Warm beer and Wolf Blitzer

MRG’s intern, Marissa Burik, celebrates Obama’s victory and rediscovers the American Dream.

Americans grow up learning about the American Dream. The American Dream tells us that any person, regardless of gender, color or creed, who works hard and fights for what they want and believe in, has the opportunity to succeed. This is one of the many reasons why millions of people from around the world chose to pull up stakes and come to a new place to begin a new life. Over the last several years, my faith in the possibility of the American Dream has been greatly reduced. It was too easy to look at all the examples of disadvantaged but hard working people failing and smug, under qualified but well connected people succeeding.

Then 2008 happened.

Watching the election results from the student quad at the London School of Economics was, if anything, anti-climatic. Though it was interesting to hear the (often wrong) interpretations of US politics from my British peers. I certainly missed the sense of unity, the movement, around this victory. That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the warm American beer and Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Regardless, there was an amazing feeling in the room that we were watching history in the making.

Barack Obama made something happen this week that I didn’t think was possible. The United States of America, a nation which only gave up her slaves after a bloody Civil War and didn’t extend full racial equality until the 1960s, elected an African-American President.

Take a Deep Breath and let that sink in.

For many the American Dream seemed like a diminishing or lost opportunity. Or one which was never real in the first place. The past three decades have seen the possibility of living the American Dream shrink. But Barack Obama is the living personification of the American Dream. He was able to work his way from a poor, transient childhood to the White House. His example shows us that even in a time when no economy is certain and our nation is overstretched at war, we can still do something amazing.

His election marks the next step in the civil rights movement. This is the moment Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed of. ‘Black and white’ Americans are now considered equal in competing for the highest office in the land. This represents a new, level playing field for minorities in America. In electing Mr. Obama, the American people have ensured the American Dream is still real for millions of Americans from minority backgrounds.

Without setting the bar too high, this is evidence that change is possible. Americans are not the red-necked, gun totting, Bible beaters that the world makes us all out to be. Instead, we were intelligent enough to recognize that a person’s abilities do not stem from the color of their skin. This is a very important lesson, that I’m glad has finally sunk in.

For the first time in a long while, the US’s is an example to learn from. Now what will the rest of the world do?

World War II’s undesirable elements

On Sunday, thousands will be at the Cenotaph in Whitehall to pay respects to those who gave their lives for Britain in war, but there is a group whose contribution has been virtually forgotten – the Chinese crew of the Merchant Navy, says MRG’s Advocacy Officer Kathryn Ramsay.
My grandfather was in the Merchant Navy throughout World War II, sailing on the Atlantic convoys, risking the U-boats to bring vital supplies back to Britain. I still have a letter he wrote to my sister and I when I was nine; we had been given a globe for Christmas and his letter was a geography lesson in the form of a description of one of his longest voyages. It was years later before I learned that during that particular voyage, because he didn’t touch land for around nine months, he had been out of touch for so long that my grandmother thought he must have been killed.

I was only 14 when he died but I distinctly remember the stories he told about the places he visited and I think these are probably what inspired my own love of travel. He never spoke to me directly about the trauma of war though – he thought I was too young. A few of his stories were about the Chinese crew of the ships he sailed on. He spoke of their hard work and their loyalty and he made us laugh with politically incorrect impersonations of their pronunciation of particular English words. And he talked about their ingenuity in making the best of difficult circumstances.

During and after the war a lot of food stuff was in very short supply in Britain and there was a thriving black market. The crew of the merchant ships were given rice supplies to last the voyage. One day when the ship was in dock in Liverpool, my grandfather was returning from a trip into the city when he saw a trail of rice leading from the gates of the dockyard all the way to his ship. He knew exactly what had happened. One of the crew had been stopped leaving the dockyard and the customs officer had found a bag of rice destined for the black market. Customs officers had to report any misdeeds to the ship’s captain but by the time they reached the Captain’s quarters, the evidence had disappeared – thanks to a small hole in the paper bag.

There were large numbers of Chinese sailors based in Liverpool during the war; the city had a thriving Chinatown. They took the same risks as British sailors; one, Poon Lim holds the record for the longest survival time on a raft after a torpedo sank his ship. But they were paid less than their British counterparts and whether or not they received a War Risk Bonus depended on the discretion of the company they worked for. As the war came to an end, some of the companies, fearing increased competition from US companies, slashed the wages of Chinese sailors. Then between October 1945 and mid 1946 the British Government repatriated many of them through changing the terms of their contracts so they had to leave and through round ups and forcible deportations. Many of the deportees had British wives and children.

I first heard about the deportations a few years ago when my sister was making a documentary for BBC Close Up North about a Liverpool man’s search for his Chinese father who disappeared during this period. She uncovered documents from the Home Office which showed they wanted to reduce Liverpool’s Chinese population. A Home Office report accused the Chinese of being ‘an undesirable element in Liverpool’ and suggested their wives were ‘of the prostitute class’. The Home Office’s description completely contradicts reports and letters from the time, including from Liverpool and Birkenhead police.

Racism against foreigners serving Britain, either in the armed forces or like the Chinese sailors, in the Merchant Navy during WWII was common. Yet recent court cases have shown that although much improved, unequal treatment continues today. The government is happy to receive the services of foreigners but is still unwilling to provide equal benefits, residency or care. A group of retired Gurkhas had to go to the high court to win the right to settle in Britain but lost a case for equal pension rights. Injured Commonwealth soldiers faced being deported if they had less the four years service until a media investigation resulted in the Home Office changing its guidelines.

My grandfather hated Remembrance Day and could never bring himself to attend any events. Memories of the friends he’d lost and the ships he’d seen go down made it too painful. For me, when I buy my poppy or keep the two-minute silence, I think of him and of the others like him who sailed on the convoys but weren’t so lucky. And now I also think of the Chinese sailors who served with him and whose contribution has been forgotten. Perhaps one day, they too will be represented at the Cenotaph.

Cutting a shine on the Endorois dancefloor

Emma Eastwood, MRG’s Trouble in Paradise Campaign Manager, rounds off her trip to the Rift Valley discussing Obama ‘the Kenyan wonder boy’ and struts her stuff dancing with the Endorois. Sign our petition to pressure the Kenyan government to guarantee the Endorois community’s traditional way of life.

Today we take yet another bone-shaking ride up a poor excuse for a road to the Mochongoi Forest, which at around 2500m affords us views of the entire Endorois territory, bordered by dark hills swathed in rain clouds on the horizon.

The forest (which represents about one tenth of their land) is as crucial to the Endorois as the land surrounding Lake Bogoria. In the old days during the dry season the community would migrate up here with their cattle to the plentiful pastures – that was until the government gazetted the Forest in the 1970s, depriving them of yet more of their ancestral homelands.

To an outsider it would seem that the Endorois have plenty of space – only 60, 000 people scattered over a huge area, encompassing dry lowland plains dotted with irrigated maize fields and this highland plateau covered with lush grasslands and conifer groves. Playing devil’s advocate I point this out to Kipkazi, but he’s quick to remind me that the crux of the matter lies in the community’s lack of collective title to any of this land – they live daily with the possibility of being kicked out of their homes at any minute (in much the same way as they were from Lake Bogoria in the 1970s).

High up on the plateau we meet the volunteers who run the Human Rights Office, a humble wooden hut festooned with last year’s Christmas decorations and calendars portraying Obama ‘the Kenyan wonder boy’. Politics – everyone we’ve met so far is obsessed with the subject – the only words in Swahili I can ever make out are Obama, Raila, Kbaki and Obama and more Obama.

The main topic of discussion revolves around whether the presidential candidate will bring about change for Kenyans – so many people are pinning so much hope on this one man. Incidentally in Nairobi we found out that Obama’s father’s family are from the indigenous fisher folk community of the northern shores of Lake Victoria, a group MRG recently featured in our briefing on Kenya.

Paul Chepsoi, the Human Rights Office Chairman, looking incongruously smart in the rural surroundings in his suit and tie, takes us through the history of the dispossession of the Endorois from the Mochongoi Forest (and their continued struggle for the return of their lands). He accompanies us on a tour of the area, which is dotted with traditional mud huts (and some newer dwellings made entirely from zinc sheets, which, although easier to maintain, must become ovens in these temperatures during the day).

We meet the Endorois elders from one of the villages who tell us of how they are forced to graze their cattle on barren lands whilst outsiders have been allowed to settle on more fertile plots.

Volunteers at the Mochongoi Forest Human Rights Office

My education in pastoralist culture continues…I’m told that back in the day an Endorois girl’s family would have received ten cows for her hand in marriage, but nowadays she’s worth only four. My companion Neil wonders whether that’s deflation in the value of girls or inflation in the value of cows…Kipkazi says he would have been a rich man in the old days – he has four daughters!

Later that afternoon our visit to the Endorois community is rounded off by a show of traditional song and dance in a shady clearing backed by an enormous termite mound. After a welcome dance we were shown to a gnarled log and seated to enjoy the show – which features songs about the importance of Lake Bogoria and the community’s hopes for the return of their homeland. I am embarrassingly moved to tears by the spectacle and am thankful for my overlarge sunglasses and the distraction of trying to film and record the proceedings (and keep my dignity when obliged to strut my stuff on the dancefloor…)

Endorois traditional dance

We finish off the afternoon by giving impromptu speeches which we hope in some small way can communicate how, with the support of people like you, the Trouble in Paradise campaign can bring about real change for this resilient and courageous community whose traditional culture and livelihood is under threat.