A Little Rostock in Dakar

One of my friends currently in Rostock, Germany to protest the Group of 8 (G8) meeting describes the police presence there as “the biggest he has ever seen.” While he was on the streets pushing for a new type of global governance and facing the water canons on Saturday, I was in a packed seaside bar watching Senegal’s national soccer team take on Tanzania’s ‘Taifa Stars’ live from Mwanza. The final score was a 1-1 draw, a fitting end to a contest between two most hospitable countries. In the immediate aftermath the din resulting from animated debates over the factors that led the speedy Tanzanians to hold the mighty Lions to just one goal more than drowned out a newsflash that twelve people had died in a stampede following another big match in Northern Zambia.

Escaping to the beach I watched some kids bathe a group of sheep and listened to one person after another as they tried to convince me to buy the beads, paintings or cashews they had on offer. I wondered if any of the young people I saw enjoying their Saturday knew that some of their European contemporaries were at that moment putting their bodies on the line in Germany for the future of peoples and the planet. Later that night I attended an open air, all night party where the fantastic DJ skills and alter ego of a renowned West African cotton expert were on display. As I experienced one of my first truly multicultural moments in Sub-Saharan Africa this year the events at Rostock seemed to be more than a world away. So too did the discussions I witnessed at Wilton Park two weeks ago about the ways and means to build a more equitable global order. Even so, as night turned into day my desire to de-stress remained unfulfilled. After a week of running my “paper writing machine” at full tilt in order to produce a record of the Wilton Park discussion it proved difficult to leave the shop behind. The great tunes and the cool ocean breeze had not put a stop to my worries about the lack of resonance global issues seemed to be having locally.

Fishing off Dakar’s rugged coast with two French expat researchers yesterday these doubts faded. Through a combination of clumsiness and inattention, my line consistently entangled my new friends’ lines, making it more difficult for them to land the barracudas and other large fish they were hooking again and again. The negative ‘externality’ the boat experienced as a direct result of my poor fishing skills and daydreams drew my attention to a political parallel. It seemed to me that the articulation of extreme views on the global democracy and justice movement might have a similar effect. For example, the energetic work of thinkers and activists that has helped the movement to regain the momentum it lost after the September 11th terrorist attacks might be tripped up by rants that focus exclusively on the barriers to achieving change. Similarly, voices that encourage a suspension of disbelief in the movement’s beneficence or strength might ensnare it in an excessive utopianism. At the weekend, my thoughts were firmly at the former end of the spectrum. They were imbalanced and lacking what one prominent US-based self-help guru terms the “power of positive thinking.” In the field of International Relations, students are taught to consider ‘Realism’ and ‘Idealism’ as two separate and competing schools of thought. Beyond this limited and somewhat archaic academic debate, it seems to me that the drive for global equality and intergenerational equity can and should embrace both concepts. Far from being a contradiction, equilibrium between the two – a ‘realistic idealism’ – that foregrounds problems, prospects and diverse policy alternatives appears to me to be exceptionally rational.

If it is not already apparent, the need for balance has become the principal theme and preoccupation of my little adventure…and I am really enjoying every minute of it.

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Pictured: Andrew Deak, André Reinach and the spirit of Dr. Tadzio Mueller