Last day! It’s all done after this one. I don’t have anything particularly emotional or profound or nostalgic to say about a month’s worth of hastily-written 1000-word blogs in and of themselves, but I will quickly drop a note that the other four lads who’ve been doing challenges, in particular Seán and Hugh and their blogs, have been wonderfully helpful (probably without realising) in pushing me through getting these all done on time every day. There were a couple of weekdays where I was only getting finished with work at around 11pm and had the choice of either making a non-disgusting evening meal or writing the blog before the end of the day. I’m pleased(?) to say I’ve had one or two rushed and messy Pasta-Tomato-Cheese mountains this month as a result. No regrets.
Other than occasionally ruining my diet, though, this has been a ton of fun. If you want to either get better at writing or find some outlet for the web of not-properly examined and stressful thoughts running around your head, blogging is a great solution. Would recommend. I’ve felt a bit awkward sharing my articles on social media every few days while making yet another timeline-polluting plug for The Water Project, but in the end it’s led to a few friends making donations which pushed us up way beyond the target we were after. We started with a goal of £1000 and ended up almost doubling it. £1,843, by the way, is a ridiculous amount of money to raise from something as spontaneous and seemingly insignificant as this. That’s 54 people in Sub-Saharan Africa who’ll receive sustainable and fresh water. Mental.
One thing I realised that none of us have done yet is talk about Africa, so I’m going to give that a go today. It may not be a surprise for you to learn that the pasty Irish boy from the tiny rural village has never visited, although I’d absolutely love to at some point. When I was 17 our school entered an All-Ireland debating competition ran by Concern Worldwide, a humanitarian NGO who work on both long-term development and emergency relief in Africa. The winning team are taken to Concern’s bases in Sierra Leone or Kenya to see their work first-hand. We got to the semi-finals, after incredibly surprisingly losing a debate where we were literally asked to defend the notion that torturing criminals was a good idea. Tough luck.
The story of the anti-apartheid movement both within South Africa and internationally is well-known at this stage. Oliver Tambo, Nelson Mandela, Joe Slavo et al were of course campaigning for an end to the brutal, authoritarian racial segregation which plagued the country for over 40 years. In 1960, South African Police opened fire on unarmed protestors who had been demonstrating against internal passport laws which restricted the right for black people to freely travel and work throughout their own country. The police killed 69 people, and the Sharpeville Massacre is considered by most to be the darkest day in South African history. By 1994, apartheid had been demolished and Nelson Mandela had been elected as State President. South Africa, for the first time ever, had a democracy.
One key guiding light in this fight for democracy was a philosophy called Ubuntu. While literally translating as ‘humanity’, the notion can be summed up more neatly in the phrase ‘I am because we are’. I’ve always liked the concept and thought it could be really neatly applied within democratic socialism (please protect Bernie Sanders at all costs), so I thought I’d dig into it a little bit. I promise it’s not as wishy-washy as it sounds.
The main belief, as far as I can tell, is as follows: there’s no such thing as a solitary human being; rather, a person is a person through other people. All of us are necessarily interdependent, and it’s impossible for one sole being to innately possess all of the necessary skills and qualities needed for a good life. Because of this, we can never be the best version of ourselves unless the people around us are striving to be the best versions of themselves too. The idea of Ubuntu, therefore, is to be warm and sincere to strangers and to members of your own community, both because it’s the moral thing to do and because they contribute to your own personal growth. It is inextricably linked to the socialist idea that wealth should be shared, and that individuals should work towards the good of the community, but at the same time it carries a deep-rooted belief in individual uniqueness and inherent difference.
Again, I should reiterate that this isn’t all just a load of abstract nonsense. We encounter micro-level scenarios of Ubuntu thinking constantly, even in the capitalist Western world. Have you ever done someone a favour or given someone a gift and realised that it made you feel so much better in yourself afterwards? Have you ever absolutely knocked it out of the park doing your bit of the group task at work or at school? How did it feel? Have you ever done a daily challenge for charity for an entire month and been inspired by your friends showing the same admirable level of commitment to that challenge? Hopefully you can see where I’m going here.
Ubuntu has been an ideology practiced throughout the last century to inspire togetherness and success after periods of great strife and division. On a smaller level, it was used to glue back together the squad of a championship-winning basketball team who had been failing for over two decades. More notably, it was the backbone of Desmond Tutu’s theology, a crucial cornerstone in the vision of post-apartheid South Africa. Nowadays, South Africans use the term as a shorthand for the country’s moral ideals and spirit of togetherness.
Ubuntu is labelled by many as too idealistic and forgiving, or as unfitting for large-scale society. Whether that’s true or not, I think its potential for creating functional and fundamentally happy communities is undeniable. It’s kept me going this month, and so I thought I’d share it with you to cap things off. Cheers to anyone who’s spent any amount of time reading over the last 30 days, and likewise to anyone who’s gotten in touch with questions or compliments or donations to The Water Project. I feel a lot happier and more stable than I did this time 30 days ago. Long may that continue.
