Update from Argentina
Hello Invisible Children family. I love writing to you because if you’re on this blog, or on IC’s website, you probably have a global perspective that starts with a fundamental love of humanity, and the heart and care that flows from that. You see the world and those who live in it as something beautiful worthy of protection and celebration.
That has always been the spirit of my trip. To see the world slowly, primarily by bicycle, and to meet its people. Having been on the road almost a year now, this has become my life. Oregon to Argentina is quite a distance. I remember my life before the road as a mirage or a dream. I am accustomed to moving to a new town or landscape every week and that newness has become my expectation. The effect of this lifestyle is that human behavior begins to boil down to patterns of being. I see how everyone is similar, and how cultures are different. This is an incredible thing to discover for yourself because it transforms your own understanding of where you’re from into a malleable society that doesn’t have to be the way it is. That idea alone has changed the way I see the world. Anything can change. Anything can improve. And we have a lot to learn from each other.
I am now in beautiful Argentina. It is a cross between Italy and Texas. Old world architecture and pace with Texas grandeur and rugged pride. Wine and leather and horses and meat abound. It feels significantly different from the rest of Latin America. It seems to have more money, more European influence, and a sense of self that grows from isolated self-esteem. Many of the towns and cathedrals were constructed here before much of the United States were states at all.
As has become the norm, I am regularly greeted by smiles, laughter in disbelief at my journey, and hospitality. I am in the north of the country, and still have thousands of kilometers to cross, but the theory stands as true here as is has in every country before it: the vast majority of people are kind.
This common thread of my trip only accentuates the moral shock of the issues we face at Invisible Children. I can find no outrage in Latin America as pronounced as the brutality of the LRA in central Africa. The ICC was criticized for indicting African warlords before other continents, but as far as I can see, the violence perpetrated by Joseph Kony over the last three decades has almost no equal anywhere in the world.
It only confirms for me the priority we placed on ending that conflict and turning Joseph Kony into an example of global justice. I stand by that. And I continually stand by my belief that humanity is beautiful and our job as global citizens is to both celebrate our humanity and protect it.
I have four more months of this journey. I’m curious what other lessons lie ahead.
Think people should hear about this?