so this is the new year

Tonight the glaring arbitrary nature of time seemed to unfold to me – the idea of “now” and “modern” and how much it contrasts between here and America. To me this really reveals the strange and, well, unrealistic way we think of time as if it doesn't need a context. We've entered 2010 now – a year that sounds incredibly futuristic, covered in chrome and white plastic and slow electronic music. And in America, 2010 means a certain type of modern: little hand-held computers like the Ipod touch and the global environmental crisis and stem cell technology and GM food, even the 3-D televisions I hear are about make its way onto the market. And its a necessity to have several cars per family and a laundry machine, or it has been for the past 50 years. But here, modern progress means schools that are based on a government regulated system (albeit loosely and haphazardly) and cell phones complete with the one square foot service spot in the middle of the cornfield, where I need to stand on a rock and wave my phone in the air. No matter that they missed an entire century of landlines. But reality here is that only the lucky few can even afford a phone, or have anyone they know outside of the village that they care to talk to. Hence, the only form of communication really accessible outside the village is the dusty RAC radio in the health center crowded with doctors and other staff from the region screaming about emergency calls from a city days away. And in the village we have the local Griot, a town crier who can yell the news to the only people they need to hear it from.And then there's the new car that the doctor just bought, easily the wealthiest person in the village, after maybe the Mayor. His 1991 Toyota with the scraped off paint and rusty stick shift is one of the shiniest things the village has seen. The donkey cart is the main mode of transportation. They thought I was crazy when I described a clothes washing machine; the one tap recently installed in our village seems like enough of a luxury when you can spend an extra minute drawing water from the well.
And hey, that's progress. That's now.