That is weird, it is showing up fine for me.

Maybe I embedded it wrong? The URL is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5BxymuiAxQ&e

“We Are The World”
By George Mtonga

After running statistical regression on what seems to be an endless project for my thesis at Hunter College, I sat down in my computer room and was just tired and was about to go to sleep on the chair at school. But I remembered why not entertain myself with YOUTUBE and watch a few videos. I started watching family guy and started laughing like crazy, and then I watched, please don’t repeat this, Tina Turner—I have no idea how I went there and then I remembered a song that always reminds me of my childhood; “We are the World” by Michael Jackson and some of the most prominent singers in America at the time the song was made. You might ask why I’m even writing about this since I often like writing about business, money and politics.

Well, I’m writing because I have often stumbled upon a few realities in my own quest for what I think is right or wrong and often times it is the realization of what has to be done which then leads me to feel small. I look at my mother in Harlem and she needs my help, I look at my brothers in Africa and they need my help, and I also look at the children at my primary school with no books, no teachers, and no parents and they all seem to need my help. I remember the days I walked miles to go to school in the morning with my grandmother waking up at 6 am to make tea, as I rushed to school hoping that one day I will become somebody--- hoping that one day I will be that Managing Director at the Bank and will make my family proud. As I watched the song I felt lonely, all my childhood friends have died from violence, my high school sweetheart turned into something I couldn’t even recognize , my family destroyed by some of the ravaging disease that i spend sometime home looking at the graves. I walked through my village, this past December seeing the last fragments of what used to be my wonderful oasis; a place that was so vast to me and full of adventure yet had become so tiny as I looked over people who on average where 5 feet. I saw a new pub that just opened in the village with “nice music” and is frequented by the young girls in my village. One girl gets my hand and asks “ Ba George, tiene” = “ George let’s go!” It seemed as if the worries I had, they couldn’t share them. I felt even more alone, because when I spoke about the future and what my village was doing to make sure that kids get the chance like I have had, they all just looked at me and wondered where I was coming from.

I think,” We are the world” is something that should apply to us. I have often been told by my professor, that I will travel a long journey and my family will not understand me. I went to Africa with the anticipation of seeing what I can do with all the knowledge that I had gained and was excited, but when I came back home I was just angry with the whole world. I have often taken on obstacles tenaciously not because I’m absurdly ambitious but because I have come to realize that at one point some of these things will have to change with me! Obviously, feeling small is always a psychological threat that most of us driven by the idealism of the ancients feel. Sometimes, I ask myself: is it the greed for glory that drives me to one day change my village? Is it because my mother suffered the shame of having a child when she was 16 and out of wedlock and was shunned by the same village I’m trying to help? What exactly I’m I trying to prove, I ask myself? I think, I will never really fix that and like many of us in the progressive movement, we will not entirely fix those personal problems that linger in our hearts. However, I wouldn’t consider myself as fighting for a noble cause because those come and go; but I would consider myself as attempting to prevent that feeling a young child, who looks at the world so imaginatively would suffer from: the feeling of being lonely! As an adult, I have starbucks( lolol…dark coffee please!!)!!! But as a young boy all I had was the world around me. That is why I think, as adults we should listen to songs like “ We are the World” or just take time watch the video " I love the world" to understand that we owe it to the many young people coming up whose only hope are in what our eyes have seen and as a result will prevent. This is why no matter how far I go into the world, I always hold on to those things that remind me of who I am!! I know I will go deep into the world with my idealism dwindling with time, but I live these letters not as a blogger but in an effort to trace my steps back to a place i know. i think it is in Hensel and Gretel that when they went into the forest they left pieces of bread so that they can never get lost (might be wrong haven't watched them in a long time)lololol! These, I guess, are my pieces of bread so that I cane retarce myself back, and hopefully nohing will eat them up so that I can be lost. I think I may not even build a room at my old primary school in my village, I may not even help that one kid who dreams of becoming a doctor but the greatest thing is that even when I look at the essay that got me into college I wrote about the same thing I'm writing about—so I guess I can still retrace my steps and reassure myself that I’m not lost. I know I can get that kid who is surrounded by everything that tells him that he can never amount to anything to understand that I have seen all that with my eyes, and what I choose to do with those eyes is not to look at what I have looked at, but to shift them and look at something beautiful and pull the child.

----In the realm of the intellectuals, enthusiasm is what moves us, in the real world persistence is what wins, in the progressive movement it is inspiration! The first two can easily be created, it is the last that when gone is hard to regain; we should always protect it with.

loved the video!!

George N Mtonga
M'cNair Fellow/ CUNY PIPELINE FELLOW
HUNTER 2008 ( GO 2008!!!! WE ROCK!!!!)
Analyst
Goldman Sachs