Change the World

When I say I want to change the world and when my roommate Sibu from South Africa says she wants to change the world we probably mean different things. Sibu told me that in her batch at her old school in South Africa she knows of 6 girls that are pregnant out of 200 in her batch. These girls are 16 or 17 years old. During my high school time in Germany I haven’t heard of anyone in my entire school who fell pregnant before graduation. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but when it happened, no one talked or knew about it. It’s possible that I am mistaken to generalize from this and to say that early pregnancy is not an issue in Germany at all or even just in my city. That there were no pregnancy-cases in the past years at my school may depend on the fact, that it is a school in a relatively rich area of the city and the students who visit this school have a certain social background that may prevent them from early pregnancy, but I think I can still say that early pregnancy is in any case by no means a problem of the same significance as it seems to be in South Africa. Sibu told me that her school has even a good reputation like my school back home has but there are still 6 girls out of 200 in her batch who are pregnant. And there might be more who had abortions. I cannot imagine this. 21.5% of South Africa’s population of the age 15 to 49 years is HIV positive. AIDS is close to Sibu but so far away from me. This is true for more than just the AIDS-issue. Also our awareness of for example poverty is different. Germany is a country that has the time to have “luxury problems” such as the clash of the climate change problems and its car industry. When people go demonstrating they demonstrate for minimum wages and against atomic waste. I am not saying that climate change is an insignificant issue or that it is a waste of time to demonstrate against atomic waste. I think these are good and important reasons for demonstrating, but I do think that when people have the time to go for such issues on the streets it shows that there is no need anymore to fight for ones basic rights for example.

Sibu’s perception of the world’s problems must be so different from mine. That has for sure also an impact on our perception of the UWC movement. People come here from so many different backgrounds. I sometimes can still not believe it.