High above the tin roofs and dusty paths of Kibera, the blue Shofco water tanks stand like beacons against a cloudless sky. For the estimated 250,000 people who live here in what is believed to be Africa’s largest informal settlement, these tanks provide the only reliable source of clean, safe water. More than this, they are symbolic of a sense of pride and hope that has carried them throughout the pandemic and, now, a cost-of-living crisis.  

Shining Hope for Communities, more commonly known as Shofco, was set up in 2004 by a sixteen-year-old boy from the settlement named Kennedy Odede, fuelled by a powerful mix of frustration and ambition. What began as a small community-led movement with one small shack as its headquarters aimed at inspiring hope amongst Kibera’s people and improving their lives has now grown to a country-wide organisation located in fourteen settlements across Kenya. 

Odede committed early on to a focus on women’s empowerment, having seen first-hand how the lives of women, including his own mother and sisters, were so often devastated by gender-based violence and widespread discrimination. Along with his wife, American Jessica Posner, who met Odede during her time volunteering with Shofco in 2007, he has catapulted the organisation — and its beneficiaries — to success.

After a narrow victory in August’s elections, Kenya’s new president William Ruto will have much to contend with as he faces into his first term. The East African country is still battling COVID-19 and is struggling with the current cost-of-living crisis, with inflation running at a five-year high of 8.5%. For those living in Kibera and other settlements, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get by. For many, Shofco has been a lifeline.  

Pandemic opportunities

When I visit Kibera at the end of June this year, an indoor mask mandate has just been reimposed in response to a surge in COVID cases. I speak to Gladys Mwende, Shofco’s Chief Programmes Officer, who joined the organisation in April 2021, a year into the pandemic. 

“When COVID came, a lot of long-term development projects were suspended but other opportunities came up to be able to respond,” Mwende says. Poor hygiene and sanitation facilities amidst overcrowding were already a threat to the lives of Kibera’s inhabitants and the pandemic exacerbated this. 

Yet, in Kibera, it was the threat of hunger and not the virus that scared people the most according to Mwende. To combat this, Odede was invited to work with the government’s National Covid Response team to deliver much-needed cash transfers to help people through lockdowns and mass unemployment.

Shofco also provided hygiene stations across Kibera and Nairobi, with a total of around 3,000 in public places. Soap for these stations was manufactured by Kibera’s women, as well as masks and other protective equipment, providing a new source of income and empowering women. And, significantly, the pandemic generated renewed interest — and funding — in Shofco’s work.

Since joining, Mwende says the organisation has been on an upward trajectory, receiving more and more support from the likes of the Rockefeller Foundation and others. They hope to be able to expand from supporting 1.2 million Kenyans to 2.4 million by 2025.

The cost-of-living crisis

While the pandemic provided new opportunities, the lives of many Kenyans are now threatened by spiralling costs of food and fuel. At the end of July, Kenya’s then-president Uhuru Kenyatta announced a price cut for the staple maize flour. Yet, this subsidy lapsed on August 18 and a fuel price cut is also expected to end by October. 

Now, despite proclaiming himself as a “hustler” on the side of low-income voters, it remains to be seen how the newly inaugurated President Ruto will address the country’s many economic challenges and support those most in need. 

World Bank statistics for 2022 show that 33.4% of the Kenyan population lives below the national poverty line. And while their April report projected a continued fall in poverty levels, it also warned of the risks that global fuel and food price shocks caused by the war in Ukraine could pose. 

In Kibera alone, stories abound of cases of extreme poverty. Mwende describes a family of five children, ranging from one to fifteen years old, whose mother had left them after being unable to pay rent. Shofco stepped in, providing not only food but also training for the mother to be able to work and support her family. 

Through their sustainable livelihoods programme, the organisation is able to help families like this to better provide for themselves. One of its more recent initiatives is the Shofco Urban Network or Sun which brings together individuals and families to strengthen and mobilise communities and provides micro-financing to start businesses.  

Community-driven hope

Across Kibera, the sky blue of Shofco is everywhere. Denis Koech, Shofco’s communications officer, leads me on a tour of the settlement. The different programmes ranging from gender development, WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene), healthcare and a girls’ school, as well as various community centres, are easy to spot. In each blue building, there are people learning or working alongside each other. 

In June, ahead of the elections, levels of cynicism are running high. Many Kiberans simply hope that a new government will provide the support needed to get through the current crisis. The low voter turnout in August demonstrated the lack of interest in the elections, with many people instead more intent on protesting food prices.

Yet, despite the ongoing challenges facing Kenyans, Shofco continues to provide hope and opportunity in Kibera and other Kenyan settlements. Leaving the hubbub of Kibera’s streets behind, the energy of the people around me is palpable. And it is this energy which has helped Shofco flourish. Powered by the individuals and families they support, the organisation’s community-led initiatives may well be the future of development.

L'articolo A Story of Hope in Kenya sembra essere il primo su Venti Blog.

Even though the headlines were pretty much all about politics and finance (the Ukraine-Russia conflict still ongoing, the upcoming political elections in Italy, and the energy prices/hyperinflation crisis just to name a few) I decided to shift my focus on a long-term socio-economic subjects – despite of not being a common way to spend spare time during the holiday season.

While browsing the pages of one of my favourite International Organizations – the World Economic Forum (WEF) – I found one report that came to my attention. Established in 1971, the WEF is a not-for-profit foundation based in Geneva, that promotes the debate on social, economic, and environmental matters among the most important leaders from both the corporate world and the public institutions.

Thanks to this activity, the Forum is one of the most prominent organizations worldwide at forefront in trying to make an impact in reshaping the society. As mentioned on their website “It is independent, impartial and not tied to any special interests. The Forum strives in all its efforts to demonstrate entrepreneurship in the global public interest while upholding the highest standards of governance”.

Among the countless reports, articles, and studies published, one specific topic piqued my curiosity: the Global Social Mobility Index. The index was developed in 2020 for the purpose of measuring the intergenerational social mobility in different countries in relation to socioeconomic outcomes.

But what does it really mean “intergenerational social mobility”? The concept can be explained as “the movement in personal circumstances either “upwards” or “downwards” of an individual in relation to those of their parents.” To put it differently,it tells basically how many possibilities the child of a low-income household has to be better off than the parents in any given country.

The index mainly focuses on 5 main socio-economic areas: Health, Education, Technology, Work, and Institutions. Compared to other academic indexes developed for the study on income inequalities, the Social Global Mobility Index takes into account policies, practices and institutions in order to rank the countries without limiting the analysis solely on the monetary outcome.

Looking at the ranking of the Index, the Nordic countries are the leaders for equality in possibilities for future generations: Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and The Netherlands make the top of the list.

What made me think, and sparked my interest for this post, was the situation among the G7 countries. The first country among the strongest economies in providing the highest social mobility is Germany, ranking 11th, followed by France in 12th position. Canada and Japan follow closely with the 14th and 15^th position, the United Kingdom ranks 21^st, the United States 27^th. Italy (34^th) scores a very negative ranking being the last of the G7 group and performing worse than many other countries like Cyprus, Poland, Latvia, and Slovak Republic.

The lack of social mobility analysed in the WEF report is rooted not in a single factor but rather in a blend of specific socio-economic conditions: “Globalization and the Fourth Industrial Revolution have generated significant benefits, but have also exacerbated inequalities. The Fourth Industrial Revolution, and with it, continuing and future disruption to labour markets, will likely compound differences in social mobility for those countries unprepared to take advantage of new opportunities.”

Let’s now focus on a crucial factor, the public education system, since it is deeply related to equal access to knowledge and job-advancement possibilities.

Digging a bit more in some data about the public expenditure on education (measured by the percentage of GDP allocated to this public service), I found out that data provided by OECD (the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) are consistent with the results showed by the World Economic Forum: countries that rank as top performer in the social mobility are also allocating more resources to primary and secondary education (on average the 3.6% of GDP).

While a blog post is not the place to prove a relationship between the two social phenomena – a statistic lover would say “the degree of correlation between two variables” – it allows us to think on how primary and secondary schools are shaping future citizens.

The subject is not easy, and it requires much consideration, evaluating factors such as school dropout in neglected areas, discrepancy in quality of education from one (wealthy) neighbourhood to another (poor) one, selection process of teaching personnel, and inequalities in accessibility to technologies for educational purposes (pandemic home-schooling just showed it the hard way).               

The school system is not self-regulating, and the political agenda of different national governments is what defines the amount of resources channelled in specific public services.

Conscious that the recent emergencies of the last years did not leave room for long-term public achievements, I noticed that the public debate about the quality of the education has been a missing point for decades. The current political campaign for the national elections in Italy is proving the point: the public expenditure on primary and secondary education has never been mentioned by any party running for government.

The French writer Daniel Pennac, before becoming a globally recognized novelist, was a schoolteacher. His working experience had played a central role in his storytelling, and this quote beautifully pinpoints the crux of the matter about the current situation of education: “All it takes is one teacher – just one – to save us from ourselves and make us forget all the others.”

In fact, too often it’s the single initiative and commitment of teachers, headteachers, and school staff that fills the gaps of structural problems. In the EU, where public services standards should be aligned across the continent, it’s time to share not only economic burdens but also virtous models and best practices to level up public services, such as a school system that promotes equality for future generations.

In the weeks that represent the start of the school year for mostly the entire Europe, I hope that offer-and-demand and budget-conscious view on education in some countries will be left out, not only for an index ranking.

L'articolo The lost social mobility in the G7 circle sembra essere il primo su Venti Blog.

At 17.58, the sunny sky wasn’t visible anymore: an explosion blew up the highway near the exit of Capaci – a town close to Palermo. Five hundred kilos of TNT hidden in a tunnel underneath the road were activated remotely when the three cars of the judges and their agents were passing by. The explosion killed the judges and three agents: Vito Schifani, Rocco Dicillo, and Antonio Montinaro.

But that detonation didn’t just end five lives, it brutally revolutionized an era. For many people fighting for the State over organized crime – “Servitori dello Stato” (State servants) – that event was a no-turning point. The loss of Falcone hit hard the whole city and its people, and it forced them to wake up in the name of one of those who led the “maxi-processo” (maxi-trial). In fact, just a few months prior, Falcone and other judges concluded the largest criminal trial against more than 400 mafia men, damaging the interests of the “Cosa Nostra”.

Falcone was gone, but what he left for the society was everlasting. The investigative approach against crime created during his years of service, the so-called “Falcone Method”, would not die with him. This technique is based on an easy and intuitive rule: following the money.

As a matter of fact, monitoring the economic transactions allows detectives to capture the criminal activity and the unexpected connections that exist between criminal families and businesses. This method was used on large scale during the investigation in the “Spatola” trials, and it led to the conviction of 75 members of the Spatola, Gambino, and Inzerillo gangs.

On May 23^rd 1992, the entire country realized that mafia cannot be dismissed as a social disfunction confined in the remote regions of Southern Italy. This acknowledgment becomes even more evident exactly 57 days after Falcone’s death. In fact, on the 19th of July 1992, a Maxi-trial judge, colleague, and friend of Giovanni Falcone was executed. In another mafia attack, Paolo Borsellino was brutally killed in Palermo (Via D’Amelio bombing). Five police escort agents – Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina, and Claudio Traina – were also killed that day.

Falcone and Borsellino were not idealists who fought alone, their ideas and ideals live with us. They are a source of inspiration for everyone, from businessmen and women to future generations of prosecutors worldwide. Many others Falcone are fighting battles around the world in contrast to organizations that are preventing a legal and healthy growth of territories and communities. To name one, Marcelo Pecci, a Paraguayan anti-mafia prosecutor, focused his investigative activity on drug trafficking in South America. He was shot dead on the 10^th of May 2022 during his honeymoon in Colombia.

In these years, there has been also an uptake of volunteer movements and cultural associations that decided to stand up to criminal phenomenon. One of these is Addiopizzo, founded in Palermo in 2004 by a small group of young people.

It promotes a local virtuous economy through the support to businesses that are not involved with racket – a lucrative form of extorsion that affects mainly small and family businesses. Addiopizzo assists victims of this crime with legal support and also promotes social inclusion projects in neglected areas of the city, because – as mentioned on their website: “Any action to combat the mafia is not enough if the social unease and urban decay that contribute to fueling the phenomena of deviance are not addressed at the same time.”

As I already discussed with a public prosecutor in an interview published on this blog “tenacious journalists, entrepreneurs, artists, and local associations are defending their communities with silent but powerful battles, often putting at risk their own lives and the ones of their relatives. Those examples need to be spread around more often. And why is that?

Because too many times I heard that “the system” is too big to be fought or some areas have been forgotten for such a long time that now is too late to change the reality.  This is the point where resignation replaces hope. Things can change starting from a small gesture, despite adverse conditions. Is this an easy job? Not at all. I actually believe that a tremendous and collective effort needs to be put in place to change the mentality, and this change is not going to happen overnight.”

Giovanni Falcone, Paolo Borsellino, Francesca Morvillo, Vito Schifani, Rocco Dicillo, Antonio Montinaro, Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina, Claudio Traina, Marcelo Pecci and many more would be proud of to see how culture is slowly changing and how we are honoring their legacy, trying to make every ordinary day a bit brighter than the previous one.

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I know, this name may sound unfamiliar, so let me tell you about him.

Naval Ravikant is an Indian-American entrepreneur, angel investor, investment advisor, blogger, and podcast author. Born in India, he grew up in Queens, New York, where he moved at the age of 9. Coming from a lower-class and single-parent household, he had to become independent at a very early age, with little to no time in amusing social child activities (using his own words “my only real friends were books”).

However, his passion for reading paid dividends a few years down the line, helping him to reshape his life out of Queens. As a matter of fact, he passed an admission test for a prestigious high school in New York, and he later graduated in computer science and economics at Dartmouth College, one of the oldest institutions of the United States and part of the Ivy League.

At the age of 27 he was already a venture partner in a private equity and venture capital firm in the Silicon Valley, and at the age of 29 he founded Vast.com, his own first company. As an early-stage investor, he contributed to the growth of companies that completely reshaped the world: Twitter, Uber, Wish.com, and Clubhouse – just to name a few. He is an icon in Silicon Valley, but not just that.

Unlikely other Silicon Valley mainstream CEOs, he has been able to build up an across-the-board audience by sharing his thoughts via blog posts (https://nav.al/), tweets (@naval), and a podcast (on Spotify: Naval). He reaches many people by talking about topics that aren’t always connected to business.

The first time I discovered his contents, I was hooked by his direct and clear communication. His approach is rather non-conventional, quite far from the narrative no-pain-no-gain and work-hard-play-hard developed by high-achiever motivational speakers.

Eric Jorgensen, an entrepreneur and blogger, decided to collect Naval’s quotes spread around different platforms in a single book: “The Almanack of Naval Ravikant”. The book clusters the contents in two main sections: Health and Happiness. In turn, each section is divided into five sub-sections: Building Wealth, Building Judgment, Learning Happiness, Saving Yourself, and Philosophy. This structure is really a good representation of Naval’s mindset.

Let me share 3 pieces of content from the “Wealth” section (what else could I have picked from a Silicon Valley superstar?) :

Lust for money

“Lusting for money is bad for us because it is a bottomless pit. It will always occupy your mind. If you love money, and you make it, there’s never enough. There is never enough because the desire is turned on and doesn’t turn off at some number.”

At first sight, this is the most unexpected piece of advice one could expect from an extremely successful venture capitalist. However, when you think that Naval is immersed in the high-tech and financial sector of California, the richest State of the whole USA, you suddenly realized that he has witnessed first-hand the effects of the race for money and social status.

Material accumulation, one of the building blocks of modern society, has intrinsically created the unhealthy equation between the size of the month-end pay-check and the value of a worker as a person. Will letting this identity go help you avoid transforming your life in a never-ending race?

Building Judgment

“We spend very little time deciding which relationship to get into. We spend so much time in a job, but we spend so little time deciding which job to get into. Choosing what city to live in can almost completely determine the trajectory of your life, but we spend so little time trying to figure out what city to live in.”

Unpondered decisions may impact long periods of your life and “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward” – Steve Jobs would say. While sometimes there are circumstances not always under our control, it’s also true that the lack of long-term focus has driven many people very far away from their true selves. So…if you like a quiet life… how did you end up in a two-million-people city?

In my personal case, the love for multicultural places and an international work environment has been shaping my expat life for the last seven years and counting. The choice of relocation abroad brought more professional opportunities, endless travel possibilities, and cultural exchanges I couldn’t have had in my hometown. It also came at a price, but that’s part of the game.

Creativity

“It’s only after you’re bored you have the great ideas. It’s never going to be when you’re stressed, or busy, running around or rushed. Make the time.”

For an investor as Naval working with early-stage companies, creativity is crucial for the development of an innovative product, designed to potentially turn upside down an entire market sector. But he is not the only person thinking that being busy without a real value or purpose is not a good status to pursue.

Cal Newport, a successful academic and bestseller author, clearly states the importance of focusing in the workplace in his book “Deep Work”. He claims: “In the absence of clear indicators of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back toward an industrial indicator of productivity: doing lots of stuff in a visible manner”. Have you really assessed how do you spend your time?

These are only three powerful passages among many by Naval. His point of view can be an inspiration for many, but it does not mean that he must be an inspiration for everyone; he is a successful venture capitalist, but not a life-saver guru. You may consider some of his food for thought and make them yours, and disregard the rest.

What’s your source of inspiration?

L'articolo Portrait of an Unconventional Venture Capitalist sembra essere il primo su Venti Blog.

During my web search on different topics, I found the story of an incredible man that completely caught my attention. That’s when I decided that in 2022 I wouldn’t be focusing on a list of tasks, but rather I would let a story inspire my future days.

This is neither a story of a sports champion coming from a neglected area that was raised by a single mother, nor the evolution of a successful business that was launched as a small start-up in a garage and that is now worth a million dollars. This is the story of the inconceivable resistance of a young soldier who survived in the jungle for almost three decades making the order “no surrender” his personal credo.

I am getting ahead of myself, so let’s start from the beginning.

The main character of this story is Hiroo Onoda, born in 1922 in Japan in the Wakayama Prefecture. When he was just 18 years old, he trained as an intelligence officer at the Imperial Japanese Army Infantry. In 1944, at the maximum outburst of violence of the Second World War, Hiroo took his military duties on Lubang Island in the Philippines, with the order to act on the front line for the sake of the enemy’s defeat and to surrender under no circumstances. In February 1945, the United States Army and Philippine Commonwealth forces took over the island, which led to the death or surrender of many Japanese soldiers operating in that area.

Onada, who in the meantime was promoted to lieutenant, ordered the remaining soldiers to go hide in the forest up in the mountains and observe the order “no surrender”. Hiroo started his guerrilla with three fellow soldiers, engaging in conflict with local police and robbing locals to survive. His book “No surrender” (published thanks also the noteworthy editing of Charles S. Terry) describes how he spent his life in the jungle, planning the defense from Philippine Army, organizing food storage, and adapting clothes in different seasons of the year.

Like many other Japanese holdouts in the world, he doubted the veracity of many flyers left on the island asking the soldiers to surrender. All those messages were analyzed and attributed to the US forces’ propaganda. In 1952, letters and family pictures were dropped in the desperate try to obtain their surrender, but the group of soldiers concluded that this was a trap and kept hiding and bringing on their resistance. In 1959, Onoda was officially declared dead in his home country.

Between the US conquest of Lubang Island in 1945 and 1972, Hiroo’s comrades passed away in conflicts against the police or local farmers, leaving Onada alone in his guerrilla.

In 1974, A Japanese student, Norio Suzuki, landed in Lubang Island to search for and find “Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order”. Within four days, Suzuki was able to find the first person on his rescue list. After 29 years, Onoda surrendered.

When he came back to Japan in 1974 at the age of 52, he found his native land deeply changed over the years: skyscrapers, high-speed trains, and a booming electronic industry replaced the traditional paper and wooden houses. Even the values of the people were changing at a fast pace: the extreme loyalty to the emperor of the ‘20s was replaced by the pursuit of financial success through an extreme work ethic.

In 1975, due to the rising attention of the media on his story and the evolution of society’s values, he decided to leave Japan and settle in Brazil, where he became a cattle rancher. He died at the age of 91 turning into a Japanese modern hero.

This story is great food for thought. Applying survivor techniques while engaging in a guerilla for 29 years is an incredible example of resistance; I never hid in a jungle as a fighter, but I’m sure there were many tough days and daily challenges – nothing related to the frustration of our 15 minutes delay of the bus ride.

Moreover, his commitment to duty for such a long time is something unique, despite he had several opportunities to give up on his order to not surrender. Even though Japan was not among the Second World War winners, Hiroo Onada clearly won his personal war, not only against the US Alliance forces in Lubang Island but rather for his own integrity.

Using his words: “some dreams are best not to wake up from”.

What is the situation you won’t surrender in the year to come?

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It was an extract of a brief speech attributed to Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, one of the most influential corporate leaders of the world. After doing some research, I found out that Brian Dyson, former CEO of Coca-Cola, most likely delivered the speech at the commencement ceremony of the Georgia Tech Institute in 1996 (the downside of the internet – verify the sources!).

Regardless of the dispute about the authorship, the lines posted online offered a remarkable message that describes the difficulties we all have in keeping the different parts of our life in balance. 

“Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. 

You name them work, family, health, friends, and spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the air.

You will soon understand that ‘work’ is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends, and spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same.

You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.”

Those few words reveal the power of the metaphor. In just a few moments, I thought about my past experiences and those of many people I met over the last few years. At some point or another, we all have messed up on what was the material of the 5 balls we were gasping to juggle: we wrongly assumed that the “work ball” was made of thin glass and that the “family-health-friends-spirit balls” were made of the most robust rubber you can find.

I think about how much energy the people I know have dedicated to a job that, in some cases, is merely a month-end paycheck. I think about the uncertainty of fresh graduates that struggle to find job stability. I think about how many people feel drained and burned out for an unsustainable work culture (just to put it into perspective, the popular work-related website indeed.com surveyed over 1,500 US employees across different industries, finding out that 57% of the sample was suffering this condition in 2021).

And what’s the reason for all this widespread struggle? While sometimes this is the result of a screwed job market, the reason at the base of an unbalanced life is also the pursuit of unhealthy values such as money, success, and social cliches. Paradoxically enough, many successful professionals – despite their “elite” job categories – are those more exposed to the risk of being trapped in this self-defeating rat race.

My last summer reading – Mark Manson’s bestseller book “The subtle art of not giving a f*ck” – suggests a remedial attitude to this detrimental mindset.

This key passage reminds me how to see things from a different angle when I find myself being hooked on the same mentality: “The world is constantly telling you that the path for a better life is more, more, more – buy more, own more, make more, fuck more, be more. (…) Why? My guess: because giving a fuck about more stuff is good for business”. 

I am aware that nice words won’t pay personal and family obligations, rent, and bills – unless you are a full-time writer. I just think that the current socioeconomic context leads us to lose our balance too easily, and sometimes we all need to recalibrate priorities.  

The next time I notice losing one of the 5 “life-balls”, I will just remember that juggling is not a task to perform, but rather a game to play. Will you do the same?

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Two decades ago, my mother travelled through Afghanistan to report on a deadly drought and life under the Taliban. Reporting for the Irish Times, she wrote of the empty fields she passed, devoid of crops: “Across the vast plains of northern Afghanistan figures line the way — boys and old men — raising both hands to their mouths in a haunting ritual beseeching each car that passes by.” Today, in 2021, Afghans face a similar fate as a combination of severe drought and internal displacement has put intense pressure on diminishing resources.

Just over three weeks since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban, the world is still attempting to understand how the government and military collapsed so quickly. It did not take long for a blame game to start amongst Western leaders, as politicians sought to distance themselves from a series of failures in the run-up to the withdrawal of foreign troops. After twenty years of conflict since 9/11, however, the failings of Western intervention in Afghanistan cannot be confined to the last year alone.

While the geopolitical implications of the Taliban’s return to power continue to concern leaders and analysts alike, for ordinary Afghans left behind in the “graveyard of empires” it is the looming humanitarian emergency that is the most pressing issue.

Afghanistan before 9/11

Twenty years ago, aged nearly six years old, I was living with my family in Islamabad, Pakistan. When 9/11 happened, foreigners were urged by their embassies to evacuate the country and, so, my mother took me and my two older brothers to New Delhi, where we stayed for four months, while my father remained working as a journalist in Pakistan.

Earlier that year, my mother had travelled to Afghanistan by herself to cover the famine in the northern part of the country. As a western woman, she was mostly protected against the ruthlessness of the Taliban. Yet her short time within the country allowed her to witness life under their rule.

The first time she had been in Afghanistan had been years before, when the Soviets were leaving the country and the Mujahideen were still engaged in battle against them. Now, in early 2001, she arrived in Kabul on a Red Cross flight, naively thinking she would have permission as a journalist to travel.

The Taliban, however, were deeply suspicious of Western journalists. My mother was taken to one of their central bases where they interrogated her on her reasons for being there. Seated in a room with bare-footed Talibs and their guns propped against the walls, she convinced them that she was only covering the famine. Only after they were reassured that her reporting would not include any political focus, did the Taliban reluctantly relent and allow her to travel.

My mother travelled across the country to Maymana, in the north-west, accompanied by a driver and the Taliban’s chosen translator. Despite her initial reservations about the translator, he became chattier during their journey and told my mother that he was secretly educating his daughter at home. As they drove, they listened to music, and each time they came upon a Taliban checkpoint, they would hastily hide the cassettes. In her articles, my mother described the “tangled masses of black audio tape confiscated from drivers caught playing Western music in their cars” hung high above each checkpoint, acting as a warning to those thwarting their ban.

When I asked my mother whether she had felt frightened at any point, she described her first night in Mazar-i-Sharif; refused permission to stay at the UN guesthouse, she had been told to stay at a hotel located opposite the Taliban headquarters. She went off to socialise with other journalists and UN staff at their base but after a few hours, as the time for curfew set in, she had to make her way to the hotel.

The building was dark, and the electricity shut off. She was led up several flights of stairs by a boy and on each landing, they passed groups of bearded men sitting chatting. At the top of the building the boy showed her to her lightless room. She told me that it was only then that she had misgivings, as she sat alone in a dark, dingy hotel, surrounded by bearded men on each floor, across from Taliban headquarters.

When she left Kabul, just escaping the city as a sandstorm descended, her relief was immense. Years later, as she told me all this, laughing at her own recklessness, I listened in amazement. I also couldn’t fail to notice the similarities between the Afghanistan she visited and the present-day one.

‘Humanitarian catastrophe’

The famine my mother reported on was brought about by a terrible drought following three years of failed rains. Thousands were forced to flee their homes, adding to the huge numbers of internally displaced people who had already fled due to conflict. Acute malnutrition in children aged under five was becoming a serious issue.

Today, Afghanistan is facing a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’, as warned by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Nearly half of the population (an estimated 18 million people) require humanitarian aid, and more than half of all children aged under 5 face acute malnutrition over the next year. The direct causes, at least, are much the same as in 2001: drought, lack of crops and internal displacement.

Now that the US withdrawal is complete and the evacuations of both foreigners and Afghans have come to a halt, the world’s attention should shift to the humanitarian needs of those who remain in the country. Arguably, after two decades of military intervention by the US and its allies, the country should be left alone. Western powers, however, left behind many more problems than those they solved. Intervention, in the form of aid, must be continued.

Then and now

The similarities between the Afghanistan my mother visited and the one of today point to the grim realities experienced by Afghans daily, both then and now. Yet, in the years since 9/11, the country has indeed changed; the economy has grown, infrastructure has been developed and there have been significant gains for the rights of women and girls. Whereas in 2003, only 6% of girls attended secondary school, in 2017, this figure had jumped to 39%. Economic growth has slowed in recent years, however, and more than half the population live below the national poverty line.

The big question in recent weeks has been whether the Taliban have changed in any fundamental way. Their attempts to prove that they have changed and modernised show that they have; their understanding of media and good PR demonstrates a marked difference between the Taliban of the 1990s and the current leaders.

However, reports that are slowly emerging from the country (where many journalists have gone underground) appear to show that their media show is just that: a spectacle intended to garner attention and goodwill from potential donors. Human rights abuses — of journalists, activists, women — have been growing under Taliban-controlled areas in recent months and, since their arrival in Kabul, the evidence is mounting of further violations.

Moving beyond 9/11

Many hope that a country in which two-thirds of the population is under 25 years of age will not allow a regression to the Afghanistan of the 1990s. Yet, if we allow the West to walk away without a backward glance, then the few gains that have been made since 2001 will be lost. For both selfish and humanitarian reasons, we must continue to support Afghanistan with the critical aid needed over the coming months. To not do so would both be morally wrong and no doubt trigger further security concerns for the West, as the exodus of Afghan refugees grows and the situation within the country worsens.

When my mother travelled across the country in 2001, despite Taliban suspicion, her aim was to report on the plight of ordinary Afghan citizens. In 2021, while the geopolitical situation may remain fraught, global media must keep its focus on the humanitarian crisis now unfolding. The US withdrawal may be over but the ‘catastrophe’ is only beginning; now is not the time to turn our backs but, instead, to offer what aid we can.

As Afghanistan and the world turn a chapter, we may still hope that the next twenty years bring some positive change to a country that has seen endless hardships. In the coming months, scenes such as the one my mother witnessed, of famished boys and men desperately begging for food, must not be repeated. It remains to be seen how the Taliban will rule, but it is critical that their return to Kabul does not mean a return to an era in which the needs of millions of Afghans are forgotten by the outside world.

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These were my very thoughts when I first saw “The subtle art of not giving a f*ck”, by Mark Manson. The eye-catching orange cover – and title – is present in many bookshops of different cities, countries, and airports. For the largest time, I didn’t want to dive into the pages of a shallow-titled paperback, which I supposed it was mainly used by passengers that struggle to fall asleep during long-haul flights.

This impression has been in my mind for years. However, I changed my attitude only recently, thanks to a conversation with a friend of mine. He decided to overcome the initial prejudice about the title he had in the first place, finding the reading actually pleasant, easy to digest, and insightful beyond the initial expectations.

After this discussion, I decided to unhook from my biased judgment and conduct some research about the author. Mark Manson is a successful blogger, bestseller author, and businessman. Just after reading a few blog posts, I realized that I was wrongly underestimating the author: in fact, the lean and direct writing style – in full coherence with his book title – alongside the valuable content absorbed my attention. So I gave a shot at “The subtle art of not giving a f*ck”.

Even before reading a single page, this volume reminded me of something important: don’t judge a book by its cover. 

What is this book about? The subheading is pretty self-explanatory: “A counterintuitive approach to living a good life”. In Manson’s point of view, pretending to be happy all the time is a dangerous way of thinking; he makes the argument with the support of scientific research, personal experiences, and past historical events. The author’s standpoint is the main driver of the story, and his direct expression provides some interesting food for thoughts; here, I decided to mention a few of them.

1. Don’t focus on what lack

“The world is constantly telling you that the path for a better life is more, more, more – buy more, own more, make more, fuck more, be more. (…) Why? My guess: because giving a fuck about more stuff is good for business”. 

This sentence comes up just a few pages into the book. Here there was enlightenment: I suddenly realized how an unhealthy and unsustainable over-comparison is present in our society, affecting the quality of relationships, workplace interactions and influencing our consumption choices. It’s getting more and more difficult to focus on few things that are really important for us and Mark Manson is aware of it. The author makes things clear since the beginning: eliminating what is not meaningful is the way to remain true to ourselves, creating space for what really matters.  

2. You are not special

“Entitled people exude a delusional degree of self-confidence. This confidence can be alluring to others, at least for a little while. (…) But the problem with entitlement is that it makes people need to feel good about themselves all the time” .

This is one of my favorite parts and core concepts of the book. Everyone knows a person with a high sense of self-esteem that is not supported by concrete achievements. When the feeling of entitlement is part of our mindset, it’s difficult to acknowledge, embrace, and solve problems – that ultimately is the act that brings real happiness for the author. The next time you find yourself pretending to have something important sorted out with little or no effort, think about how much you committed to it. Give it a try and check the results!

3. A story of Picasso about failure and success

To explain the importance of commitment and the act of embracing failure as a source of happiness, Manson mentions an event that happened to Picasso in the late years of his life in Spain. One day the famous painter was sitting in a coffee shop, drawing something on a napkin while drinking his cup. When he decided to leave and throw away his sketch, a woman sitting nearby recognized the great artist and she asked him to keep the napkin for herself. As a response, the painter requested the equivalent of 20,000 dollars, generating a surprising reaction in the woman, who promptly replied that the amount was exorbitant for something that took him only a few minutes to draw. Before leaving, Picasso firmly clarified that it didn’t take only a few minutes, but rather sixty years to make it, then he folded the drawing in his pocket and walked out.

Those are only three of the interesting arguments presented across the nine chapters of the book. Not all of Manson’s points will be a life-changer discovery for the reader since there is no golden rule for a happy life and everyone approaches situations based on their own personal experiences. However, the counterintuitive and uncommon approach to problem-solving will give a different perspective to the readers, broadening their minds. 

If you feel the need to fall asleep during a long-haul flight, to overcome the prejudice about this catchy title you may have had in the past, or simply to have a new book to enjoy your summer downtime, you may have found what you need.     

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Overcoming his first impression, the photo reporter captured the snapshot with a 400mm lens from his Beijing Hotel room.  The picture soon became a worldwide symbol of freedom and resistance not only in mainstream media and newspapers, but also in students’ bedroom posters and t-shirts, nourishing everyone’s dream of resistance.

As Widener revealed at a later time, this picture broke free to the world through another less known side story: owing to the high risk of arrest for censorship in China at that time, the film that captured the shot was smuggled out from the Beijing Hotel in the underwear of one of Widener’s collaborators before being released to the Western press – a compounded resistance effect.

To this day, the identity of the Tank Man remains unknown. All that we know about this young man is that he was in Tiananmen Square in the aftermath of violent repression undertaken by Chinese military forces in the attempt to stop student-led demonstrations advocating for democracy, better education, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. After a month of protests, on the 4th of June 1989, the Chinese Authority decided to intervene with strong measures, generating the so-called Tiananmen Square Massacre. According to reporters and Western diplomats, on that day, the army was shooting over the crowd, causing the death of hundreds to thousands of protesters and as many as 10,000 arrests.

In different ways, 32 years later, young generations in many areas of the world – from East to West – are still enduring through their own resistance. Since the heroic gesture of the Tank Man, challenges have changed, taking different forms. Freedom of speech and censorship – taken for granted in the western world – nowadays is still a hot topic in some countries, and music and cultural events are the new targets of repression.

In 2018 in Cuba, for example, the enforcement of a law that allows the government to stop all the dissident artistic events generated a movement led by young rappers aimed to reconquer the lost freedom of expression: the San Isidro Movement.

In a country where the cultural isolation from the rest of the world is fueled by one of the least developed access to the internet and IT infrastructure of the world, young artists without social media and other forms of advertisement were able to create a nation-wide movement, which also aggregated the protest of part of academics and independent journalists of the Caribbean island.

This initiative of youth dissent is not the only one. The environmental crisis that dramatically evolved in the last decade has become the mission of many ecologic associations, NGOs, and international institutions (as discussed also on this blog here and here).

However, in 2018 a unconventional protest took place in Europe: a high school student, Greta Thunberg, initiated a climate-change movement that soon became a worldwide phenomenon. “In the three weeks leading up to the Swedish election, she sat outside Swedish Parliament every school day, demanding urgent action on the climate crisis. She was tired of society’s unwillingness to see the climate crisis for what it is: a crisis“ reports the website now dedicated to the cause. The propagation of the message ad the demonstrators’ mediatic impact was astonishing, considering that the initial group of students had no funding and no initial network, but only their mobile phones and social media accounts. Against all the odds, two years later that young high school girl arrived to discuss climate change in Davos at the World Economic Forum, sharing the stage with the most influential people on the planet.

The aforementioned initiatives are only two remarkable examples, proving that youth resistance is still alive even though manifested in different ways. Many silent battles are in place in daily life, such as the job hunt in a hyper-competitive market where fresh graduates struggle to find stable contracts, and the fight against the gender pay gap and sexual discrimination in the workplace.

It might be possible that we have been told by someone of prior generations “you’re not tough enough”; but all in all, I think the Tank Man would be proud of the way we are fighting those small and big battles.

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An awkward situation – someone would call it a diplomatic incident – caused several criticisms right after the meeting kicked-off: three leaders involved in an official convention, two chairs available in the room, and the only woman of the group left to sit on a sofa, aside from the center of the discussion, which was symbolically controlled by the two male leaders.

Was the room setting arranged in that way on purpose? Was the response of the two EU leaders adequate at that moment? 

Let’s look closer at all subjects involved. On the Turkish side, President Erdoğan, in office since 2014, defines himself as a “conservative democrat”. The NGO Reporters Without Borders ranks Turkey 154th out of 180 countries in the 2020 World Press Freedom Index, defining it as “the world’s biggest jailer of professional journalists”. The censorship of websites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Wikipedia is an ordinary event over there. On the 20th of March 2021, through a presidential decree, Turkey withdrew from the Istanbul Convention, the international treaty promoted by the Council of Europe to prevent and combat violence against women. Ironically, the first country that ratified the Convention was Turkey itself back in 2012. Henceforth male chauvinism is just what we could have expected from Erdoğan.  

But what about the reaction from the EU leaders? In such an embarrassing situation, Charles Michel thought best to take the seat next to Erdoğan, showing only a slight regret for his gesture later on. Ursula von der Leyen, instead, looked puzzled and irritated while standing far from the other two leaders. It’s hard to say whether von der Leyen’s decision not to speak up was the right one, or whether Michel’s lack would have been putting von der Leyen on the spot. For sure, none of the two showed a firm reaction. Unfortunately, the sofa gate overshadowed the critical topics on the agenda: the Aegean Sea dispute between Turkey and Greece for the use of the international maritime space, the Istanbul Convention withdrawal, and the refugees’ management on the Syrian border.

In the days after the Ankara meeting, the international debate on the sofa gate escalated: the most impactful statement came from the Italian President Mario Draghi, who commented on what happened to von der Leyen during a national press conference. He defined Erdoğan as a “dictator – with whom one nonetheless has to coordinate”. As a matter of fact, despite the debatable foreign policy in Kurdistan, Syria, and the Aegean Sea, the EU has been financing Turkey with 6 billion Euros to stop the refugees flow from Syria since 2016 (von der Leyen at that time was the Minister of Defense of Germany, playing a crucial role in building up this agreement between the parts).

Although the male chauvinist episode needs to be undoubtedly condemned, the main point of discussion should focus instead on the EU decision to deliberately “cooperate” on delicate humanitarian topics – human lives – with someone that has been defined as dictator by one of the most prominent leaders. 

In the specific case of the refugees’ Balkan Route, the EU leaders decided to trade human rights with domestic consensus. In fact, the internal social problems were already too heavy for the member states to be summed to the incoming flow of migrants from the middle east: the only immediate solution left was to ask for help from Erdoğan, blocking those people far away from the continent in violation of refugees’ protection rights.

As Gandhi says: “To safeguard democracy, the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect and their oneness“. Is the EU, motherland of democracy and cooperation, pursuing these values by dealing with Turkey’s current government?

The hope is that one day the missing chair of the Ankara summit will be given to the progressive Turkish young generations that strive for a more emancipated and modern country, to all those refugees blocked on the Syrian border on their way to Europe, to all the Kurdistan women fighters for resistance of Women’s Protection Units, and to all those leaders that do not accept to collaborate with a dictator.

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