Freddy and I are sitting on a leather couch, looking out from a beautiful open-concept living-dining room-kitchen onto a sunny terrace leading to a huge yard with pool, sauna and hot tub, a farmer’s field and beyond that, a large wooded area which we will explore later today and which, I am told, holds small deer, foxes, and bunnies. This is our Bed and Breakfast in Brookman’s Park, where we will be staying until we leave for Germany on the 17th. Here is a lovely old tree across from our B&B.
I can’t believe that it is December, my first term at LSE is over, and I haven’t blogged since October 30. On the one hand it feels like we’ve been here for ages, on the other like we just moved into our Hackney flat yesterday. The professor that owns our flat returned from Boston on Friday, so we moved here to be closer to Fred’s school while he finishes his last week. I am sad to have left that beautiful flat with its grand piano and shelves of books, but it will be remembered fondly as the first place we lived together. And of course, the place that first saw our Masters related stress develop.
Life in London has been hectic, overwhelming, anxiety-infused, exciting, and at times comforting and homey. My program has been everything I had hoped, and so much more that I had never imagined. I came to the program because I, like so many others, want to “be the change I see in the world”, as Mahatma Ghandi is so often quoted as saying. It sounds trite to say it, but there it is – it’s the truth. There are so many injustices and inequalities today - globally as well as locally – and of course this is nothing new; there always have been, as there always will be. It is not a new reality, but it is one that is getting worse. The more we “progress”, the wider the inequality gap becomes between the affluent and the poor. One of the first things we learned in our course was that income inequality is reflected by differing life expectancies from nation to nation, from city to city within nations, and even from neighbourhood to neighbourhood within cities. The poorer the area, the lower the life expectancies are in that area. And this is just one determinant to consider amongst many others such as literacy, level of education, etc. Although this is a fairly obvious phenomenon, to me it really brings home the fact that inequality and poverty is not just a “problem” for the developing world, but one that saturates every community we are part of.
So what can be done. So what should be done? So what can or should one who comes from a privileged background (who is, for instance, able to attend LSE and stay in beautiful Bed and Breakfasts) do about it? Is wanting to address these issues nothing more than an idealistic and patronizing pursuit? And what role does art play in all of this? These are the questions I came to London to have answered. And they haven’t been answered, of course. Not at all. They’ve only been tattered and thrown to the wind and blown about a bit, collected and partially pieced back together. Because education doesn’t provide answers, it raises questions. Everything is contested, nothing is known, the only answer is ever “it depends”. One of our professors, in one of our last lectures, cautioned us with these words: “be careful of wanting to do good. That will always get you into trouble”. Interesting parting advice for a room full of people studying Health, Community and Development, no?
So my job over the next few weeks (in addition to reading about 20 articles and two books – “Pedgagy of the Oppressed” by Paolo Freire and “Whose Reality Counts? Putting the First Last” by Robert Chambers) is to mentally scan all that we talked about over the past few months and try to discern where exactly I should go, given this new critical view and these valuable insights into community development we’ve been exposed to. Where should I go with my research, and where should I go with my career? Should I try to “be the change”, or should I just be aware that a change needs to be, and that I have no role in being it.
One thing I keep returning to in thinking about this is the description of our course on the Institute for Social Psychology website, which says that “our starting point in this MSc is that interventions succeed to the extent that they resonate with the needs, interests and worldviews of the communities they serve, and that effective community participation is a necessary precondition for success. We seek to develop understandings of how health and social development professionals can work in partnership with target communities to improve well-being, fight disease and build 'health-enabling' social environments.” For me the key words here, which underpin everything we’ve learned, are “participation” and “partnership”. It’s not about an outsider coming with all the knowledge and imparting it on a “stricken” community. It’s about outsiders coming in, critically aware of their own overly-valued knowledge and power, and working in true collaboration in communities to create positive change.
So this is all great in theory. We shall see how it plays out in practice when all 20 of us go out into the world to conduct field research for our theses!
Outside of all the theory and academia, my actual “life” in London has been on the whole, exciting. Here are some delicious crepes we had while out on the town one night:
Eating cupcakes from Bea's of Bloomsbury with Lekha, in Red Lion Square:
There are many things I have yet to do – such as visit Portabello Market, the Tate and the National Museum; go to see some plays or musicals; find some great live music venues and discover the “indie music scene” which I’m sure is thriving in London; bike more around London and travel more around the UK. I have done some fun things too though, such as dancing until the wee hours of the morning to a great DJ in Shoreditch; doing our Saturday morning shopping at Broadway Market;
visiting the enchanting white cliffs of Dover for the weekend; watching contemporary dance with Fred (which he actually did enjoy); hosting and attending house parties with new and amazing friends; going for dinner, drinks and dancing with newly reacquainted friends and family; cooking with Freddy, who is incidentally quite the chef; finding great finds like beautiful street art and vintage and indie designers in Brick Lane and Stoke Newington Church Street;
and generally enjoying the history and architecture of beautiful London.
So, I guess that is my last two months in a nutshell. I will try to be more diligent with blogging from here on out, but I make no promises. I can’t wait for our tour of Germany, and spending the holidays with great family friends there, although I continue to miss my dear friends and family back home very, very much.
