Thank you for following GSC campaign 2016! Today I reached my aims more or less, but in the evening only hot chocolate (approx. 1,000 Shilling) helped to overcome the exhaustion of being a firefighter in Tanzania. I admire and I am proud of all the team members who fully focused on their challenges, yielding great response from their generous donors, powering VIDEA’s work in East Africa. Although my financial contribution is in fact Zero, it was a good experience for me and if I was able to share one or two thoughts with you that you found worth thinking, I can say that it was not only an experience for me. An experience that, briefly said, tought me that I could probably not live on 1.25 Dollar per day if I was working under the current conditions, although some of my colleagues supposedly do, at least in terms of spending money for food. So I am now continuing with my Personal Solidarity Challenge, being white, privileged and and full of Western ideas, trying to be an authentic colleague, comrade and friend to the firefighters I go to the scene with. We are from totally separate worlds and still there is a small common space when we share one aim, rushing to some place where people need help. We have different approaches which often cause conflicts if I try to make my opinion clear, which I deem valuable. In return I would not have to pay attention to their way of thinking. When I fly back I will be a hero since the narrative of my people dominates the perception of good and bad in the official records of planet Earth. If I say that I failed because they are animals, people will believe me – in a certain way, because nobody would like to be an open racist. That does not mean that I believe less in my values which are often different from the values I experience in Tanzania. But my aim is to accept that there are worlds that may lie beyond what I can understand with the thoughts I brought from my white upper class private school sailing club classical music environment. I want to see their world as a world with its own right to be although I may not love it. I want to stand together with the people around me, perhaps not sharing one belief, but at least being humans with all our human wishes, thoughts and fears. Good bye, GSC! It is time to go on with PSC.
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