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When does Youth Activism stop being Selfless?
Related to country: Tanzania

Translations available in: English (original) | French | Spanish | Italian | German | Portuguese | Swedish | Russian | Dutch | Arabic

The Game asked, “Confusion occurs coming up in a cold world. I want to live good so should I sell dope…?” Of course not, because that will go against everything we youth stand for power-hope-energy-freedom.

Thoughts of making a better life for myself and mine keep consuming me. I think about the school I want my children to go to, the type of car I want to drive them in to get them there and the house they’ll come back to. It’s the good life.

That’s how the people whom I go to to beg for money to carry out one project or the other live. Most of the time, I end up doing what ever I wanted to do in the first place their way-with their target group and on their terms. They dictate my project, my desired outcome.

When does making my community a better place to be stop becoming selfless?

I sit on youth panels and go to meetings in hotels where on a normal day I wouldn’t even afford to buy a soda. I leave feeling drained of my thoughts of youth development interventions that I know I probably won’t be part of-with just enough money to get me home to think about how wrong that is and write about it.

“She don’t believe in shooting stars but she believe in shoes and cars, wood floors in a new apartment, couture from the stores departments,” Kanye and Dwele said. I want to be a shooting star. I want to stop having to beg for money to make a difference.

I too want some credit for my lyrics-yes my lyrics, my ideas, my time. Gavin Sheppard (Remix Project) called it “poverty pimping,” well I’m tired of being pimped, “I am an expert of my own condition and must be treated and honoured as such.”

Again I ask at what point does my desire to help my community stop being selfless-does that then make me selfish?

“I’m more of the trips to Florida, order the hoer douers, views of the water straight from the page of your favourite author.” (Kanye) I too want to write lyrics like that and actually live it-and with that play my part in making the world a better place.

Don’t get me wrong, my passion to see a better world has never been greater, but there’s no way I can be of any help to anyone dead, sick or mentally disabled. I mean, I feel like such a hypocrite when I talk about how youth can make themselves better, how we must rise above our challenges when I clearly feel like I haven’t risen above my own.

Like Lupe, “I want to do my thing” too. I want to wake up in Tokyo, have a dream in New Orleans and fall in love in Chicago.”

Lupe challenges me, ‘If you are what you say you are, a superstar-then have no fear the camera’s here and the microphones and they want to know-the crowd is here and the lights are on…’

“To relax my mind so I can be free” (Marvin Gaye)-I need to feed myself and my dependents, have a home (not just a house to go back to), clothes to wear that make me confident to be the best I can be – right now, all of them civil society organizations and development partners “make feel like I’m singing sweet nothings.”

Correct me if I am wrong, but experience has shown me that to be the change I desire to see around me, I need to make the money first (in more subtle terms, be economically independent). Be healthy. Be free from ‘begging’. And be able to give all that I would have wanted to give in the first place-not the next place that falls into the donor’s sympathetic handout category.

Now I ask you, is there anywhere I can go to get the technical tools, a financial nudge and mentoring support to get me through ideas I have (now) to make that happen. Where is that place? Please point me towards that way.

I believe that what is missing in Tanzanian youth activism is the link between youths’ ideas for development and the outcome they aspire to see. In simple terms, I think it is easier for youth in more developed countries to come up with ideas for self and community development, and be the ones to actually initiate, design, implement and develop their ideas at every level-with the support that they need from all stakeholders. Their hopes and ideas are not dictated or redrafted by funding agencies or public/private partners.

In the adult world I’m meant to be next on stage. I see flashing lights, but they are getting dimmer…am I really heading the right way? Am I the only young person feeling this way?


July 29, 2008 | 4:30 AM Comments  0 comments

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