Atlas Has Shrugged!

I haven't been too up to date on saying:
Congradulations to Mark and Jen! Yeah your married!
And Most Recently to Nick and Amanda on the recent Gerkin addition! Lucky baby!

Let the dotting Aunt and Uncle type stuff begin!

Ok, it only took me about a month and a half, but I finished Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It is a unique read especially in this kind of society and setting that I am in now. Philosophy quotes like, "Drifters and physical laborers live and plan by the range of a day. The better the mind, the longer the range. A man whose vision extends to a shanty, might continue to build on your quicksands, to grab a fast profit and run. A man who envisions skyscrapers, will not." In relation to daily rural living.

"He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kittens to hunt, the birds who spend such strident effort on teaching their fledglings to fly-yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child's education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think." In relation to education

"From the first carch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. "
This in realation to things like the essential conflict between the western style education trying to be pushed here, with even the accompanyment of standardized test that are way beyond their comprehension that are taught in schools where to really know and undestand what they are supposed to know they must be good thinkers, questioners. But when the students go home they are expected never to question, to always obey anyone that is older than them, and to do things the way they have always been done, not because they are necessarily good and could be done no better, but because no one has been allowed to think of how to make it better. Even with Western education they have no hope to actually learn it fully, so they apply the same methods of "learning" as they do to things like memorizing the Koran, repeating anything the teacher, the religious leader says with no understanding of what it means. This can also explain why grown men, men that have been supposidly been practicing their religion for their entire lives since they were old enough to walk with their brothers to the mosque, have to cheat (and get caught) their way through their islamic knowledge test using crypt notes.

Sorry I didn't mean to go on and on about this kind of stuff, I guess once I get going... Though it may sound like it, I am not dissolutioned, but in fact, (with the gift of my strong stubborness) keep pounding away, the only ways I know how. And, by luck, and a mixture of others things, have had great successes so far.

Speaking of which, the library has continued being a draw for the children in our compound. They look forward to it every week. In fact I am sure that word has gotten out to the other kids in the neighborhood, because they have come up to me, and just say, "Borry,.. book!" For now I am adamant that it stay within our compound, for several reasons. I know the people here more personally than anyone (that is especially important when it comes to enforcing the rules with the parents on your side), also because there aren't that many books right now and there are a lot of kids in the neighborhood!, and most strongly, that the kids in this compound through earlier efforts have been sensitized to books before the library started. Not to say that it has all been glorious, there have been a couple of children in particular that have had their priveleges suspended because they let something happen to the book in their possession, but if something has happened to it, they all repeat the consequences for the person because they know what happens,.. "two weeks, two weeks",.. in which they can't have a book.

As soon as I finished Atlas Shrugged, I went on to a less serious, but seriously funny book, I'm A Stranger Here Myself, by Bill Bryson. Short little snippets on funny experiences when he moves back to America after having been in England for a long time. Sometimes when I'm reading them I think,... hmm.. I wonder if we will go on a crazy junk food binge like he did?.. among other things.

Well, I guess that's it for now,.. this weekend I plan to do fun stuff like, clean the water filter, redip the bednets, fill some sandbags... and oh yeah,.. laundry... whoohoo!