How do we get over the apathy?

Today I'm at home, trying to start an essay about internally displaced people in Burma. I've left it pretty late (it's due Friday, ugh) but now I've got some articles, and have started reference stalking (you know, when you find one paper, and then stalk more papers through the references, then through the references of the reference, and so on. Before I start big essays, I always think "Oh, 3000 [or 5000 or whatever] words is so much - how am I going to do this?", but inevitably once I've started researching I start to wonder, "God, 3000 words - how am I going to say anything?"

That said, I've not written anything yet so it is early days. Sigh.

Reading more about Burma and the atrocious inequities and human rights abuses that exist there brings up the realisation (again) that I know squat about very little, even though I like to think I'm interested in international health and development. I am barely scratching the surface of one country's crises and yet I know there are tens more that I know nothing about, and that would make me feel just as angry and impassioned - most of Africa, for example. I have sometimes wondered whether Australia's geographic isolation helps create something of a fog of ignorance about these issues - maybe they're just too far away? But the information is so accessible now on the web - so it really comes down to a lazy mind and a mouth that's disproportionately big. That said, how much of this stuff really gets covered in the mainstream press here? Let's be honest, most people will read maybe one or two newspapers a day and watch a news program or two. World news gets relegated to about page 12 or 14 in the major papers here and even then it's all compressed onto two or three pages of broadsheet (or, in a curious feat of inverse proportionality, one or two pages of tabloid - gotta love the Herald-Scum.). I don't know much about the media world in Australia but the editorials don't tend to make much of a fuss about these international issues - too far away? too "irrelevant" to Australians? too hard? Australia too small?

I don't know the answers. If you do, please feel free to enlighten in the comments section!

So I resolve to do what I resolved to do months ago (resolutions are not my strong suit) and to read a few articles each day from ReliefWeb, or Human Rights Watch, or Refugees International. I've done this intermittently in the past and I'd like to make it part of my daily routine. Every now and then I find myself in a flurry of information grabbing and hungry reading eg. about Sudan a little while ago, or Liberia before that, Zimbabwe and Burma now - but I'd like a broader perspective on things.

Child soldiers, high maternal and infant mortality, HIV, TB, malaria, nearly half a population with no access to proper sanitation, torture, rape, human trafficking, malnutrition, anti-personnel landmines, daily internal conflict between a military junta that nobody wanted and dozens of ethnically diverse militias - just life for the people I will be working with when I go. To think that it won't be confronting, shocking, horrifying, would be pretty foolish.

And then here I am, trying to work out the vagaries of duty free shopping to see if I can claim back tax on shoes.

Hmmmm. Maybe I should have been a violinist, then I probably wouldn't think about health and politics so much, and I wouldn't be able to afford shoes. Two birds with one stone.

On a slightly less self-conflicted note, I've been talking to Ange about her plans for Laos - so exciting! The really nice thing is being able to share the thoughts and the plans and the anticipation with someone who wants to do something in a related vein. Now, if only Ernie seemed real...

And lastly, but not leastly, Ben needs a name for his new half-boat! Well, it's a whole boat but he half-owns it. Apparently it is small (4.5m long or something?), has a motor and is blue. When Ben sends me a photo (hopefully SOON Benny!) I will post it up here and you can all suggest away!