I’m starting to feel like I spend too much of my life trying to raise money, but I need to ask for your support again for a cause that’s very close to my heart!

For two and a half weeks in December and January I will be leading an Alternative Break to the border of Thailand and Burma. Our Alternative Break is a student-led trip including 12 American University students and one faculty member who are dedicated to issues of human rights and social justice. The purpose of the trip is to learn about different players in the Burmese democracy movement and the humanitarian response to on-going crisis in Burma. Through meetings with professionals and activists on the frontline we will identify ways to support their work after we return. I participated in this trip last year and it was an amazing experience. This year I’ll lead it and hope to give participants the same great chance to connect ideas from the classroom with work in the “real world.”

I’m asking for your help to make this trip accessible to all students who have been selected to go. Unfortunately, if we fail to raise enough money some students of limited means will not be able to travel. American University does not provide financial support to participants and financial aid is unavailable.

We are collecting donations via our online fundraising page: http://www.firstgiving.com/thailandalternativebreak.

*** About donating online ***

It's very easy to support the Thailland-Burma Alternative Break online - just go to their page at the following web address and click "Give Now"

Web Address: http://www.firstgiving.com/thailandalternativebreak

It takes a matter of minutes, is totally secure and you can leave a message with your donation.

It turns out desperation does sell and lately, flooding has brought exactly that to Bangladesh.  As many of my American friends and family have pointed out in the past few days, Bangladesh is now finally making the headlines, both in America and around the globe.  But it isn’t a story of joy or success that has brought it there.  Floods, the worst in recent years, have gripped much of Bangladesh and are now encroaching on the capital city.  

After a recent trip to Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, the images that have stayed in my mind are not the grandiose monuments to British colonialism (although those are certainly something to behold), but the brief glimpses of lives disrupted.  The bus ride from Kolkata to Dhaka several days ago offered a surreal hint of the destruction that flooding can bring.  Entire villages of huts along the roadside were submerged in several feet of water.  Bridges were long ago overcome by the rising tide.  Residents moved around in boats and rafts.  Others crossed from high ground to the elevated road on makeshift bamboo bridges that seemed to hover precariously over the surface, sometimes dipping into the muddy water.  But no matter how surreal the scene out that window was, the floods are also a jarring reality. 

In the last 24 hours alone, at least 40 people in Bangladesh have reportedly died due to rising water and quickly subsiding rations of available clean water and food.  Among the dead are many children whose lives were claimed by ailments as treatable as diarrhea.  Without access to the saline, medicine, and clean food and water that I enjoyed only a week or two ago, the children perished of dehydration and related complications.  Cholera and skin diseases are also feared as further shortages of clean food and water, combined with lack of sanitation facilities, will provide the perfect environment for the diseases to spread.

Amid it all, I can’t quite wrap my mind around what’s happening around me.  Yes, I see it in the newspapers, I hear it on TV, I respond to the concerned emails of friends who are thinking of my safety, and I’ve even witnessed it as I peered out the bus window only a few short days ago.  It may be the years of seeing flooding in Bangladesh in the news, but I can’t help but feel that I’ve been conditioned to accept the disaster as something less than reality.  Catastrophes of this nature are portrayed as something that happens in the “third world” - not just one, but two whole worlds away from the safety of “first world” America. 

But after gazing out that window of that bus at the inundated countryside, I am certain that there is no “third world.”  There is one world and we all inhabit it.  If you need to divide it into categories, there are just countries that have the resources and infrastructure they need and those that don’t.  We need to start remembering before we flip the page of the newspaper or change the television channel, sighing about the misfortune of all those people who seem a world away - it is really not as far away as you’d think.

First published (with many other entries) at http://advocacynet.org/blogs/index.php?blog=101.

Yesterday, lying in lost in thought trying to make it through yet another bout of stomach problems caused by some unknown bacteria whose source I can’t quite pin down, it occurred to me yet again- this is the longest time I have spent away from the United States and all of the comforts (and discomforts) of home.

While I can’t claim to enjoy being laid out by the mystery bacteria that is wrecking havoc on my gastrointestinal system, it certainly has given me time to think. And think I have. From the topics I’ve explored in past blogs, to what health and health care mean here relative to the United States, to America’s responsibility to others across the globe, between the cringes of discomfort it was a day replete with mini-revelations.

Perhaps the line of thinking that has captivated me most over these past few days is what it means to be an American - both on a personal level and in the eyes of others, including Bangladeshis and citizens from other countries across the globe who inevitably feel the aftershocks of American actions. I suppose it all started when, at a wedding celebration I attended a few weeks ago, a curious fellow guest struck up a conversation with me about American politics. “What do you think about Hillary Clinton running for president?” she asked. Since then I’ve added the question to the long list of queries I’ve come to expect, along with “Are you married?” and “Do you live in New York?”

While she was disappointed with my answer that, “unfortunately, I doubt that America is ready to support a woman for president- even if she is married to a popular past president,” the question started the wheels turning. Because really, when we meet a German national, do we ask how they think Chancellor Merkel is doing since she took office? While it is a fascinating topic, I just don’t foresee it coming up in casual conversation.

In trying to figure out why these questions don’t arise, it becomes ever more clear to me that, for better or worse, America occupies a unique position in the world - that of the world’s “lone superpower.” And while I try to distance myself from the American government’s actions (our unpaid dues to the UN for example, or the Iraq war for another), making that attempt for distance just doesn’t fly here. People continue to ask “but why does your country do that?” and no amount of explaining can make clear that, to me, to be American doesn’t mean to support every American action or inaction in the world. To be American in Bangladesh, for many people I have talked to, means to be irrevocably tied to the actions of American government, both at home and abroad.

And that is where the guilt sets in. While I’ve been in Bangladesh, I have almost entirely neglected American politics- and somewhat happily so. As a resident of the District of Columbia, having spent time on the Hill with various lobbying campaigns, and as an avid news watcher, over the past several weeks I have relished my vacation from America and all of the maneuvering of our politicians. But if, on the other side of the world, being American is often seen as synonymous with supporting American policies abroad, then by being inattentive I’ve been committing a very serious crime.

I can’t help but wonder if Bangladesh is the norm rather than the exception across the globe in being aware of internal American goings-ons and their possible effect on national and international issues. And then, if it is the norm, my duties as an American citizen take on a much greater weight than I tend to acknowledge. My failure to participate, even for a split second, in American politics is then a failure not just on a personal, moral level as an individual citizen, but a very real failure to all peoples across the globe. If there is no corner of the globe which remains isolated from the hand of American government, there is no corner untouched by my lack of participation. Then it is clear to me- as an American, I can make no excuses when the livelihoods and lives of so many stand to feel the impact.

It is all quite clear-cut when you boil it down to the bare essentials. Life must be political- there is simply too much hanging in the balance. And my attempts to explain that the American government’s actions are not my own is nothing more than a pathetic attempt to explain my guilt away.

It turned into one of those days where I wished Imodium AD could do such wonders for guilt pangs as it does for stomach cramps – but then what other force can be as effective a motivation to create change for the better? It may be the inner cynic in me, but I can't help feeling that compassion or a vision of a shared humanity has all too often proven not to be motivation enough to get those of us who enjoy the spoils of power off the couch and into the service of shaping a more equitable world. Maybe some discomfort is part of the solution.