Yang Lan on young people in China on TED talks 10/3/11:
“umong the 200 million migrant workers [in China] 60% of them are young people. They find themselves sort of sandwiched between the urban and rural areas. Most of them don’t want to go back to the countryside, but they don’t have the sense of belonging; they work for longer hours with less income, less social welfare, and they are more vulnerable to job losses subject to inflation, tightening loans from banks, appreciation, or decline of demands from Europe or America for the products they produce… … For those who do return back to the countryside, they find that they are welcome, because of the knowledge skills and networks they have learned in the cities with the assistance of internet, they are able to create more jobs, upgrade local agriculture, and create new business in the uneducated market.”
I was stunned to hear this Chinese woman discussing this fact in a Scotland lecture hall while here I am an American preaching this fact in Peru.
Here, it is looked upon as an honor to be able to move into the city. No one wants to stay in Madrigal, but often the families are in a sense trapped here due to financial restraints. But, if a couple can afford it, they send their children to the city to study (high school or university), which is fine in my opinion. The education system here is pretty darn terrible, so if I had kids I would send them as far away as possible. Yes, it means they lose some of their historical and cultural knowledge, but they can read, and write, do math, think critically, and know how to live healthfully=worth it. Then they can visit the farm on holidays and still appreciate their root, and move back here as adults to raise their families. But there is one key factor missing: These kids never come back to their small communities. Instead, they live in poverty due to low job opportunities in the polluted outskirts of Lima, Piura, or Arequipa.
There is a good friend of mine that raises horses in a village nearby. He is one of the locals I have found to be the most educated and enjoyable to talk to. He knows everything there is to know about local farming, raising horses, and the land here in general. Someone I respect greatly. The key is, he came back. Now, he runs the most successful horseback riding tourism company in the entire canyon.
While riding horses one day he was bragging about his kids to us because we had inquired. We only knew his youngest, who is small, smart, and respectful (qualities you don’t often find here… ok, well small yes, but smart, not so much, and you have to earn these kids’ respect). He was telling us about how his older kids studied and now lived in the city, to which I reamed him. I went on a rant about how they have to come back and pointed out how he was so successful due to his education and how the communities here are naturally selecting for the elderly, disabled, and least educated. No wonder they are having decades of trouble advancing as a communal society. He looked at me wide eyed and I think a little shocked. He had always been proud that his adult children were now living and working in the city with good jobs and nice apartments. “Imagine what they could do for Yanque.” I said. His children are on the higher end of the social standard in the cities. It would almost be like sending another me or Peace Corps volunteer to one of these villages. They are professionals. That is how the conversation ended. But, neither of our thoughts ended there.
I was trying to set up a mentoring program, last year, that would bring young professionals to Madrigal and/or other villages in the canyon to no success. Because these young adults are professionals they are busy and can’t afford to commit to taking the time to travel all the way out here regularly. Another factor to the lack of success of the idea was that a Limenian tourist had gone missing in the canyon around that time, and the young professionals were honestly scared of the danger involved in living in the canyon and the scary roads and bus rides, which is completely understandable. It takes someone special to be willing to endanger themselves in this way for the good of someone else (toot toot). Of course there is also the fact that ‘volunteerism’ the word, doesn’t exists in Spanish and is not a part of the culture.
Today, watching Ms. Lan’s lecture about the same phenomenon in China struck me. This means, it is happening every were due to these worldwide urban development trends. What if someone developed an international NGO that simply focused on bringing rural community members’ educated children home? Could that be a successful program?
I want to say that I am an exception, but I think I am a perfect example of that not being successful. I love my family, and miss them all dearly, but I don’t want to live in Ohio. I think they would be the first to tell you my mother, father, brother and I are the black sheep of the family. I like living in communities where people think more like I do, and that wasn’t Ohio. Communities like Ann Arbor, Austin, Portland, Granada, Brighton have citizens with similar goals and understandings to that of my own, and it is comforting and inspiring to be surrounding by them. If my hometown was third world, would I want to risk sacrificing my happiness to be a part of a statistic that could possibly bring future generations higher education and healthier lifestyles?
Maybe.
Maybe not.
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