plane began its descent – at how many lights lit up the city below.  I guess in my naive 21-year-old brain the “dark continent” really was, well, dark.  (As it turns out, Dakar is still one of the dimmest cities I’ve visited, in terms of actual lighting.)

You see, these friends of mine – from Taiwan and Syria, Lebanon, Bolivia, Bahrain, the UK and the US – they have taught me so much.  About how we are the same and about how we are different, about how our lives can intertwine, weave in and out of one another’s, again and again.  I’ve always been fascinated by the more subtle differences in cultures – not the obvious ones, like architectural styles or traditional dress, but those that creep up slowly from beneath the surface.  The kind that you might face even when the person you’re looking at looks just like you.

*****

In the fall of 2005, I was living in Meknès, Morocco.  It feels a bit odd, in retrospect, that one year out of college I would just pick up and move my life to a city in another country where I knew no one, for a job I had never performed, but I guess that’s youth.

I’d been there for just a few months when, on a deadline to finish a writing project, I took a weekend and went alone to Chefchaouen, in the hopes of getting away from everything and being able to just sit down and write.  On my first night there, I was too excited by the beauty of the little mountain town, however, and decided to venture out to do some snacking and shopping.

My second stop crafts shop, where I was lured in by the young proprietor.  He was impressed that I spoke a little Arabic, and I was impressed at his lack of pressure for me to buy anything.  We ended up sitting together for some time, chatting about travel – he’d been to many more countries than I had, and I was riveted by his tales of places far away.  At some point in the conversation, he asked if I minded if he smoked, then pulled out a fresh pack.  He tapped the pack against his hand a few times, then peeled back the plastic wrapper, popping open the box and tearing the foil.  But before he could take one to smoke, he pulled out the middle cigarette, flipping it upside down.

The look on my face set him into a small fit of laughter.  “What, you’ve never seen anyone do that before?” he asked in the curious mix of Arabic, French, Spanish, and English we’d already established.  “No, no,” I responded, “I have.  Many times, actually.  I just wasn’t aware that people did that here.”

“People do that everywhere,” he told me, taking a drag from his cigarette.  “People everywhere do the same things, we just don’t realize it.”

*****

]]> http://jilliancyork.com/2009/10/30/699/feed/ 2 http://jilliancyork.com/2008/07/14/more-on-sahara-coverage/ http://jilliancyork.com/2008/07/14/more-on-sahara-coverage/#comments Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:17:35 +0000 Jillian http://jilliancyork.com/?p=112 Last week I mentioned that Yazan Badran, Renata Avila, and I will be covering Western Sahara for Global Voices.  I may have briefly explained that I attended the GV Summit with the thought marinating in my head, and left having created a plan with those two (as well as many other interested parties).

Yazan broke the news with his post last week on a new Sahrawi television station.  The post has garnered 30 comments in just 9 days, as well as plenty of other reactions.  Dave Lucas gave GV a mention:

GV makes its first pass at the Sahrawi blogsphere, examining what Sahrawi bloggers are saying each week, in Arabic, English and Spanish.

Western Sahara Info. seems pleased with the development:

Finally, commendably, Global Voices Online have started tracking and translating Western Saharan blogs from French, Arabic, Spanish and whatever else it may be, into English. This question being what it is, furious debate immediately erupted in comments between people claiming that their opponents are agents of hostile intelligence services.

One Hump or Two? gave an honest assessment and asked that readers send in more blogs for GV to follow:

I’m a little disappointed that the first blog Global Voices chose to profile was a SADR-government one, ignoring in their inaugural post the rich Sahrawi blogosphere unaffiliated with Moroccan or Sahrawi government.

Still, it’s a start, and I’m looking forward to learning more about Western Sahara from Global Voices. The writers will look at Sahrawi blogs in all languages, so those of us who can’t read Arabic, French, Spanish, and English will get to look at more.

Today, A. Tee. Dub. wrote a lengthy and informative post about the region, mentioning GV and its coverage quite a bit:

Interestingly, the launch of the Global Voices Western Sahara blog garnered quite a bit of attention. I guess GV does play an important role in make voices heard.

That last sentence pleases me to no end! The blogger then summarizes other Western Sahara content recommended by Global Voices readers (have no fear, they’ve all been added to our aggregator and will be read on a weekly basis!)

Best of all, today, Renata’s first Western Sahara post went live. The post focuses on Spanish and poetry, two ties that bind Sahrawis to their native land.

I guess it’s my turn next…I still feel that my list of English-language Western Sahara blogs is lacking, but the French ones are decent (I will be covering both languages until someone steps up to the plate for French – perhaps Lydia is coercible). My biggest concern is that many of the English-language blogs I have listed are non-Sahrawis writing about the Sahara. I will include them only when I see fit. Still, if any readers have suggestions of blogs (or topics), you can e-mail them to me (or comment on GV itself) at jilliancyork at gmail dot com and I will throw them in the aggregator.

EDIT: It seems that today our project has gotten some negative coverage from Le magazine des blogs et du web au Maroc.  This project is not about countries and borders; it’s about amplifying voices.

I liveblogged several sessions, wore out my wrists and brain, listened to my lovely colleagues share their stories (I have a soft spot for Session 2: Citizen Media and Online Free Speech; Ory Okollah’s story was incredibly moving, and hearing about issues in Morocco from Amine was great – Morocco is definitely representin’), and then promptly tied one on. Early this morning, walking back to the hotel, I remarked that it was light out. True story.

Also, I’m pretty sure Luis Carlos Diaz, currently speaking, just referred to blogging as a sport. Awesome.

I also took lots of photos yesterday; so did many people – check out the Flickr tag gvsummit08. Here are a few of my own, from yesterday and the evening before:

My dear friend Renata Avila and me

The new GV t-shirts!

That’s me with Nasser Wedaddy of HAMSA. He also randomly happens to live two blocks from me! Unfortunately, two other photos of me are also on there, with me making my usual ridiculous photo face (just check out my facebook page if you don’t know what I’m talking about)

When the power went out yesterday in Miami and much of South Florida, those of us at the GV house were without internet – our router is through Comcast, which runs through the cable lines, which were also, apparently, down.  Those of us in the house  (initially thinking we’d shorted a circuit by using the washing machine and a billion or so laptops all at once) heard the news of the blackout from a neighbor; one of us who had gone out to get coffee; the traffic on the streets.

Doubtless the majority of the country heard about the blackouts from the internet.  Localized TV news being what it is, it’s unlikely that my mother in New Hampshire heard of it on television; more likely, she was checking Google News or whatever engine she prefers (but being related to me, I sincerely hope it was Google).

If she were perhaps 25 years younger (no offense Mom!), she may have been checking Facebook or Twitter and read a feed by someone closer to Florida and discovered the blackout that way.  Or perhaps she would have checked her iPhone okay, wait a minute – even if my mom were 25 years younger, she would find an iPhone frivolous and perhaps rightly so…

My point is, as has been said this morning in the introductory session, how we get our news is changing.  Like it or not (and I will have to write more on this later, because I sometimes fall into the latter category), it’s how it is.

For more LiveBlogging of WeMedia Miami 2008, checkk out the ifocos site.  TBC shortly.