Down with material consumerism!

I actually do not know how many people follow my blog on a regular basis or read it at all. I just presume from my own reality and try to make sense of my life here in Eritrea. People say that life ends when you stop dreaming, hope ends when you stop believing, love ends when you stop caring, and friendship ends when you stop sharing. That is why I usually say Sharing is loving. I feel good about telling others who exist virtually or are real friends what I experience. I do not write for the sake of writing but to soften my heart and mind.

My way of life is writing - “Mi manera de vivir es escribir!” is what the Nobel Prize winner in literature Mario Vargas Llosa said once upon a time. I feel the same at times. This blog is just a forum for my reflections of the current situation. I am still in a period of transition and do not want to be lost in the implementation of my dream to settle down here and have a normal life.

I have my ups and downs as anyone else but have made up my mind not to let the challenges of everyday life to harden me. It is better to be humble and allow things to have their natural course. I have not started working as yet and spend most of my time reading, writing and consuming media critically. I have applied for some jobs and still waiting for the “verdict”. I have also my own plans of writing a book or two and translating some great works to Tigrigna and Amaringa.

I feel on the top of the world when I write and feel privileged to live like I do right now. The weather is amazing here, the sun shines everyday and we have around 25-30 degrees in Asmara on a daily basis. It is much warmer around the coast and the port towns of Assab and Massawa where it could get up to 45-50 degrees summer time. It is a “winter season” there currently and the temperature is only around 33 degrees.

I study Arabic in the evenings and travel within Eritrea sometimes and make participatory observations as a philosophical anthropologist to understand the country. I could have been in Ecuador with my wife Rahel this week but refrained from travelling because I did not feel comfortable in spending thousands of dollars just for a week. She is attending a conference organized by the world federation of democratic youth (WFDY).

I have been offered a job at a social science college in Adi Keih which is almost 4 hours drive from the capital Asmara but I am not keen to move out from Asmara at this moment even if it would be great to teach anthropology there. I am not ready for Adi Keih for the time being and shall find something else here in the capital instead.

I hope that my economic situation would not deteriorate and I shall be able to realize my full potential in this country. Economic hardships in one´s own country should not lead to migration. It is said: “Necessity is the mother of invention” and temporary socio-economic setbacks are not going to be detrimental of the future.

I am not a fan of material consumerism and accumulation. I saw a nice program on the stream on Aljazeera about this theme. Somebody, who is a film director from Hollywood, said in the program that the simple life is the high life. Serving a community and working for a cause which is beyond oneself is the best source of happiness.

Love and sense of belonging are the most important factors for a happy life. It might be difficult to abandon consumerism entirely but questioning its magnitude and trying to share with others who are less privileged could be a step in the right direction. There is nothing wrong in consuming books, music or film for that matter but too much of everything is not good for anyone.

Success can not and should not be measured in terms of material wealth and ownership of the biggest house, the best car or the latest Iphone. We all know the fact that the need to consume is the result of a void people feel internally and consumption has been seen as a way out of that emptiness. This attempt has failed and an ever increasing of the world population is becoming ecologically conscious citizens who question the status quo and the despotism of consumerism.

I am not who I am because of my consumption but my sense of communality and endeavors to make a positive difference in peoples´ lives. Desmond Tutu says: “we are because we belong”. We belong to some groups for some reasons like ethnical, racial, religious, professional, educational, sexual preferences, etc.

But this sort of belonging is not what humanity needs in the 21st century. I advocate for a kind of belonging that transcends the “tribal” and “primitive” form of identification and embraces the human race as one.

A Fanonian phenomenon of cosmopolitan citizenship for social justice on a global scale. Equal rights and opportunities to all engender freedom and responsibility.

What we demand is a sense of ownership in issues that determine our fate. We want to be the masters of our own destiny from Georgetown in Guyana to Freetown in Sierra Leone.