So I go home tomorrow... I know I know, time has flown by for all three of you my avid readers, thanks Mom, Jo, David and Jen. Ok so that is four not three but anyway, you know numbers arent my thing.
So I have learned a lot of things here in Liberia for example:
- If women have sex with a man with a large penis they will, not can, but will, get cancer.
- Eating too many peanuts will cause you to create too much sperm and your testicles might explode (this conversation was a whole lot of fun with my still patchy understanding of Liberian English, I was positive that I was hearing incorrectly... nope.)
- I learned that anyone that can walk can dance and a nice sunrise is reason enough to dance.
- I learned just how lucky and blessed I am and that because I have been given much in this world, much is expected of me and I too must give.
- I learned that some people would kill to have been able to sit through my, what i thought was boring, math and sciences classes in high school.
- I learned that meat is meat and worrying about pesky details like if it was bat or beef really didnt make much of a difference.
- I learned that I really do love this field that I am in and I can do it for a long long while and feel fulfilled, challenged, and happy.
- I learned that long distance relationships are rough and that I am much more broken than I ever thought I would be.
- I learned that there are a lot of good people out there trying to make the world the way they wish it could be but that its a lot easier to ruin everything then it is to try to fix it.
- I learned that simple unsexy things like roads can make all the difference for a country.
- I learned Malaria usually wont kill you, that is of course, unless you are already weakened by silly things like chronic poverty.
- I learned I really need to learn how to drive a stick shift. That will be my goal at christmas time to learn from zach.
- I learned that I don't need nearly as many physical possessions to make myself happy and that I am far too dependent on the ones that I have right now.
Well these are some of my thoughts right now, I think they are about to cut off the power so I need to go, I like this blog thing though and I am going to keep posting stuff along the way, although I dont know if my insights will be nearly as profound or interesting when I am no longer in such a profound and moving place.
Thank you all for your support.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Matt 1 Banana Snake 0
So it is Sunday. Here at DEN-L in Gbarnga Liberia that means that there is not a whole lot going on. That actually might be a bit of an over statement. There is nothing happening here at all. No one comes in other than a couple of the kitchen staff, there is no electricty which means no computer for movies or anything like that. Everything is closed in town. So I had developed a routine while here.
Usually I wake up, have my own little church service here at the compound (I get weird looks while singing hymns to me myself and I but whatever), then i read a while (today is Audacity of Hope, GO OBAMA!!!!) then I eat lunch and spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on the porch of my building making rings for different people out of coconut shell.
So today I was sitting there carving away at my coconut shell creation working on my masterpiece and Terese came out to talk with me (the intern from Ivory Coast). We were talking a bit when all of a sudden she started shrieking at the top of her lungs. Almost simultaneously, one of the kids that works here, Amos, starts smacking the ground with a mop handle. all this is of course happening behind my back so i dont know what he is doing. I jump up screaming something amazingly eloquent like "what the hell?!?!?" to see a three foot long green banana snake writhing on the ground about a foot or so from where my leg had just been.
I look for a second at the snake who is now hissing at anything and everything and quickly stomp on its head with my heart now pumping like crazy. First thing out of my mouth is "Amos you are my hero." second thing is "was that thing poisonous?" answer "yes, its a very bad snake. It kills many people." good to know right?
Thats my drama for now. So if you are the praying type, make sure to thank God for Amos for me tonight cause without him around I don't know that I would be typing this story now.
Usually I wake up, have my own little church service here at the compound (I get weird looks while singing hymns to me myself and I but whatever), then i read a while (today is Audacity of Hope, GO OBAMA!!!!) then I eat lunch and spend the rest of the afternoon sitting on the porch of my building making rings for different people out of coconut shell.
So today I was sitting there carving away at my coconut shell creation working on my masterpiece and Terese came out to talk with me (the intern from Ivory Coast). We were talking a bit when all of a sudden she started shrieking at the top of her lungs. Almost simultaneously, one of the kids that works here, Amos, starts smacking the ground with a mop handle. all this is of course happening behind my back so i dont know what he is doing. I jump up screaming something amazingly eloquent like "what the hell?!?!?" to see a three foot long green banana snake writhing on the ground about a foot or so from where my leg had just been.
I look for a second at the snake who is now hissing at anything and everything and quickly stomp on its head with my heart now pumping like crazy. First thing out of my mouth is "Amos you are my hero." second thing is "was that thing poisonous?" answer "yes, its a very bad snake. It kills many people." good to know right?
Thats my drama for now. So if you are the praying type, make sure to thank God for Amos for me tonight cause without him around I don't know that I would be typing this story now.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
just one more week???
how did this happen? my time has come and is nearly gone and what do i have to show for it. well thankfully I think I have gotten a lot out of this trip. I read Jeffery Sachs' "The End of Poverty" this week and he was talking about the different levels of poverty. He mentioned the idea of relative poverty which is what we mostly have in the United States. I mean yeah there are poor people in America but the vast majority of them do not live in dirt floored mud huts and dont have enough caloric intake to sustain life at all, so relatively speaking they are poor compared to the rest of the affluence running around the US. Then there is poverty which is the people in the world that barely have enough to scrape by but they either make enough food that there is some sort of progress or they have some sort of financial income that allows them to at least be stable. This is primarily what I have dealt with before in Asia and in Latin America. Yes there are people in those countries that live in more destitute life shattering poverty but the vast majority are not in any threat of dying from hunger any time soon. Then it comes to extreme dire, one small injury from death poverty which is the vast majority of Africa.
I had realized when I got to Liberia that I had never seen poverty like this before but I didn't really know any of the numbers behind it. I had no idea that I was looking at a whole other ball game. So I have come to think that the lack of development and therefore crippling poverty in Africa comes from a few different things. first, the infrastructure is horrible. there is no running water, no electricity, no roads, one barely functioning airport, no telecommunications no nothing. This last week I was in Lofa. It is now the rainy season and the roads that before were bad bumpy roads are now giant mud pits that you go from one to the next pushing yourself out of. You can not move crops on the roads (85% of Liberians are farmers), you cant get to a hosptial ( as previously explained they are far far away from most of the people), you cant even get to a family members funeral before they have to burry the person because there is no such thing as a morgue or a freezer to hold the body in. You are basically grounded to your village or anything within walking distance. The lack of electricity cuts down of efficiency in other places as well. kids cant study at night or do anything else because there is no light to do it with so that means as of 7:00 pm you are done for the night and the sun doesnt come up again till about 6:30 the next day and you are close to the equator so that pretty much doesnt change all day long. No running water so you spend huge parts of your time looking for water to bathe, clean, wash clothes, cook food etc. and then there is no gas or electricity to cook on so you have to get fire wood which, depending on how long people have lived in your area and how thorouhgly everything is picked through means you are walking quite a distance to find some wood to cook on for the day. basically all your time is spent providing for the basics of life meaning you have no time at all to invest in your future by going to school, growing extra food anything like that.
the next thing I blame is the horrible governance of this country. It can be argued that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia's president) is doing a fairly decent job provided with what she is up against but then again most people would argue the opposite. I just know that Liberia has had like 5-6% growth for the last three years which is almost unheard of post protracted conflict. But between the war and malicious rulers this country has been lead astray continually and this probably explains for why more of the wealth doesnt go into doing things like building the infratructure and investing in health care and eduction. This is one point i disagree with Sachs on. He lets off the leadership pretty blame free saying that its mostly the fault of health reasons and lack of infrastructure but I would argue that the reason there hasnt been money to invest in these areas is because its all going into the American bank accounts of Liberia's elite Americo-Liberian ethnic group.
Then there is health concerns. In liberia that means Malaria and AIDS. everyone gets Malaria all the time. by that I mean Sachs provides statistics that pretty much everyone gets it at least once a year. I thought that was excessive till I started asking everyone about it and they said that that was right on. everyone I have asked as had it at least once in the last year most of them have had it at least two times. Now, Malaria is not nearly as bad as we think of it when we hear it in the states. I mean yeah its bad, it will floor you but unless you are really young or really old its not going to be lethal. that being said it does kill millions every year of the young and the old and those that are already weakened by other things...for example aids, or starvation or any number of other maladies found in abundance here. So when i started thinking about what that means that everyone gets Malaria at least once a year. that means that thats about a week that you are out of commision (Malaria is like having a really really bad flu). So thats one week a year that everyone is out of school, not working on their farm, not able to take care of their kids. one week guaranteed, thats a lot of man hours. not to mention that if Malaria is not treated fast enough it can leave lasting side effects that will dibilitate for life.
So I dont know what that was all about but it was on my mind recently. Basically that I was blindsided that I thought I had seen dire poverty and knew what it was but now realize that i didnt have a clue what i was talking about and if i had a clue i didnt really have any sort of understanding what that clue was alluding to. And still, just because I have seen it close up doesn't mean i really understand. I mean I stop in the villages stay for a few days and then get in my giant toyota land cruiser (by the way, i have a testimony of the amazingness of that machine and what it can do, holy crap is it a powerful powerful beast!) and drive back here to the compound and take a shower, hop on the internet and get a cold drink... what do I know? I'm forced to admit that I know nothing.
I had realized when I got to Liberia that I had never seen poverty like this before but I didn't really know any of the numbers behind it. I had no idea that I was looking at a whole other ball game. So I have come to think that the lack of development and therefore crippling poverty in Africa comes from a few different things. first, the infrastructure is horrible. there is no running water, no electricity, no roads, one barely functioning airport, no telecommunications no nothing. This last week I was in Lofa. It is now the rainy season and the roads that before were bad bumpy roads are now giant mud pits that you go from one to the next pushing yourself out of. You can not move crops on the roads (85% of Liberians are farmers), you cant get to a hosptial ( as previously explained they are far far away from most of the people), you cant even get to a family members funeral before they have to burry the person because there is no such thing as a morgue or a freezer to hold the body in. You are basically grounded to your village or anything within walking distance. The lack of electricity cuts down of efficiency in other places as well. kids cant study at night or do anything else because there is no light to do it with so that means as of 7:00 pm you are done for the night and the sun doesnt come up again till about 6:30 the next day and you are close to the equator so that pretty much doesnt change all day long. No running water so you spend huge parts of your time looking for water to bathe, clean, wash clothes, cook food etc. and then there is no gas or electricity to cook on so you have to get fire wood which, depending on how long people have lived in your area and how thorouhgly everything is picked through means you are walking quite a distance to find some wood to cook on for the day. basically all your time is spent providing for the basics of life meaning you have no time at all to invest in your future by going to school, growing extra food anything like that.
the next thing I blame is the horrible governance of this country. It can be argued that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (Liberia's president) is doing a fairly decent job provided with what she is up against but then again most people would argue the opposite. I just know that Liberia has had like 5-6% growth for the last three years which is almost unheard of post protracted conflict. But between the war and malicious rulers this country has been lead astray continually and this probably explains for why more of the wealth doesnt go into doing things like building the infratructure and investing in health care and eduction. This is one point i disagree with Sachs on. He lets off the leadership pretty blame free saying that its mostly the fault of health reasons and lack of infrastructure but I would argue that the reason there hasnt been money to invest in these areas is because its all going into the American bank accounts of Liberia's elite Americo-Liberian ethnic group.
Then there is health concerns. In liberia that means Malaria and AIDS. everyone gets Malaria all the time. by that I mean Sachs provides statistics that pretty much everyone gets it at least once a year. I thought that was excessive till I started asking everyone about it and they said that that was right on. everyone I have asked as had it at least once in the last year most of them have had it at least two times. Now, Malaria is not nearly as bad as we think of it when we hear it in the states. I mean yeah its bad, it will floor you but unless you are really young or really old its not going to be lethal. that being said it does kill millions every year of the young and the old and those that are already weakened by other things...for example aids, or starvation or any number of other maladies found in abundance here. So when i started thinking about what that means that everyone gets Malaria at least once a year. that means that thats about a week that you are out of commision (Malaria is like having a really really bad flu). So thats one week a year that everyone is out of school, not working on their farm, not able to take care of their kids. one week guaranteed, thats a lot of man hours. not to mention that if Malaria is not treated fast enough it can leave lasting side effects that will dibilitate for life.
So I dont know what that was all about but it was on my mind recently. Basically that I was blindsided that I thought I had seen dire poverty and knew what it was but now realize that i didnt have a clue what i was talking about and if i had a clue i didnt really have any sort of understanding what that clue was alluding to. And still, just because I have seen it close up doesn't mean i really understand. I mean I stop in the villages stay for a few days and then get in my giant toyota land cruiser (by the way, i have a testimony of the amazingness of that machine and what it can do, holy crap is it a powerful powerful beast!) and drive back here to the compound and take a shower, hop on the internet and get a cold drink... what do I know? I'm forced to admit that I know nothing.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
BLESSED!!!!
So let me share with you how blessed I have been, besides my run in with the rebel lion volley ball team as mentioned in the previous post of oh so long ago as yesterday, I have been getting hooked up. So first off I am in Liberia having this amazing experience and loving it over here. I get to do wonderful interesting things like lead workshops, take ferry rides (read as: ferry = some logs lashed together with vines) across hippo and crocodile infested waters, talk with people whose lives have been forever changed by conflict, etc etc.
In addition to this, while I have been here I have managed to score an apartment a mere block or so from the metro and in a new ward at church so that I wont have to go back to that horrible one I was in last year. The best part about the apartment,??? its within walking distance of the kabob palace!!! oh yeah! score! The only extra cost that the apartment had was that I had to admit to Jen that she was right about sending a shout out on the Colonial List Serve... you were right Jen.
Then the latest news is yesterday I had a follow up interview for a position at the United States Institute of Peace, who even knew the US had one of those? I thought we only new how to make war but turns out we do indeed have a congress funded Institute of Peace. Well I nailed the interview, I had the lady interviewing me laughing the whole time. She tried dropping some names on me and I knew each and everyone of them and could tell her all about their theories and what they had done and all that jazz. When i finished the interview I hung up the phone and yelled "I nailed it!!!" The African Interns that were sitting across from me were like, wait that was your interview? but you were laughing and joking the whole time. You didn't seem stressed at all. And quite honestly it really was a very pleasant stress free conversation. So yeah, I am working at the United States Institute of Peace as a Research Assistant doing work on the Economics of Violence and Peace. I will get paid less money than I got payed working at Taco Bell as a high school student but oh well. Good thing I have two bachelors degrees and half way through a masters degree right? anyway, got a job and its a foot in the door.
So the way I figured it, I will be coming home to school already to go with a huge amount of my research for my final thesis already done, I will be coming home to a beautiful amazing girl friend who somehow still hasn't figured out that she is way too good for me, I will have an apartment to move into straight off the plane, and two days after I get back I will start work at my new job in exactly the field I want to be working in. Wow has heavenly father hooked me up.
In addition to this, while I have been here I have managed to score an apartment a mere block or so from the metro and in a new ward at church so that I wont have to go back to that horrible one I was in last year. The best part about the apartment,??? its within walking distance of the kabob palace!!! oh yeah! score! The only extra cost that the apartment had was that I had to admit to Jen that she was right about sending a shout out on the Colonial List Serve... you were right Jen.
Then the latest news is yesterday I had a follow up interview for a position at the United States Institute of Peace, who even knew the US had one of those? I thought we only new how to make war but turns out we do indeed have a congress funded Institute of Peace. Well I nailed the interview, I had the lady interviewing me laughing the whole time. She tried dropping some names on me and I knew each and everyone of them and could tell her all about their theories and what they had done and all that jazz. When i finished the interview I hung up the phone and yelled "I nailed it!!!" The African Interns that were sitting across from me were like, wait that was your interview? but you were laughing and joking the whole time. You didn't seem stressed at all. And quite honestly it really was a very pleasant stress free conversation. So yeah, I am working at the United States Institute of Peace as a Research Assistant doing work on the Economics of Violence and Peace. I will get paid less money than I got payed working at Taco Bell as a high school student but oh well. Good thing I have two bachelors degrees and half way through a masters degree right? anyway, got a job and its a foot in the door.
So the way I figured it, I will be coming home to school already to go with a huge amount of my research for my final thesis already done, I will be coming home to a beautiful amazing girl friend who somehow still hasn't figured out that she is way too good for me, I will have an apartment to move into straight off the plane, and two days after I get back I will start work at my new job in exactly the field I want to be working in. Wow has heavenly father hooked me up.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Horror of horrors!!!!!!
So I have broken my foot, well not really but my ankle sure hurts like hell. I have thus been restricted to doing only office work which I will be honest and admit is not my ideal work place but it does give me time to sit down and write out another blog post. Before you start to worry, I am fine. I wish I could say that I sprained my ankle in a more worthy cause like defending a group of nuns and school children from being attacked by rebels or lions or even better,… rebel lions but alas I cannot. I hurt it playing volley ball yesterday after executing a perfect smash (well, actually, I don’t really remember what the play was but for the sake of my ego and posterity I will say that it was actually while executing the most perfect of volley ball moves.) . However, coincidently, we were playing the game against rebel lions so that has to count for something right?
To remedy my vicious sprain my co workers have been trying to persuade me to let them pull it. From what I gather they think that they need to pull and push my swollen softball size ankle all over the place and in so doing they will push it back in line or something like that. I have tried to explain to them that it is not broken or dislocated or anything like that that I just need to keep it elevated and ice on it (by the way, there is no such thing as ice in Liberia) and I will be fine in a couple of days. Since I have been reluctant to allow them to yank on my foot till I want to punch all of them in the nose and I also passed on having the local “herbalist” (read what the western world would call a witch doctor) so instead everyone (I am currently looking at four tubes sitting on my desk) has brought me different creams and ointments. The writing on them is not English, nor any other language I speak, and as best as I can tell from a close study of the writing on the various tubes the medicine comes from Mars. That or Cambodia but I figure either one is going to be hit or miss. So they have all insisted on putting the stuff on my ankle themselves so I currently have four different creams working on my foot. I half expected there to be some sort of chemical reaction and for my foot to spontaneously combust. So far all it has produced is a pleasant cool sensation which I am hoping is not in actuality just my nerve endings being melted by the various chemicals that they are being bombarded with.
Oh well… anyway, all you need to know is that my foot is fine and I will survive… unless the rebel lions come back to finish me off.
To remedy my vicious sprain my co workers have been trying to persuade me to let them pull it. From what I gather they think that they need to pull and push my swollen softball size ankle all over the place and in so doing they will push it back in line or something like that. I have tried to explain to them that it is not broken or dislocated or anything like that that I just need to keep it elevated and ice on it (by the way, there is no such thing as ice in Liberia) and I will be fine in a couple of days. Since I have been reluctant to allow them to yank on my foot till I want to punch all of them in the nose and I also passed on having the local “herbalist” (read what the western world would call a witch doctor) so instead everyone (I am currently looking at four tubes sitting on my desk) has brought me different creams and ointments. The writing on them is not English, nor any other language I speak, and as best as I can tell from a close study of the writing on the various tubes the medicine comes from Mars. That or Cambodia but I figure either one is going to be hit or miss. So they have all insisted on putting the stuff on my ankle themselves so I currently have four different creams working on my foot. I half expected there to be some sort of chemical reaction and for my foot to spontaneously combust. So far all it has produced is a pleasant cool sensation which I am hoping is not in actuality just my nerve endings being melted by the various chemicals that they are being bombarded with.
Oh well… anyway, all you need to know is that my foot is fine and I will survive… unless the rebel lions come back to finish me off.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
one more week in the books...
so a week and a half ago or so i went down to the airport because there was a new intern coming in and because the airport was the closest place I could go to get strategic American things like deodorant, root beer and ground beef for important fourth of july reasons. Anyway so after I purchased my booty we had to wait at the airport for a few hours as the girls plane was delayed. I had two feelings while sitting there waiting around and seeing a couple planes land and then take off again (as you might imagine the Liberia intl. airport is not the busiest place in the world). So first thought was man, if I got on one of those planes right now i could be home by this time tomorrow enjoying a burrito and sleeping in a nice air conditioned room and seeing my friends. The thought that I actually had it in my power to make that happen was a slightly freightening, I mean really I had my passport in my pocket and I had my credit card with more than enough of a limit to whisk me away without another thought had I wanted/needed to. It really would be just that easy, no one would stop me I have it in my means to just pick up and leave whenever i decide that I have gotten too tired of being here or just don't want to play developing world anymore.
And then that made me think of all my friends here in Liberia that did not have that option. When things got bad there, like lets say a 14 year civil war that killed 300,000 people in a population of 3 million, my friends can not just go to the airport and take the next flight out while rockets explode around their houses. When things get bad there, like perhaps when the man that I met a month before in the small rural village of Goyala had a small cut on his foot that got infected because he lived in destitute poverty and could not afford to go to the doctor, when I met him it was the size of a football and he was in immense pain, I talked with people from his village yesterday, they said he had is leg amputated when he finally got to a doctor, his fault for being born in a poor country i guess, foolish man. why didnt he just use his amazing blue passport and his three by five inch piece of plastic to jet himself off to some better place where he could get all his vitamins every day and have access to clean drinking water? Thats what he gets for commiting the egregious sin of being born on the wrong side of the water and on the wrong side of a few arbitrary lands drawn through the middle of the jungle.
I sat watching the kids walking around selling corn or dvds or knock off watches and thought how they can not escape Liberia, Liberia is their future and they will never even see the inside of one of those giant metal birds they saw land and take off every day. I realized how un-commited I was to the plight of not just them but of all the poor in the world. How can I pretend to say that I care when in actuality if a war were to break out I would leave this country. I would get on the helicopter that my embassy sent for me, I would take that to the airport and i would get on the plane and I would leave the country and all my friends behind not knowing what would happen to them. I sure I am glad that I made sure to be born in the right country. I'm sure glad that my country was able to achieve its status by exploiting my friends and their status.
oh well, in case you cant tell my "I love America" day is over and I am back to wishing that we would just live up to the ideals that we preach so much. Alright I am done for now, I'll make the next post happier I promise.
And then that made me think of all my friends here in Liberia that did not have that option. When things got bad there, like lets say a 14 year civil war that killed 300,000 people in a population of 3 million, my friends can not just go to the airport and take the next flight out while rockets explode around their houses. When things get bad there, like perhaps when the man that I met a month before in the small rural village of Goyala had a small cut on his foot that got infected because he lived in destitute poverty and could not afford to go to the doctor, when I met him it was the size of a football and he was in immense pain, I talked with people from his village yesterday, they said he had is leg amputated when he finally got to a doctor, his fault for being born in a poor country i guess, foolish man. why didnt he just use his amazing blue passport and his three by five inch piece of plastic to jet himself off to some better place where he could get all his vitamins every day and have access to clean drinking water? Thats what he gets for commiting the egregious sin of being born on the wrong side of the water and on the wrong side of a few arbitrary lands drawn through the middle of the jungle.
I sat watching the kids walking around selling corn or dvds or knock off watches and thought how they can not escape Liberia, Liberia is their future and they will never even see the inside of one of those giant metal birds they saw land and take off every day. I realized how un-commited I was to the plight of not just them but of all the poor in the world. How can I pretend to say that I care when in actuality if a war were to break out I would leave this country. I would get on the helicopter that my embassy sent for me, I would take that to the airport and i would get on the plane and I would leave the country and all my friends behind not knowing what would happen to them. I sure I am glad that I made sure to be born in the right country. I'm sure glad that my country was able to achieve its status by exploiting my friends and their status.
oh well, in case you cant tell my "I love America" day is over and I am back to wishing that we would just live up to the ideals that we preach so much. Alright I am done for now, I'll make the next post happier I promise.
Friday, July 4, 2008
4th of JULY!!!!!!
GO AMERICA!!! This is the one day of the year I allow myself to forget about the horrible bad wrotten hypocritical things that America has done/ is doing now and am unabashedly jingoistic. AMERICA #1!!!!
I was roused from my room this morning by a bunch of co-workers waving hand made American flags (with 52 stars and 12 and 10 stripes on them because they werent sure how many there actually were) and cheers of "YAY America." it is going to be a great day, unless of course it rains like crazy like it looks like it wants to do.
I reflect today and realize all the great things that America has brought to the world and the future of all things it still has to offer. The diversity, the ingenuity, the discovery, the constant looking forward at things to come, that is what makes America so great and keeps it as epitome of how things could be for the rest of the world. I am indeed very proud to be an American, especially today.
I was roused from my room this morning by a bunch of co-workers waving hand made American flags (with 52 stars and 12 and 10 stripes on them because they werent sure how many there actually were) and cheers of "YAY America." it is going to be a great day, unless of course it rains like crazy like it looks like it wants to do.
I reflect today and realize all the great things that America has brought to the world and the future of all things it still has to offer. The diversity, the ingenuity, the discovery, the constant looking forward at things to come, that is what makes America so great and keeps it as epitome of how things could be for the rest of the world. I am indeed very proud to be an American, especially today.
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