The upside-down saucepan

I met a Kenyan Englishman here in Kenya. That is, he's a third generation Kenyan, with all English descending ancestors. Very interesting fellow.

In the evening, we were looking at the stars and satellites above. It was a lovely, clear night for stargazing, as are most nights in that place, he assured me.

I told him about the stellar constellation that in Sweden we call something like "Charles' wagon" or "Charles' stroller", which in English is often called "the saucepan". It had just risen over the horizon, upside-down as always in this part of the world. I told him how in old Sweden, people used to use it as a rough measure of time, since it is always visible in the sky, so long as it's dark enough. It never sets, it just rolls like a baby stroller around the northern star, much like the hands of a clock. Though a counterclockwise clock. I added:
"And it never looks upside-down like this! That's one of the weirdest things about coming to Africa for the first time, the Charles' stroller being upside-down!!... Baby Charles will fall out!! It's one of those constants of the world suddenly no longer being constant!...
No, you see, in Sweden it's always up there", I pointed towards the zenith of the sky, right above us, "so you can choose to see it whatever way you like. So we always choose to see it as a stroller."
Suddenly my friend exclaimed:
"Oh that makes so much SENSE to me now!!....... You see, I always used to wonder: 'Why do they CALL it the saucepan when it's always upside-down?'. Now I get it!!
...I'm gonna make up a new name for it now!"



Oh how subtle, the long tentacles of colonialism... Calling a stellar constellation something in Africa, that only makes sense near the northern pole... Where the African would never have been, nor will ever go.
















———————————————————

Ok, so the picture is from Chile and not from Kenya… You can tell, because it's pointing towards a Northern Star significantly below the horizon. Not ON the horizon, as it would be here on the equator… It was surprisingly hard finding a picture of the upside-down saucepan from Africa!

How I've changed in my foundation over the last few years

"May we all have our hopes, our will to try
If we don't, we might as well lay down and die"...

-ABBA

I think maybe I did that... Maybe I died.

Until I was 25, I lived like people expected me to live, more or less. Of course I was always unusual, no way to escape that, but in the large picture, I followed people's expectations.

Then at the age of 26, when I was in university, on my way to becoming an engineer, have a good job, get an intelligent husband and have a house, a car and 2 intelligent children, I suddenly fell out of the bubble and my world came tumbling down... I realized that this rich world that I'd been living in (Sweden) was an exception, both in the world right now and in time, and that it was possible only because it was living on the expense of others, both of the poor world today and of the whole world in future. And it hit me that I was not ok with this!! Not at all!...

I cried. I suffered immensely just going into a supermarket, and realizing how much exploitation of nature and poor people there was behind almost everything that was sold there, to us rich people. The evil behind it all was crushing me.

I thought I would die, but then I found my salvation in escaping the bubble, and in putting all of myself - all my powers, all my talents, all my time - into fighting for good, fighting the evil. At 27, I went to Africa, and I started working with a biogas project. It was meant to empower the poor and save the forest, all at once. It's how I survived, but not only that: I felt more alive than I ever had before! Finally doing things that nobody had ever recommended or expected of me, I felt alive for the first time...

That's 12 years ago now. In that time, I've had two children in Sweden, with my Kenyan husband, and I felt I had to take a little break from saving the world outside, so that I could save my own family... The husband had so many problems, and bringing up children takes a lot of one's time and attention.

But then something else happened. The Green Party, which I had been a member of for 18 years, got into government and started doing everything wrong. Taking massive steps in the wrong direction, and calling it small steps in the right direction... It shocked me! And in the aftermath of that shock, I realized, among other things, that for 20 years, I had been paying extra for organic food, because the other food was destroying the planet and to me it was obvious that if it destroys our planet, we stop it... but it had come to nothing, because the others never followed! I was ok with being the first, I was ok with pulling a bit extra, but after TWENTY YEARS, organic food was still less than 10%... The others were still enjoying the money they saved by buying food on nature's expense, on other people's expense.

And my country closed its borders to refugees in the biggest refugee movement this world has ever seen... With the Green Party voting for it! Not even those 7% were with me!!...

Somehow, I think I died. I stopped breathing for a while. I felt that I had misunderstood everything... I had been trying to save the world, because I thought it was important to reduce suffering... but the world never wanted to be saved! It was fine, the way it was! I was the only one who minded, and that was my problem!... Even those refugees, they never cared for anybody else! They wanted us to save them, yeah, but had they grown up safe, they would have also closed the borders! Even those poor people, had they grown up rich, and I poor, they wouldn't have cared for me!... So why should I care for them?...

Nature is nature. It's cruel, and it's beautiful. Death is ever present. The majority of all living creatures on Earth die very young. Only some very few of them reach the age where it's even possible for them to have offspring. In Sweden, this is no longer true for humans... Most of them now live to old age, but that's an exception. One way or another, that will change again, back to the natural way.

Humans were never made for a life without suffering. Without grief. Without death ever present. I don't think it's good for us!...

12 years ago, I came to Africa for the first time, and I discovered something that we in Sweden must have lost. I discovered a joy, an appreciation of life, that Sweden didn't have. It surprised me, and it puzzled me... Eventually, I started asking myself if it was the proximity to death and suffering that was the cause...?

And now I've reached the conclusion that yes, to a large extent, it is. I now live in Kenya since August 2017, and I still feel so much more alive, so much happier, so much better than I ever did in Sweden. I sell biogas digesters. Thus I'm still empowering the poor and saving forest, but only because it gives me satisfaction, and because that's where I now have my expertise. I always felt enjoyment in clever ideas and beautiful solutions, and biogas has all that. But I'll never again care like I did before. I'll no longer try to rid the world of death or suffering. What for? That wouldn't be an enjoyable world anyway! We were made for hardships, and we need some of that to be able to enjoy life. And pretty soon we all die anyway, and then none of it matters anymore. No matter how sweet or terrible our only life was, it will all have come to nothing.

Enjoy it while you can, if you can! And if you are among those who can, congratulations!

My previous life is over. I died... This is afterlife.

---------------------------

Further reading:

A small bubble of peace and harmony

The US destroyed my world view

Around 9/11/2001 I was having a period of news fast (not consuming any news). I had found that it made me feel less down and stressed, and most often I learnt about the more interesting stuff anyway, through others. When I called my friend A that day, he said, agitated: "Oh yeah, you don't have a TV! You've got to get to a TV Karolina, it's like some totally freaked out action movie!!... Like Armageddon!"

When eventually I got to A's TV I remember Malou (famous Swedish anchorwoman) sitting in front of a big video screen, showing an air plane time after time flying into a skyscraper, while she was interviewing people with any distant connection to the US, and I found it tasteless. So I felt informed enough and left. (And little did I think then about how the towers fell, or why a plane would at all make a building collapse into a neat little pile of dust...)

A bit later I heard that now the US was going to start a war on Afghanistan. It could not be serious!!!, I thought. Why??? Apparently because they believed that he who had carried out the 9/11 attack was located there, but what did that have to do with this? If he had been hiding in New York, would they be bombing New York? Is this not a matter of police work, where innocent are left aside? What do they mean, "war"?!...

Up to that day my perception of the US was based mostly on TV series, like Friends and Full house. There people were nice and funny and said: "I love you daddy!" - "Aaaaaw!" and such things. They had their peculiarities but at large they were much like us (Swedes), rich, developed and therefore peaceful. Unconsciously I was harbouring a notion that war was something that belonged to the past. To the time before we became this civilised. The only reason there were still some wars here and there was that everybody had not yet achieved this degree of civilisation, but they would too eventually, and then all wars would end! Thus my mind turned itself into a knot, trying to understand the US's behaviour now!...

And it was in this connection that it finally came to my knowledge that the US never had been peaceful. That they had already bombed 26 countries after the 2nd world war. (The number of countries has not gone up between 2001 and now, only the number of bombings...) And thus they ruined my pretty, liniary writing of history that went from war to peace. Soon thereafter they enforced immunity to crimes of war for their soldiers in Irak, by threatening to otherwise sabotage a peace project in Bosnia with their veto. Shear kidnapping that is, because they had nothing against the peace project in Bosnia!... Etc. As if they were going out of their ways to make sure my naive, good perception of them would never be restored. And they succeeded.

So where was I now? The country that had been saluted as the great hero nation of the world, was acting like a rogue state! And was still saluted as heroes!!... By other countries that I also considered good, civilised and peaceful... My belief in the ultimate inner good of the world creeked in its foundations.



Now, many years later, I have come to a new analysis of the world. Apparently being rich and developed is not enough for a country to also be good. It's probably more true that money is power, and power always corrupts. Perhaps it can be said that wherever lots of money is involved, assaults will be made and suffering will occur. Diamond trade, sex trade, child adoption, trade between rich and poor countries,... And my new cure against this evil is now instead: The civil society! An involved and informed public that meddles in everything, and forces those in power to behave humanely. But even more importantly: Takes matters into their own hands and create good development wherever possible. Proving it possible by being an example.

It is the responsibility of every new generation to win back the power of the people!