Rangers are still getting attacked in the Virungas. This is the last correspondence I received:
"I know the man in Virunga will not have much time and interest. They are fully busy, there was another rebel attack yesterday and a ranger killed, another seriously injured." (Feb. 1st, 2011)
A week ago it was Dara's birthday. We've hung out twice now; appropriately, once on my birthday and once on her birthday. For Dara's birthday we went to dinner at David and Alexis' apartment here in Kampala. The two are engaged and working on compiling a ring - bits and pieces of places they want to go. One of the things that they mentioned was some rare mineral from the DRC. This peaked my interest, so I asked them what the name of the mineral is. They couldn't remember, something they use in computers or something like that.
You mean....coltan?!
Of course, I couldn't let this go. Here I am getting news about rangers and people dying, women getting raped and civilians displaced by the millions in the Virungas and this nice couple wants to set off their marriage with a Blood Diamond style Conflict Mineral....can't be.
This couple, so happily in love, works for UNICEF and have lived in different parts of Africa for a handful or so years; they must at least in part think that they're out here doing some good in one way or another. I couldn't let them be another part of the problem. Another willfully ignorant consumer, party to a reprehensible violent conflict.
I say willfully because most of us who have grown up in North Atlantic countries and their Pan-Oceanic analogs (i.e., Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) are relatively highly educated with an incredible amount of access to information....and yet, we live these insular ignorant lives, we are the force that is so much greater than all of those who want to break endless poverty cycles, live in a "world" free of wars (and I use the term "world" in the completely subjective sense that we each inhabit completely different worlds, despite overlaps here and there....let me show you my world), walk for water and firewood without getting raped, over and over and over....when is it ever over?
That's one thing that I think we all have a say in. Forget that the conflict is seemingly so far away....Afghanistan, DRC, Tunisia, Cambodia, Egypt, Cote d'Ivoire, Israel, Palestine, Mexico, the list goes on. Globalization says it's not. We are all by mere participation in global consumption, markets and trading, a close and intimate ally to extreme violence, human rights abuses, arms trades, trafficking (of humans and natural resources), not to mention...ecocide.
In the U.S., we've been dumbed down to think that democracy means voting, maybe once a year, punch a hole in a card and you've fulfilled your civic duty, pat yourself on the back and call yourself a good citizen, Patriot even. But, now they say there are other ways to vote. Three times a day with the food you eat (where's it come from, how's it made, who's your farmer?), every time you make a commercial transaction, every second your money sits in a bank and they're off investing it in massive hydroelectric projects, massive logging concessions, oil drilling in some eco-fragile region with disenfranchised populations, you get the point.
So as rangers die and happy couples plan their lives together, all I can do is hope that somehow connections are being made and we're using all that privilege, education and access for something....preferably something good.
Arm yourself with information, demand peace and dignity for all life on Earth.
Some resources on Coltan and Conflict in the DRC dredged up from the first page of a simple google search (a.k.a. you can probably find better stuff than this if you care to):
- Guns, Money and Cell Phones: http://www.globalissues.org/article/442/guns-money-and-cell-phones
- Coltan and Conflict in the DRC: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/RMOI-7P73BC?OpenDocument
- Conflict Mining 101: Coltan, the Congo Act and How You Can Help: http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-connect/conflict-minerals-congo-act.html
- Coltan Mining in the DRC: http://www.gesi.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=PoQTN7xPn4c%3D&tabid=60
- Coltan Exploitation in the Eastern DRC: http://www.iss.co.za/pubs/Books/Scarcity+Surfeit/Chapter4.pdf
"I know the man in Virunga will not have much time and interest. They are fully busy, there was another rebel attack yesterday and a ranger killed, another seriously injured." (Feb. 1st, 2011)
A week ago it was Dara's birthday. We've hung out twice now; appropriately, once on my birthday and once on her birthday. For Dara's birthday we went to dinner at David and Alexis' apartment here in Kampala. The two are engaged and working on compiling a ring - bits and pieces of places they want to go. One of the things that they mentioned was some rare mineral from the DRC. This peaked my interest, so I asked them what the name of the mineral is. They couldn't remember, something they use in computers or something like that.
You mean....coltan?!
Of course, I couldn't let this go. Here I am getting news about rangers and people dying, women getting raped and civilians displaced by the millions in the Virungas and this nice couple wants to set off their marriage with a Blood Diamond style Conflict Mineral....can't be.
This couple, so happily in love, works for UNICEF and have lived in different parts of Africa for a handful or so years; they must at least in part think that they're out here doing some good in one way or another. I couldn't let them be another part of the problem. Another willfully ignorant consumer, party to a reprehensible violent conflict.
I say willfully because most of us who have grown up in North Atlantic countries and their Pan-Oceanic analogs (i.e., Japan, Australia, New Zealand, etc.) are relatively highly educated with an incredible amount of access to information....and yet, we live these insular ignorant lives, we are the force that is so much greater than all of those who want to break endless poverty cycles, live in a "world" free of wars (and I use the term "world" in the completely subjective sense that we each inhabit completely different worlds, despite overlaps here and there....let me show you my world), walk for water and firewood without getting raped, over and over and over....when is it ever over?
That's one thing that I think we all have a say in. Forget that the conflict is seemingly so far away....Afghanistan, DRC, Tunisia, Cambodia, Egypt, Cote d'Ivoire, Israel, Palestine, Mexico, the list goes on. Globalization says it's not. We are all by mere participation in global consumption, markets and trading, a close and intimate ally to extreme violence, human rights abuses, arms trades, trafficking (of humans and natural resources), not to mention...ecocide.
In the U.S., we've been dumbed down to think that democracy means voting, maybe once a year, punch a hole in a card and you've fulfilled your civic duty, pat yourself on the back and call yourself a good citizen, Patriot even. But, now they say there are other ways to vote. Three times a day with the food you eat (where's it come from, how's it made, who's your farmer?), every time you make a commercial transaction, every second your money sits in a bank and they're off investing it in massive hydroelectric projects, massive logging concessions, oil drilling in some eco-fragile region with disenfranchised populations, you get the point.
So as rangers die and happy couples plan their lives together, all I can do is hope that somehow connections are being made and we're using all that privilege, education and access for something....preferably something good.
Arm yourself with information, demand peace and dignity for all life on Earth.
Some resources on Coltan and Conflict in the DRC dredged up from the first page of a simple google search (a.k.a. you can probably find better stuff than this if you care to):
- Guns, Money and Cell Phones: http://www.globalissues.org/article/442/guns-money-and-cell-phones
- Coltan and Conflict in the DRC: http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/RMOI-7P73BC?OpenDocument
- Conflict Mining 101: Coltan, the Congo Act and How You Can Help: http://planetgreen.discovery.com/work-connect/conflict-minerals-congo-act.html
- Coltan Mining in the DRC: http://www.gesi.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=PoQTN7xPn4c%3D&tabid=60
- Coltan Exploitation in the Eastern DRC: http://www.iss.co.za/pubs/Books/Scarcity+Surfeit/Chapter4.pdf
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