I'm a Farmer.

Don’t let the title of this post fool you. I’m not really a farmer.

I was just masquerading as a farmer on a farm that harvests nothing.

I had to head up to country on Saturday to visit my mum for Easter, but me being the silly girl that I often am, decided to rely on my iPhone and Vodafone to get me to this unknown destination.

As soon as I hit Ballarat, my phone lost reception and I had no way to call my mum to ask her for directions. All hope was lost.

I pulled over and got the Sat Nav from the boot, only to discover that the charger was missing and it was flat as a pancake. No prizes for guessing who I think lost the cord.

I decided to wing it, and after driving for 3 hours (knowing it was only meant to take me 1.5 hours maximum) and seeing signs indicating that I was getting closer to Horsham, I panicked, took a mean right turn down some dusty road and prayed that I would get closer to my destination.

I had a full tank of petrol, a slab of water in the boot but also a hangover and CD’s that I was quickly getting sick of.

After driving for another hour, I ended up in a town called Talbot and stopped at the milk bar for directions, and they gave me the happy news that I was only about 10km away from my destination. They drew me directions and I set off with hope. After driving 20km, I started to panic and stopped in the next town at the Police Station, for more directions, only to discover that they were shut. Great going, Victoria Police.

After I flagged down a local who gave me directions to turn back, I sat in my car on the side of the road crying for 20 minutes at the thought of my mum, worried that I had ended up in a ditch somewhere after not showing up nor calling her.

20 minutes later I decided that the time had come to go to someone’s house and hopefully use a phone.

I left my car on the main road, incase the inhabitant decided to kill me, I figured my car would be visible at least and might help the police locate my dismembered body.

I knocked on a door and thankfully a lovely lady helped me out, rang my mum and we found out I was literally only 5 minutes away from them.

Mum came and got me, and it turns out she was in the main town looking for my car, and she was indeed panicking.

So, a 1.5 hour drive took me 5 hours. I’m not usually such a crier, I am the sort of person who thinks running out of petrol is fun as it leads to an adventure, but knowing that mum was already worried about me driving over the Easter break, paired with frustration, was enough to make me lose my shit. 

Anyway, on to hilarious photos of me pretending to be a farmer, cork hat included.

Don’t judge my terrible outfit choices. It was freezing on the farm and I only packed minimal clothing so had to wear it all at once.  I literally have 2 pairs of pants on, 2 tops, 2 cardigans and a hoody on.

Mum walked around the land, whilst I rode the ride on after hearing stories of snakes.

Her one piece of advice whilst we were collecting fire wood? ‘Make sure that the stick does not have a head or a tail’. Great. Believe me, I was looking for movement with every damn step that I took.

I’m just not a country girl.

Whilst going to look at some land nearby, I stopped and took a photo of this cow and then it looked like it was going to bull rush me so I mildly panicked. 

Mum had said that she wanted some trees and seedlings for Easter so I stopped on the way and got her a lemon tree and apricot tree. At least if I ran out of petrol whilst lost I could munch on lemons. 

We had a great weekend of reading, eating, conspiracy theories and ghost stories.

I had to make a dash to Maryborough K-Mart to buy some slippers and warmer clothes.

Don’t get used to seeing me like this.

Today’s manicure consists of China Glaze Jitterbug with an accent nail of China Glaze Lorelai’s Tiara. Perfect for this frosty Melbourne weather.

Yesterdays outfit photos are pretty terrible as the bedroom has shocking lighting and I forgot to take advantage of the bathroom mirror at work.

I was wearing:

Zara Cropped Pants (full length on my short and stumpy legs)

Caroline Morgan Belt

Portmans Top

Zara Blazer (not pictured but you know the one, it’s black)

Tony Bianco wedges.

Embracing pants as I can't be bothered to shave my legs. 

I look extra mini and super shiny in this photo, but I assure you, I am not mini. Shiny perhaps, but not mini. 

It’s been pretty fresh to death here but I still like to eat my lunch outside in the fresh air, so have to struggle through the bone chilling wind that whips around.

I need to take some more skin photos to show the results of my peels at Miss Fox because my skin is looking pretty good!!! 

I know I have mentioned this lip balm before, but now I have to grumble about it.

What is the deal with lip balms which grow a skin over the top within a day of non use?! Seriously. I have to peel off the gross hard skin, wasting a crap load of the lip balm in the mean time, and get to the fresh gooey stuff.

If you are reading this, Figs & Rouge, this is really, very annoying. 

In other news, my Kony 2012 bracelet arrived. I actually have zero intentions of wearing something that will make it look like I am associated with kabbalah but bought it with good intentions of donating a little bit of cash.

Seems like everyone has forgotten about Kony.

I’m eating my Lite n Easy dinner for lunch instead today as I have boxing and need the extra energy. 

I’m not sticking to Lite n Easy religiously, as I am not doing it for weight loss, only for convenience, but am still pretty happy with it. Except for the fruit. It sucks. 

Thanks for all the entries in The Makeup Box Shop give away so far, was shocked to discover that it would get over 200 entries within 24 hours! Amazing.

The Husband is still in America, and I have been slowly compiling lists of things for him to bring me back, but at the moment it only consists of mascara and nail polish, oh yeah and glittery toothpaste for Ashleigh-Rose.

I’ve been scouring the usual websites, Macys etc, for things that I might like (looking for wedge sandals and general fashion items etc) but so far no bueno. I mean, there are things that I want, but it would probably be easier for me to just buy them on-line rather than send him out to forage for them..

I’ll just be happy when he comes back safe and sound, and if he remembers to bring me the hotel shower caps, that is an added bonus. 

KONY - What are your thoughts?

If you are a person, who can read, and is not deaf, I am going to assume that you have heard about Joseph Kony in the last 24 hours. 

I didn't know about it until I woke up this morning to a text message from my friend Laura, asking me to watch the video and possibly blog my opinions on it. 

Just warning you, this is a long post and I might ramble a lot. I have a lot that I want to say, I just don't know how to say it. 

I am not sure what my thoughts are on the matter. 

I watched the video and had tears. It moved me. It was meant to move me. 

I bought a bracelet ($10 plus $20 shipping). 

Do I think this will help? I doubt it. I hope so, but I doubt it.

Do I think that this movement will help Kony be captured, and put a stop to this madness? I don't know what to think. I'm not telling you what to believe either.

Do I know what will help, what will stop this? No, of course I don't. 

Do I know all the facts about Joseph Kony? No, of course not. I just know what I have seen and researched all day about. 

Does it make me sick? Damn straight. I am appalled that Kony has been able to get away with what he has done to so many Ugandan people. 

The worst? This stuff goes unnoticed for years and then one day, a clever film that makes people want to actually do something goes viral via social media. It works. The video has over 21,000,000 views at the time of writing this blog post. I really hope it works. Nobody deserves this treatment in the year of 2012.

But, what about all of the other insanity that goes unnoticed in the world?! There is just so much of it. 

You can watch the video here. It is very good. 

Remember, this video only went live 3 days ago. Wow. 

We like to think that we can help, it makes us feel like we are doing something.  It makes us feel like we can change the world. Can we? I damn well hope so.

Just a quick search of Twitter and Instagram shows the following:

It's been trending all day. 

P.S - Happy International Women's Day. Go women!! We rock!!!

Instagram images tagged with #kony. Not counting images that are not tagged.

My Facebook feed is full of STOP KONY, KONY THE MOTHER FU$%ER IS GOING DOWN, KONY2012 etc etc.  I like that people care. I hope people continue to care. Better than the standard passive aggressive or often generally stupid facebook status' I guess. 

I also hope that people research this, and other charities. 

Of course everyone wants to put a stop to this stuff. Who wouldn't? It's disgusting. These are human beings being treated like nothing. 

When my mum was in Kenya volunteering, the things that she saw, happening in a government regulated orphanage, is enough to make anyone bring up their dinner. This stuff is not rare, and that is the worst part of it. 

I know that there are people who are saying "don't give in to this shit" etc etc, but everyone should make up their own mind.

I hope this blog post doesn't sound like I am trying to sway anybody on anything. 

Obviously, I want Kony caught. I want for there to be nobody to step into his place and continue running the Lord's Resistance Army. I want these kids safe, and leading a normal life. On the other hand, I also don't know whether this will make a change. 8 hours of reading up on the matter is not enough, I don't know much about charity to begin with unfortunately. 

I wanted to share this article with you, it is written by Simon Allison, a collegue of my brother Greg who works at The Daily Maverick,  the newspaper in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Kony 2012: Lord help us, because this campaign won't help anyone

So everyone now knows who Joseph Kony is. Great, I’m sure he’s shivering in his combat boots, if he’s even been able to watch the video that is launching him to terrorist superstardom (do they have 3G in the bush?). It’s just a pity that at best the campaign will achieve nothing, and at worst it’s got the potential to do a lot of damage in a very fragile part of the world.

I’ve been playing the “who’s the biggest terrorist” game for years. It’s particularly fun with Americans, and the most fun with American Christians. You can see their mind going through the options – Saddam, Osama, the Taliban? They’re not sure which one, but they know it’s one of those Arab Muslim types.

Except it’s not. This is the fun part – introducing them to Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army, and watching the realisation dawn that there are people who do bad things in the name of Christianity too, and they’re worse than the Muslims. If the world was just, the War on Terror would be fought in Central Africa, and everyone wearing a crucifix targeted by the overzealous officials at US airports.

But this game’s not going to be fun anymore. As of Tuesday morning, Joseph Kony has finally entered the consciousness (and the conscience) of the western world, thanks to a slick piece of viral marketing from the Invisible Children campaign. If you have any social media presence whatsoever you’ll know what I’m talking about: the over 4-million YouTube views of the Kony 2012 video, the “shares” on Facebook from even your most apolitical friends, the six Kony-related hashtags trending in Twitter’s worldwide Top 10. Finally, Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army have gone mainstream.

And they’ve earned it. There is some debate about the figures, so let’s keep it general, but the LRA have done some terrible things. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by their misdeeds, whether through killings, child conscription, sex slavery, rape, maiming and displacement. Al-Qaeda can only dream of this kind of influence. There’s some evil stuff going on in central Africa, and it needs to stop.

Step forward Invisible Children Inc., self-appointed saviours of central Africa’s children. Even their name is problematic. The 'Inc.' bit at the end implies a company, which they’re not. But for a non-profit they do have a very shiny headquarters and an impressive fleet of branded vehicles, judging by what we saw in the video, and an unimpressive record when it comes to making your donations count – only 32% of the money they receive goes to direct services in Uganda, with the rest being spent on film production, staff salaries, and that shiny headquarters.

And then there’s the name’s main bit – Invisible Children. As the old adage goes, if a tree falls in the forest and no Americans hear it, does it make a noise? I might have messed that up slightly, although it does seem an appropriate mistake in this case. I’ll rephrase: if a Ugandan child dies, and Americans don’t know about it, does that make that child invisible? Of course not. In Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and both Sudans, people know exactly who Joseph Kony is, and what he’s doing to their children. And believe it or not, people and NGOs and traditional structures (and governments, although this is more problematic) within these affected communities have been doing whatever they can to stop him.

But what’s in a name? It’s just a label, and if it packs a punch of emotion then all the better for it. Let’s move on to the Kony 2012video itself, and the campaign that it’s driving. The goal? To make Joseph Kony famous and thereby stop him. The method? Explain why Kony is a “baddie” and why Invisible Children Inc. is a “goodie” to a cute white five-year-old boy (a cunning strategy this: let’s face it, the internet loves cute children, and age five is the intellectual level of too many social media users).

The solution? I’m still a bit fuzzy on this one, but the basic idea is to get everyone to write to their favourite politicians and celebrities, creating such a buzz around the issue that it becomes impossible to ignore. Personally, I can’t wait for Justin Bieber’s take on central African politics. This then forces American politicians to keep their military presence in LRA-affected areas (not a huge ask given that there’s only 100 of them there, and there’s been no sign that they’re likely to be removed anytime soon, especially given they only arrived in October). Although not specified, there’s a definite subtext that America should get even more involved. And then the American troops will somehow get Joseph Kony arrested by the end of 2012, despite the previous failures of everyone else, including an American-led mission, who has tried to do exactly that (once Kony was in the bath when the Ugandan army turned up and he still managed to escape).

But this 2012 deadline is important. At the end of 2012, something happens, and it just might be a game-changer. The Kony 2012 video expires. I don’t know what that means either (perhaps it will collapse under the sheer weight of its self-righteousness), but we were told it would happen right in the beginning of the video and judging by the dramatic videography it’s not a good thing. So the pressure’s on: get Kony now, or else people might take off those stylish red wristbands that you get if you make a donation to the Invisible Children campaign.

I wonder how Kony’s feeling about all this sudden attention? They probably don’t have good 3G signal out in the bush where he’s mean to be hiding, but word will get through that there are college students all over western universities calling for his downfall. As one astute observer commented on YouTube: “I bet Kony is shitting bricks after he saw this video, the comments and the? views.”

Apologies if I seem a little disgruntled. Surely any awareness of what Kony and the LRA are doing is good? Surely the more that people know, the more they can do? And it can’t cause any harm, can it?

Here’s the thing. The LRA is an incredibly complex issue. By simplifying down to a case of “Goodies versus Baddies” the Invisible Children campaign risks undermining the very real progress that is being made agains the LRA. Also released on Tuesday, in a report completely ignored by social media, a spokesman for the UN High Commission for Refugees said that a recent spate of LRA attacks were “the last gasp of a dying organisation that's still trying to make a statement,” adding that there were only about 200 LRA fighters left. Progress is being made. There’s even a chance that Kony will be caught or killed by the end of 2012 – but this will have nothing to do with a YouTube video, however slick it is.

And in the rush to simplify things to the level of a five-year-old, the creators skimmed over a few relevant facts. Most important is that few political actors involved in that part of the world are innocent. The Ugandan army – the people that Invisible Children want the USA to support – have been accused of gross human rights violations on northern Uganda’s civilian population under the pretext of the fighting the LRA. These include rape, torture, summary executions and child recruitment. And Uganda’s government hasn’t been much better. In a bitter irony, one of only two Ugandan politicians featured in the Kony 2012 video is a man named Santo Okot Lapolo, a district commissioner with a shady history. Most recently, he’s being investigated on corruption charges, accused of diverting for his own benefit 1,700 pieces of iron sheet intended for northern Ugandans displaced by the LRA. This is the man who wants to “rescue our children”, according to the video.

The other politician interviewed also has an interesting take on this issue. Norbert Mao is the leader of a Ugandan opposition party. He was also instrumental in establishing an amnesty deal for former LRA fighters, a solution that has proved remarkably effective in allowing LRA members to return to normal society. This wasn’t mentioned in the video because it requires a little nuance to understand that the men who fight for the LRA and commit these atrocities are themselves victims, many of them having been recruited as child soldiers and brainwashed from an early age.

Ultimately, the Kony 2012 campaign is based on a false premise: that increased American involvement in the issue will solve it. This might sound completely reasonable to starry-eyed Americans, but here in the real world we know that increased American involvement almost never leads to increased peace and stability. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The Invisible Children organisation reminds me a little bit of a certain Julius Malema. Loud, charismatic and with a popular touch, both can attribute their success to raising awareness around issues that aren’t being spoken about elsewhere – Invisible Children on Kony and the LRA, Malema on land rights, wealth distribution, etc. These are all important issues. But raising issues is the easy part, requiring little more than good marketing. Solving the issues is harder. Misguided solutions have the potential to make problems worse, and calling for the American military to get more involved in in the middle of our continent is likely to make things much worse indeed. Even Julius wouldn’t approve of that. 

You should also read:

Invisible Children | Kony 2012  (Official website)

Visible Children Tumblr  (Blog getting a lot of attention for bringing to attention the negatives)

News.com.au article (Quick run down)

So, sorry if you read through this whole post and don't know what it is that I am getting at. 

You probably want your 15 minutes back.

I know that I don't know much about charity organisations and world affairs which is why I am writing this blog post. I want to know your opinion. The good and the bad.