Letter writing and the holidays

As the holiday season draws closer, we find ourselves retreating further and further away from the all-round craziness. To us, it seems, people are less friendly, more unhappy, quicker to get stressed or snap. For what? A pagan holiday wrapped up in a Christian one? It seems that the more one buys into the media/big business driven holiday BS, the unhappier one is because the promised paradise land of “Christmas” is in reality anything but. Do we celebrate Christmas? No, not really. Andy sarcastically answered a work colleague this week that the reason we don’t celebrate it is because everyday is a holiday! Just a joke in a sense, but not really. Shouldn’t every day be special? Every day is a once in a lifetime day, one we will never get to experience again, one that when it is gone we are one step closer to having this magical experience of our life end. Every day should be celebrated. Let’s not wade through misery and unhappiness every day to live for the one or two holidays a year that we pretend mean something ……

On a different note (if not a lighter one) Andy has spent a lot of time this week participating in the annual Amnesty International Write-a-thon. The Write-a-thon is the world’s largest letter-writing event. Each year in the weeks around International Human Rights Day (December 10), tens of thousands of Write-a-thon participants in more than 30 countries bring concentrated pressure to help key human rights defenders, prisoners of conscience, and other victims of human rights abuses (www.amnestyusa.org/writeathon). Today, we sent out 40 letters, including cases about a Chinese journalist, human rights lawyers in Vietnam, and trade union leaders in Uzbekistan, as well as the high profile case of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate in Myanmar (Burma). We sent letters to the Iranian Ayatollah, Hillary Clinton, the Prime Minister of Vietnam and the Chief of Police in Nepal, as well as letters of support to each of the individuals. One case that was particularly upsetting for us was that of the human rights defender and health adviser Rita Mahato, who has been threatened with death, rape and kidnapping as a result of her work at the Women’s Rehabilitation Center in Nepal, where she helps women in who have suffered acts of violence.

And talking of Nepal, our friends and the clinic are all doing well – Evan spoke to them today. The clinic is now very busy after the recommendation in the newest Lonely Planet guidebook. We are beginning to firm up our plans for our return trip. We’ve also heard from the spinal cord injuries counselor from the hospital, so our friends and colleagues there are still thinking of us.

And we’re still at work on our bigger plans for next year and beyond…. In fact, that’s what we’re doing next!

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“We already have enough darkness! Adding more has no effect …. to light a candle … let this be your life” (K. Viswanathan, founder of Mitraniketan, a center for rural self-reliance, Kerala, India)