Well the fighting in Kotra has given us our first casualty at Hunar Ghar. A girl called Meenu who was really interested in doing some work with us has decided to cancel her visit to see us because of the fighting. She’s still wants to come, but when the conflict has died down a bit.

For her and her family it is the same as people in England et al hearing of the attacks in Mumbai. In that case people got scared and didn’t want to visit India, in this case Meenu’s family are concerned and don’t want her to visit our school. In both cases the conflict has nothing to do with the rest of the area but the media hype it up and lack of clear information and knowledge of things makes people act in different ways which means that the attacks in India did effect the rest of India where no attacks happened and the conflict in Kotra is effecting people that it has nothing to do with.

In both cases it is not what has happened that causes the most problems but the way people react to events. In such a way terrorism wouldn’t work if people just ignored it. After all far more people die of cancer or heart attacks than terror attacks but millions of people still suck away on cigarettes or tuck into a few too many burgers. It’s not what happens that matters, it is how dramatic it is and how it is portrayed by the media and reacted to by the society. Ultimately though it is us as a society that suffers from giving excessive attention to some things and not enough to others. In the case of all those people that didn’t visit India in the wake of the Mumbai attacks that is then international friendship lost, lost stories that familiarises each culture more with the other. Instead it is replaced by a feeling of uncertainty and caution which only goes to distance people and help themselves justify acting and responding to further negative experiences in negative ways, or to attacking other people. The Hindus justified killing a Muslim because a Muslim killed a Hindu, and visa versa. It was irrelevent if the first death was an accident or not, the social scene in which it occured did not care for such information. G W Bush and his pals justified attacking Iraq as a result of the attacks on new York and Washington. Ther was no Al Qa’ida link, there were no WMDs, there was only a dictator who was no longer playing ball, one who had switched oil trading from dollars to euros. In this situation also the information was irrelevent, it was the dogmatised social perception that over-ruled.

So how we react in such situations is important if were not to propogate problems but fix them. This takes time of course, and personal effort but it seems to me to be something really worth doing. When I first moved into Bakhel with Rob we were told we would be attacked and robbed and maybe shot at with bows and arrows by those ‘backward and violent people’. We went anyway and lo and behold none of that happened an all we’ve had to endure is smiles, friendship some of the most fantastic times I’ve had and cups of sweet tea.