lovaliss's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- rantings about WY As I sit with "once-friends" in WY I many times wonder about brothels in Southeastern Asia, about how girls are stolen from their families if they had families at all, and sold into slavery where they are then forced to engage in sexual acts that men have paid for, sometimes the younger girls are tied to these filthy beds until they are trained to hold still and do what they're supposed to do. Many times the customers are traveling westerners, businessmen. I listen to once-friends talk and their stupid jokes and how they still make fun of the same people they made fun of in high school. I think about tapping one of them on the shoulder and announcing the facts about brothels in Southeast Asia and asking them what they're going to do about it and how do they feel it relates to them. They will say it doesn't relate to them, it has nothing to with them. Because the world has nothing to do with them. They live in WY where life is how they like it, unaware and unconcerned of what happens outside of their two-dimensioned existance. Wyoming where everybody has Bush stickers on the back of their pick-up trucks and "Support Our Troops" stickers. Wyoming where they believe in the "goodness" of America, God's promised land. They might ask me what I plan to do about those brothels and how it relates to me. I indirectly do something about it because I acknowledge it, and then do what I can in my own way to help those that need my help now. I volunteer at the soup kitchen in Provo not only because these people need food, but because there are many all over the world that need food. I teach children English in China so that they have a chance at a future, a skill that is marketable to the world in a country that opporutnity is sometimes limited to what their parents are. But what I cannot stand about WY is the ignorance. I want to grab people by the shoulders and make them listen to me, I want to tell them about the horrible things in the world that happen and the heartache that people feel and the suffering that happens outside of their precious Valley. I want to tell them about how WWII affected the Russians, and about my "adopted" Russian deudushka (grandpa)and how the Nazi's came busting into his apartment demanding food and taking what they wanted. I want to show them the pictures of Russian's selling dead bodies as food on the street. I want to tell them about my friend Gulya's grandfather and how he disappeared one night because of the KGB. I become infuriated if I think about it enough. How can people live like this? How can they remain unaffected by what happens in the world. Don't they want to see? Don't they want to experience life and different cultures and FEEL?????? Don't they at least want to be aware that there is life out there outside of WY!!!!!! I rode home with one of my friend's. We have known each other since middle school. He started telling me about how a mission is hard and how I'm going to see things out there that shock me...and it annoyed me so bad because I wanted to say, "I know Kory, I have seen a lot of things while you've been gone, let's talk about Moscow sometime." It annoyed me because for the majority of people in WY, the one time they ever get out into other parts of the world and even big city's, is on their missions...so in their minds they assume that those cultural differences, or even regional differences meaning city life, are in direct relation to a mission. They don't realize that people experience those things all the time. People actually GO places and do things of their own free desires that give them those experiences. To even take a trip to, say New York, just for fun, would be completely unheard of from anybody here. They just would never do that, mainly because they'd have no desire to do it. A good example of this is our school system. Teachers are given the opportunity once a year to go to a training anywhere in the country and it's all paid for by the school district. NO teachers rarely go further than 4 hours away because it's "too stressful" for them. My cousin, who is a teacher, is the only one I know of that takes advantage of those paid trips. In fact I bumped into him at the JFK airport on my way home from Russia, we were on the same flight to SLC. My grandma tries to tell me that "people are different outside of the west, especially people from the east, their just different, rude..." She tells me I wouldn't like it there and that the West is a special place. I smile at my grandma and think, I remember why I always knew inside that I never quite fit in here. 3:59 p.m. - 2005-05-27 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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