The privilege of birth

Lately I have been thinking increasingly about some facts we hardly ever consider: our privilege of birth!

I know this might sound random but think about if for a minute. Don’t you think that much of how your life will be is already decided before you’re even born? I am not saying that all is god-given and that we can not influence our lives or what becomes of us, but still…

My parents celebrated their 60th birthday some weeks ago and we made this huge party. It was a great success and everybody was happy. My parents wanted to “give something back” so we collected some money for the foundation I used to work in Ecuador back in 2005. As a preparation I wrote a little report about my experience, to tell people what it was like. And that made me think. Those children at the foundation are all cerebral handicapped, which means, that during the “process of birth” the brain got no or not enough air and its function is therefore limited (this explanation is really poor, I am sorry for that but I lack deeper knowledge). All of the children at this foundation needed a wheel-chair although some were able to walk at least a little without it. The level of their handicap varies greatly and the foundation therefore “divided” the children into three groups according to their ability. I do not want to go into too much detail here but I might write another post about that later on. It was an incredible experience for me to work with those children and also very rewarding.

However, there was also one thing that made me sad. Those children don’t have a future. Any future, to be more precisely. Unlike Western Europe, Ecuador has no possibility to integrate those children into its labour force. They most probably won’t be able to live an independent life and will live with their parents for all their life. This makes it also more difficult for their parents to work because they need to take care of their child. So “just” because they were born in Ecuador, they will never be able to live an independent life whereas if they had been born here there would be some organisation for them, they could live either alone or with some other handicapped people. Don’t you think that is not fair? What have we done to deserve the luck of being born in Western Europe? And do we at least acknowledge that and are happy about it? I would say most time we don’t. We don’t even think about it. We take all those opportunities for granted. We are so used to such luxury that we do not even recognise it anymore, left alone appreciate it.

But this example is not the only one. I also read a book of a Swiss woman named Lotti Latrous, married to a manager of Nestle. She lived a nice, luxurious life wherever they lived. But one that she wanted more, a meaning for her life and so she started working with children affected by AIDS in Abidjan (Ivory Coast). Some of those children were orphans, other had a dying mother. Slowly she opened up a hospital where they can live together with their mothers, get food and also education. She also runs an information service about AIDS and HIV or other health issues like nutrition and gives out medication (very often for free if people can’t pay). Furthermore there is medical centre where everybody can get a free consultation.

This book is very touching because it’s about somebody who enjoyed luxury and gave it up on purpose in order to “do some good”. “Do some good”, but not in a “I know everything better” way like many other people. I admire her for all she does and I am not sure if I would be strong enough to live her life. It is great to have people just like her and we really need them, currently maybe more than ever. But again, there was this nagging feeling. That somehow this is not right. AIDS can not be cured. At least not today. That is sadly also true for Western Europe. People die from AIDS also in Western Europe. But the WAY the die, and HOW FAST they die, that is a completely different story. And this leads me back to my first remark. The privilege of birth. Those two (quite extreme) stories illustrated hopefully what I mean by this. We can not change our privilege. But we could at least try to live up to it. To think about it and to acknowledge it. To be happy about what we have and to think about people with less privileges. At the very least THINK about them from time to time.

100 years of scouting and more to come

I know it was very quiet lately on my blog. I am sorry for that but there is not much to tell at the moment. I was working until Friday. Now my internship is over and I can enjoy some free time before I go back to University on the 17th. But my days are rather filled up already. There seems to be little time for dolce fa niente. But I am ok with that. It's not that quantity that's important, it's the quality .-).


So today I would like to share with you some thoughts about my oldest passion: Scouting! The youth organisation is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year and it still is very young at heart ;-). Honestly. Scouting was the best part of my life for years after years. I joined when I was about 8 years old and spent every Saturday with it afterwards for more than ten years. Much more actually. But scouting was always more than just a hobby. It is where I met most of my oldest friends and we still love each other. It is where I learnt to cook, to knot, to build up a tent, to light a fire, to pond streams. It is where I first spent time apart from my parents at my first camps, where I first took over responsibility (by being a leader for the girls aged 5 to 12, for the Saturdays or during the camps), where I first got abroad without my parents (for a hike with the bike), where I first “possessed” a leadership role (as well as being a role model for the young ones) and it is my first international experience (in an international camp in Interlaken, Switzerland (2001), Iceland (2002) and Belgium (2003)).


But it is also where I first spent time with 24'000 people (and so far my only time). This was at the national camp of 1994. It was an incredible experience and I still often think about it. This camp will now be „reinvented“, so to speak. Next year there will be another national camp. It might not be as big as the last one but I am sure it will make as big an impression on the participants as it did to me back in 94. So now that you get to hear more and more about that camp I am more and more tempted to take part in it. To enjoy it all for the last time. To give something back to the organisation that formed me and is, at least this is my belief, responsible to a huge amount for making me the person that I am today. I am really tempted. I have not have given in but I might…given a good opportunity I really might. After all it is not that different to being part of AIESEC. There is actually just one difference. AIESEC is run by students for students with the purpose of a career or at least a good preparation for a good career whereas scouting is run by teenagers mostly for kids. I took over my first group at Christmas 94. So I was still very young but I loved it. I just did, what I had to do. I didn’t think too much. I was not thinking of a strategy, there was no year-plan that we worked hard on but many tools which are much simpler but have the same effect. It is really amazing how well it always worked just by enjoying what you did. This is maybe the biggest difference to us doing something as adults. Sometimes we try really hard and put a lot of time in effort in something. But if we would just follow our heart we might even get a better result, without too much thinking and planning.


But maybe I get carried away here . Anyway I just like to thank all those great people out there who made it possible for me to get such a great scouting experience. Thank you B.P. (founder of scouting) for that idea! My childhood would not have been the same without it.


For those of you who have no clue what I am talking about I am sorry. I am sorry, not because you think that I must be crazy, but sorry because you really missed something. And this can not be experienced now. That is gone, forever. All the others who know what I am talking about, smile and enjoy the videos.

Amen ;-)