I miss my muse.

....

I don't even know what to write anymore.

I keep wanting to update the old blog, but I don't know what to say. What do I write about? The fact that I almost feel guilty about getting back in sync with 'normal' life so quickly? Or the fact that everything seems so easy and clean and sometimes extravagant, but I like it?

I'm just being brutally honest here. From the moment I stepped into Dubai International Airport and saw the familiar landscape of cafes, duty free shops, designer brand outlets, and people clad in business suits, I felt a huge sense of relief. The fact that I could just flip open my laptop and look for a number on my cell phone and listen to my iPod all at the same time, without having to worry that I was flaunting all my gadgets too much, thereby attracting too much attention to myself, was... nice. I was always really paranoid about that in Togo - if I had to answer my phone, I'd do it very surreptitiously. I never took my laptop out of the house, and listening to music was something I'd do in the privacy of my own bedroom. Even things like drinking a can of Coke in front of others made me a little awkward. All those things just seemed out of place, and fickle. I felt fickle simply by still being attached to them somehow.

Being in a place like Bahrain, where you often come across complete paradoxes, in terms of wealth and poverty, is very interesting. You often see heavily ornate mansions juxtaposed next to a space of wasteland with piles of rubble and sand, totally neglected. While driving, you'll see an old, very run-down pick up truck packed with 15 workers in the back, wearing very simple clothing, dirtied after an exhausting day's work, as a latest-model Lexus, Maserati or Chrysler (really, take your pick) passes by you, driven by a wealthy man in his pristine white thobe and headdress, talking on his expensive, top-of-the-line cellphone.

I think about the fact that my 7 year old brother is proficient in using a laptop, whereas most of the adults I met in Togo wouldn't know what to do with one; the fact that you can go to an enormous hypermarket like Géant and buy whatever your heart desires, all contained under one roof. Hungry? Eat something. There's a running fridge, knock yourself out. If there isn't anything you like, go ahead, take the car, which costs almost nothing to fill up, and drive to a place where there is something you'd like. Fancy a shower? Choose your water temperature and take as long as you want.

My mother left 500 fils (about USD$1.30) in the car yesterday, and I asked her whether that was such a good idea, thinking that it was an open invitation for someone to break in and take it. She looked at me and said "it's only 500 fils". 500 fils. That's 575 francs, which will easily get you four decent-sized meals - rice, meat, and vegetables. 575 francs can get you 23 500ml sachets of distilled water, which some people can't afford, so they just drink tap water (if that's available), a common source of disease.

I'm not being resentful or bitter, even though I know it may sound like it, I'm just coming to grips with this in my own head. Part of me is afraid that it's been so easy to re-assimilate with this lifestyle that I'll forget. I'll forget that as I'm typing this, someone that I know, and have made a connection with, is wondering how they're going to get the money to pay their rent, or where their next meal is coming from. Someone that I know may be wondering how they'll afford to buy medicine for a family member that's fallen sick. Many people that I met are trying to figure out what they're going to do with their lives now that they've gotten their degrees, given that unemployment is so high that they've already accepted that it's just going to continue like that, unless some kind of miracle happens. Some of them who are employed, and come to work everyday, haven't been paid in 3 months because their own boss can't find the money to buy a meal for himself.

Man... it's so easy to just slip back into my own little cocoon where my Issues of the Day are actually embarrassing to admit, but they still manage to irk me.

Over this past week, Bahrain has made me think about how it sort of displays a small-scale version of the world we live in. You have developed infrastructure, technology that makes your eyes pop out of your head, trinkets like Swarovski-crystal-embedded laptops (I kid you not). There are high standards of living, a thriving economy, large incomes, private schools, housekeepers, 5-star hotels and bidets. Then, in the very same sphere of life, you have poverty, enormous expanses of untouched, undeveloped land, underpaid and unappreciated workers. There are prejudices, unaddressed societal issues, and there is ignorance. And yet, even though these may seem like they are all at opposite ends of the spectrum, they are still members of one single spectrum, from one end to the next, and all that's in between. The issues that plague our world, no matter how far they are from where we are, and how different and shocking they may be in relation to what we see in front of us, are still issues in our world - the same world we live in. It scares me that it's so easy to just carry on comfortably with my life, that we can just get on with it and not turn our minds to the nightmares that our fellow human beings have to endure day after day. I think the very least we can do is be mindful of what they have to go through (I always say 'we' but I really mean 'I'). I don't even think that's enough.