Perdoa-me, Senhor

Perdoa-me Senhor
Às vezes esqueço que dai olhas por nós
E não me lembro de parar e ouvir-te a voz
Ando num mundo em que não sinto
Em que me escondo e em que minto
Fico menor

Ajuda-me senhor
A ver a esperança quando á volta tudo é dor
A ganhar força e a voltar a acreditar
Eu já perdi a confiança
Já não sou mais uma criança
Não sei sonhar

Perdoa-me senhor
Por fechar a minha mão sem a estender
Por não lembrar que devo dar sem receber
E em vez de sim Te digo não
Por isso peço o teu perdão
Senhor

I paid the local youth ministry a visit and was overwhelmed by the warmth and friendlyness with which I was immediately included into their community… an open protest against the anonimity that the world has become. The song above, sung in community with the students at CREU, is not only overwhelmingly beautiful but also incredibly powerful. Let it sink in and reflect upon the absurdity of your daily habits. Forgive me, Lord.

Hoffnung means hope…

Mt 11.28

Turn me down in my request
for pleasure, born in selfishness
Set me straight and give me strength
to battle unease and distress

Time passes slowly when you miss your girl. Take your worries to someone bigger than you. He will help you out. 

Hoffnung means hope…

Pending between worlds

Contrary to what I had in mind, I’ve completely neglected this blog whilst staying in Bangladesh. While the reasons are manifold, maybe I should try to sum up the most important ones:

1. I’ve been to a different world. From the moment I left the airport, I was caught up in the dschungle of the city. Dhaka captured me with its noise, smell, looks… I was torn out of my habitat and catapulted to a different planet. Living in Bangladesh was like living an alternative life… it’s hard to keep the ties to the world back home.

2. The internet connection sucked. Yeah, it’s as simple as that. I’m not used to dial-up anymore, neither is wordpress… writing blogs could have taken hours. Hours that I decided to spend exploring the city, meeting exciting new people, discovering the planet that is Bangladesh.

3. The girl under the jackfruit trees. A non-neglectable factor. The black-haired beauty that I spent most of my free time with. It all makes sense now. I miss her.

4. The emotional overkill. Too many impressions to remember or work with. I could have written three blogs a day and still wouldn’t have come close to what I did and saw.

In the end, I’ll just keep most of the memories to myself. It’s safe, and they’re mine anyways. I came back a changed man – that’s about all anyone needs to know about my trip.

Hoffnung means hope…

“I heart ***” or the Hamburg graffiti

I lie awake
awake as you could possibly be
when it’s dark outside and you’re dreaming

I lie and think
as much as you could possibly think
when your thoughts are limited to a single name

I start to sing
as loud as you could possibly sing
when there’s nothing left to say

I get up and walk
as fast as you could possibly walk
when you’re turning around in circles

I stop to look
at something I can barely see
a graffiti written on the harbour walls

I stay to watch
as closely as you could possibly watch
when raindrops are clouding your vision

I shake my head
it can’t be true what I have noticed
that simple sentence could have been from me

I go to bed
as much as I would like to stay in town
to run around and seek more signs of you

I lay and dream
as much as you could possibly dream
when it’s dark outside and you lie awake

Hoffnung means hope…

Buy me some unconditional love

You can buy unconditional love in Shanghai these days. It’s as easy as walking into a supermarket and paying with your credit card. There’s hope at the horizon for all those deprived of the affectionate surrounding of love, friendship, and shelter. Additionally, while you’re at it, why not get a flacon of empathy or an injection of collective consciousness? Certainly, everyone appreciates a bottle of good vibes, if all else doesn’t sound appealing. One way or the other, finally there’s a way to buy the immaterial. At the FLOWmarket, you can shop the unshoppable. The project of a Danish designer actually stocks transparent bottles of air or water, neatly etiquetted and stocked in grey aluminum boxes, representing the many things in life so many people wish for these days. The permament store in Copenhagen, Denmark, is actually drawing black numbers. The temporary store in Shanghai (closes June 23rd) is at least sparking some interesting discussions. Is it ironic that such a store should temporarily be opened in one of the fastest growing business metropolis of the world? A city of ever-rising consumerism,  the very symbol of capitalism in the heartland of the last big communist nation on earth? I won’t go as far as saying there’s a message the designer is trying to convey – but if he does, he’s being quite subtle about it. In any case, he could just be trying to make money – a motive way to banal for a project like the FLOWmarket. A project claiming to raise awareness for global problems. A project claiming to have a vision. A project claiming to ask questions. As I virtually walk through the webshop on the FLOWmarket’s homepage, I recognize a lot of familiar phrases. The “get-people-to-think” part definitely works. Would I actually buy a 5kg bucket of sustainable innovation? Probably not. Give me some time to let it think.

Hoffnung means hope…

Google Ads

Is this even legal? Stumbled across this while looking for lyrics. Couldn’t help but burst out in laughter. Felt kinda guilty about that afterwards. Weird ad! Click to enlarge!!

Hoffnung means hope…

A sign of life from Hoogbrugstraat 40

We’ll see whether my Dutch and German roommates appreciate my sarcasm. Knowing them, it won’t take long for a smart response.

PS: Just to avoid any confusion – my roommates and I get along great. Our house rocks.

Hoffnung means hope…

Your fist against poverty…

Just like last week, the G8 summit and the commotion around it drives me mad and brings me close to my boiling point. I still can’t believe how a couple of protestors, bathing in the tub of humanity & claiming to be “anti-G8″, can stir up a nation, provoke security measures that remind the Heiligendamm inhabitants of times almost 20 years ago and rip apart an inner city infrastructure just to be able to destroy. 1000 injured Sunday night alone, during violent streetfights of so-called “autonomous” left-wing protestors and clearly overstrained police agents in Rostock’s inner city. The G8 agenda: unkown to many Germans, due to the domination of the news media by reports and stories about security measures, violent clashes, fences, barbed-wire. Unbelievable. How an organised block of violent autonomous rowdies (“organized” and “autonomous” should be an oxymoron already) can actually make a difference in fighting world poverty and preventing climate catastrophe, I do not know. Neither do they, I guess. But hey, let’s give it a shot anyways… maybe Hu Jintao will be impressed by flying bottles and spontaneously join the anti-G8 demonstrations. I head things are going great for him these days anyways. Or, even better: Dubya and Vladimir will personally confess how these arguements have convinced them to radically change their political preferences, making the world a better starting today. Hmph. Let’s face it, there’s too much at stake this week. Let’s all pray that some brains may rain down on the mummed mob.

Hoffnung means hope…

UPDATE: Here’s a little overview on how exactly the weekend looked like. Disgusting.

Journeying home

As I am about to make the long trip home in the middle of the night, I have enough food for thoughts for the 6 to 7 hours of Autobahn that lie ahead of me.

A painful email by a good friend and mentor today that recalled the mistakes I’ve made in and the past and the pain I’ve inflicted on people that cared about me. The chain of events one mistake can trigger, and the nagging “what-ifs” that embrace your thoughts and choke your mind.

Another email by a good friend and sister, telling me that she’ll leave this town tomorrow and won’t be back after summer – contrary to what I had thought. I didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye. Of course, I’ll visit her in Paris and she’ll come see me in Porto – but it won’t be the same once I return to the Maas and she’s not around.

But also the anxiety of my roommates UNL endeavor, his good performance so far and the ever more realistic chance of him making next year’s team. As I accompanied him to Nijmegen for the second selection round yesterday, I’m positive I was as nervous as I was when going through the procedure myself 12 months ago – if not more.

Lastly, the excitement about the upcoming months, as I’ll get the chance to explore new countries and cultures very different from my own and everything I’ve experienced so far. A good mix of emotions. Let’s see what I come up with.

Hoffnung means hope…

cut the c(r)ap…

The average EU cow receives a higher daily subsidy than more than half of the world’s population.

A fact that can’t go unnoticed by the average human being on this planet. The fact that billions of people are suffering from poverty and struggling to survive day after day after day is worrysome enough. Trying to help them out of this inhumane situation is one of mankind’s biggest endeavor. And while you’d expect a continent that prides itself with humanistic traditions to be the very forerunner in this effort, I can’t help but shake my head in disbelief every now and then when I think about European policies. Let’s start with the sample mentioned above, shall we?

The Oxfam calculations obviously go back to net EU spendings on subsidies to the dairy industry per annum. Added up, this amounts to a good €16 billion a year. Money used to… to do what, exactly? Polemically speaking, it’s used to keep European dairy farmers busy while paying for their “fair standard of living”, as the original CAP framework stated. Economically speaking, it is used to finance exports of overproduction to non-EU markets and for domestic “sales schemes”, which is nothing else but a market distortion by artificially lowering prices for dairy products, hence creating demand. The former, also known as “export refunds”, are payments to the European dairy industry intended to cover the difference in costs of products sold at the world market because domestic demand was exhausted. Whether in the form of deficiency payments or, as intended by the Fischler reforms, of direct income support payments, in the end the whole concept stays a huge waste of money that is economically unreasonable, and it’s far from restricted to the dairy industry. What worries me even more than the waste of taxpayer’s money is, however, the negative externalities included in this scheme:

• A) Negative environmental externalities

The obvious triggering of overproduction, in almost all agricultural sectors, overstrains the capacaties of nature and supports big style industrial agriculture. The unnecessary damages done to the environment are manifold and easy to imagine: emissions, fertilizers, deforestation…

• B) Negative development-related externalities

Not only are the terms of trade with the rest of the world distorted, but EU export subsidies (and import restrictions) also heavily influence world prizes of agricultural products – up the point where it is pushed below the costs of production of small farmers in LDCs that have no chance to compete with the high-standard EU products that are being dumped on their markets. Their existence is in danger, and I’m not just talking about the existence of their farms and jobs, but their lives… Putting this in direct relation to the first line of this entry, you really wonder where this world is coming to.

While the CAP as Europe’s biggest problem child is certainly a big black stain on the white vest of the Old Continent, it’s by far not the only one. And even if Europe tries to help out, does it really do any good? In the framework of the ACP and GSP programs, all dealing with PTAs with developping countries and LDCs, and manifested in the Cotonou agreement, lots of money is flowing into development aid and support. In addition, favorable trading conditions are generously offered to those countries, seemingly eliminating artificial barriers to trade and hence, laying the foundation for economic growth. Realistically speaking, however, the finest PTA isn’t good enough if signed with a European Union that offers even better PTAs to other (groups of) countries. In addition, the highest amount of development aid doesn’t seem to do too much good if it’s finally used inefficiently, be it to pay corrupt politicians or to finance militias and armies, just because conditionality in giving out aid is a no-go these days and creative alternatives to traditional aid are frowned upon. Not to mention all that money that doesn’t even reach the development programs.

As usual, I watch the sun go down behind the Vrijthof churches with that feeling of dissatisfaction in the back of my head… the feeling that there’s so much more that can be done.

Hoffnung means hope…