thought for the day

I am sure that the journey through the north African desert will open up many endless discussions among the volunteers. We are still following the trail closely as the ferry crosses over from Spain. I think of my 'mor-far' my grandfather, who went enlisted with his brother in 1939 to join the British corps and they were posted to Egypt in 1941. He came back with a wounded leg. He lost his leg later at home. He used to play the banjo outside the house, and smoke his smoke, drink his drink, and croon as the mood took him, while I came to sense even early that his family resented him for leaving them for so long to endure so much poverty and hardship, his wife with ten children, and coming home broken, busted up, from the broil with Rommel in the desert. No-one spoke of his brother again. But I saw the pictures before they left, they looked so, so ... like me, in uniform, but happy and proud to be themselves. All these years later I am thinking about what he stood up for then and why he went with his brother to a faraway country to oppose tyranny and fascist disctatorship, and I now understand that they went there wih very noble ideals, to protect the world for the children, from the nihilism that threatened to engulf the world. Today w have to stand up again to defend even the basic gains made so long ago. If we don't, well we have so much to lose.
Even now I understand that this convoy to Gaza is an important move, taken by ordinary people to defend the very gains for which our forebears sacrificed themselves, even in the very lands we are rolling through. But we should not get distracted the many potential obstacles, including ideological mirages on our sojourn through the desert. To return to the starting point, we have freely undertaken it, without any compulsion, and in that already we have asserted ourselves to be free and self-determining, that is to say historical people, doing something that is only possible now at a point in history when our capababilities are only coming nto view, we are at the cusp of this 21st century global movement. We have to keep this in view, because the very slogan Free Gaza raises the question of what do we mean by freedom and from whom and what?
Before I sign off, I remember as a broke and hungry student winding my way up to campus one day when I picked up the student paper, there was an article/interview with Terry Pratchett, and I hope to always remember what I read there that day on the steps because, he said there that if you are aiming for freedom and emancipation of humanity, we should start first by looking at the way in which we opppress other people and creatures. I paraphrase, but you get my drift. Because I think this is a good starting point and guiding principle also, and it helps us to get a long. Good courage to the voyagers. We are together.