This story comes in from Ambassador Fredrick Vreeland.
Ambassador Frederick Vreeland is a great friend to the Obama campaign. A former US Ambassador to Morocco, and a distinguished career diplomat and CIA officer, Ambassador Vreeland is a life-long Republican (he was even George H.W. Bush's roommate at Yale!) who endorsed Barack Obama early this year, and with Professor Larry Gray of Rome, founded "Republicans Abroad for Obama". Now retired and living in Rome, Ambassador Vreeland still travels frequently to North Africa, and recently sent the following email to Kim Reed, Senior Advisor on Americans Abroad to the Obama Campaign, regarding his encounter with Youssef, a Moroccan who, like millions around the world, yearns for Senator Obama to be elected on Tuesday.
Here is Ambassador Vreeland's story:
Youssef teaches school in a village in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, which he gets to at the end of a six mile hike after taking an hour's bus ride from his home town of Marrakech, Morocco. He spends every weekday in that village but goes home on weekends to Marrakech where he can pick up cash as a guide for the tourists. He told me last weekend what he does with that cash: he saves it to help buy a pump for the village which, although without roads or running water, has recently been attached to the electric power grid. That's how we got onto the subject of Obama for president. Youssef prays that Obama will win, not because it will revolutionize American foreign policy or save the world from the deepening recession, but because it will realize the dreams that his village's school children have for an America whose leadership they can believe in -- and ignite a burst of hope among uncounted millions of other young people around the globe whose life now lacks everything, but especially hope. For Youssef that water pump is like an Obama presidency: it will change everything. Now, without an electric pump, the village children never do their homework because their parents need them to work the village's one handpump and then carry the water home in heavy jars. But with an electric pump the houses can be connected to the well in the village square and younger children will do their homework. And that will permit them to go on from primary school to highschool, rather than dropping out at age 11 as they do now. And that in turn will mean some will go on to college, thus opening up the world of well paying jobs and improvement in living standards. Youssef sees this as all connected with Obama, who will bring, in his mind, the same burst of optimism and energy that galvanized Morocco in the Kennedy presidency during his own childhood. And the fact that Obama's father was from a Developing Country will make everyone in what used to be called the Third World feel that we live in One World, with common challenges and realistic ambitions. I left Youssef to go back to his almost inaccessible village school, sharing his prayer that next week his students will be liberated from hopelessness, from living in a blind alley and that an Obama victory will reverberate around the world the way Youssef and his fellow villagers are hoping.
Comments are closed for this post.
