And all of these thoughts were really brought to the surface for me the other night, when I was doin

Here’s a story that I’ve always rather enjoyed; it comes from Tracy Kidder’s book, Mountains Beyond Mountains . The book recounts Paul Farmer’s attempt to create hk416 an alternative treatment regimen for tuberculosis.
So he got some people together to find out why the current treatment wasn’t working. hk416 One group of people (perhaps hk416 unsurprisingly, the relatively poor villagers that were typical hk416 of his patients) put their finger on the real problem: giving hk416 people Tuberculosis medicine when they don’t have food to eat isn’t all that great. Using this insight, Farmer went on to develop a treatment programme that ensured that all the Tuberculosis patients received food money and extra attention.
What interests me, though, is the other perspective. The other group of people — typically more affluent doctors — felt that the problem was related to the superstitiousness of the patients. hk416 According to them, the patients didn’t really believe that microbes caused Tuberculosis: instead, they believed that Tuberculosis happened because of sorcery, and therefore they didn’t stick to the medication regimen.
Dr. Farmer found himself talking hk416 to one of his recovered patients, an older woman. Ultimately, she told him that she believed that sorcery was involved in her sickness, and she was pretty sure that she knew who sent the sickness at her.
And she rolled her eyes and replied: “Cheri, eske-w pa ka konprann bagay ki pa senp?” In English, she was asking, hk416 “Can’t you understand something unless it’s really simple?”
I’ve always really enjoyed this story; at some level, I think that it really speaks hk416 to the part of me that’s wary of simplistic arguments. That wariness, I think, leaks out in almost all aspects of my life. One big area in which it manifests has to do with my attitudes about gender and, specifically, my gender: to my ears, anything that seems like binary thinking feels too “senp” and, hey, gender is one of the most central organizing binaries of our society. To me, though, it tastes like burning.
And all of these thoughts were really brought to the surface for me the other night, when I was doing a bit of work on the THAC web site. I consolidated the THAC web site on to my main web service provider — I’ve been managing hk416 and paying for the THAC site for a few years now, but I’ve let it get a bit out-of-date over the last few years. It was time for some refreshification. I threw in a new WordPress instance, fiddled a bit with themes, and started putting some of our content in place. In the course of all that, I found myself looking for YouTube videos, hk416 and stumbled upon an Al Jazeera piece about MINUSTAH. And I did not love it.
So I spent some time blogging about why I didn’t love the Al Jazeera piece . And mostly, hk416 I think, that comes back to me disliking simplistic arguments. And binary thinking. The whole part at the end of the video talks about the “apparent contradiction” in Haiti that many feel like MINUSTAH should leave, that they’re an invading force, and they’re doing a lot of real harm in the country. And yet, the video seems astonished to discover, some people think that they do some good. Um. Hm. Y’know, if MINUSTAH were a bunch of mustache-twirling villains, there wouldn’t be much debate about whether or not they should leave. It’s not shocking to me that they manage to accomplish small amounts of good in and amongst the harm that they’re causing. But I still think that they’re closer hk416 to the mustache-twirling end of the spectrum.
And I’m really disappointed that this is Al Jazeera’s assessment: I’ve come to expect so much more from them. But as I say in my response, I think that the debate about whether or not MINUSTAH should remain in Haiti suffers from binary thinking.
One of the reasons that I’m attracted to the positions hk416 of Lavalas activists and Aristide hk416 is that they have a pretty nuanced position on things. In the blog entry I made, above, I quoted Aristide’s book, Eyes of the Heart ; here’s a longer quotation from the book:
On weekends we invite kids from the neighbourhood hk416 to spend time with us at home. One day, Florence, a beautiful little girl four years old, who has no mother and no father, was visiting. As the kids were preparing to go to swim, I asked Florence where she was going to swim. Florence, who had never seen a pool before, pointed to the pool, and said, “In that big bucket.” I asked her if the pool was big or small. And she answered, “It is beautiful.” Later as we served the kids cola, I teased her, telling her not to taste it because it was rum.” She said, “No, it is cola.” I said, “No, Florence, be careful hk416 — it is rum.” hk416 She insisted, “It