what is?

lots of good food and planning last night at sister NG's house. i think i will enjoy Nigerian food very much. spiced chicken with fried plantains, squashes, other veggies, rice and delicious tomato mixture over the top. sunday, i think, we have ox tails...i'm actually quite excited about it.

we started asking questions last night. the biggest and the one which sticks with me today is how it is we define "poverty." it's a question that, while there, i want to think about, both for myself, for the people of Nigeria, and the world as a whole.

the western, capitalistic values which have come to dominate the world, i think it's easy to say, surely aren't the be all end all. in fact, in many instances i think some of these values have produced more harm than good.

i'm trying to revisit some of Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom in the coming weeks. what is the measure by which we determine a people's well-being? if it's soley based on GDP, import/export ratios, etc. then we're necessarily creating a context for injustice. people are often times lost in those kinds of numbers. stories aren't heard.

how, though, in the asking of these and other questions, in defining "poverty" or "success" do we still honor the story? and, more importantly, how do we prevent an entire people from being just another case study? that, just like strict economic calculations, allows the story of a person to be lost and thereby their human-ness is lost, too.

if we're doing justice we're loving others beyond anything else. i want to ask big questions, work towards big solutions, but more than that i just want to be. i want to be human. be american or white or protestant or gay or whatever else. but more than that, i just want to be with and in the human experience with others, near and far. hear their story and be in pain and joy and celebration and confusion with others. because in encountering the otherness we come to see we're not all that other, we're all human and we all deserve the same....love and the chance to make choices for ourselves.