Gapminder World Graph (Cell phones and teen birth rate)

Graph: Cell Phones (per 100 people) vs. Adolescent fertility rate (births per 1,000 women ages 15-19)

http://graphs.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=6;ti=2006$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=pyj6tScZqmEdIphYUHxcdLg;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=phAwcNAVuyj2ZMli4YTn2Ag;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=8.21;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0XOoBL%5Fn5tAQ;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID0;by=grp$map_x;scale=lin;dataMin=1.453;dataMax=230$map_y;scale=log;dataMin=0;dataMax=172$map_s;sma=49;smi=2.65$cd;bd=0$inds=

The pattern that I see in the graph is that when a country has a greater amount of cell phones per person, there is a smaller adolescent fertility rate per 1,000 women (meaning that there is a smaller percentage of teen births). Also, in 2006, there is a much higher percentage of people who have cell phones around the world, than when compared to 1997. For example, in China, 35% of people had cell phones in 2006, but only 1.1% had them in 1997. In the United States, 20% had cell phones in 1997, and only nine years later in 2006, 77% of people had them. However, while cell phone ownership has sharply increased over the past decade, the adolescent fertility rate has actually decreased. In Chad, a country with one of the highest teen birth rates, in 1997 there were 193 births from adolescent mothers out of every 1,000. In 2006, there were only 169. And in 1997 India, there were 99 births from adolescent mothers per 1,000, whereas in 2006 there were only 63. Across the decade, Sub-Saharan African countries have always remained at the top of the teen birth rate scale and the bottom of the cellphone ownership. Countries in the Americas have generally had higher teen birth rates than most countries (besides countries in Sub-Saharan Africa), yet still remain at the top of the cell-phone ownership scale.

This graph is relevant because it shows how generally the more technology (as well as money for technology) a country has, the more information, education, abortion, and general resources are given out to potential teen mothers about sex. This spread of information could partially be from the help of technology, but also because a country that has more money for technology will be able to provide for more of the things listed above. Also, as a side note,  a factor that could be playing out is that many countries that have more money (and therefore more technology) have different views on and ideologies about teen pregnancy than, say, Sub-Saharan ones.

A possible limitation of these indicators is that in certain countries, having a cell phone is more useful, beneficial, and cheaper than having a landline cell phone. This usually occurs in less developed countries, which are usually the ones with higher teen birth rates. So, hypothetically, there would be a relatively higher cell phone ownership, even though there is also a high teen birth rate.

The Lemon Tree Response #5

This final response will discuss the very end of the book. One passage that stood out to me was when Ghiath Khairi, Bashir’s cousin, is talking about the Palestinian-Israel conflict being somewhat resolved. He says that for the Palestinians to get their land back, they will need “generations and generations…[and] an entire cycle of history.” This is interesting because in class we briefly discussed it. The Palestinian-Israel conflict has no signs of slowing – for now at least. Palestinians refugees who had been forced to move are still alive and angry today, and even people who weren’t alive then are mad. However, it seems as if with the new, younger generation of both Palestinians and Israeli Jews, there seems to be more understanding. I remember seeing a news story once where some sort of company or school set up aseminar for Jewish and Palestinian teenagers to discuss the conflict. At the end of the news story, they interviewed some of the participants who said that they were leaving that day with a completely different view of the conflict – they had seen that the other teenagers (whether that be Israeli or Palestinian) are just like themselves, with the same general hopes and aspirations, just with a different perspective, and they had all become more understanding if each other’s views. This completely supports what Ghiath is saying. I believe that in time, whether it be fifty years or 150, the conflict will become resolved, mostly due to understanding.

The final passage that I have chosen is in fact the final lines of the book. “Perhaps one day, [Bashir] said, he would be back home in al-Ramla, and on that day, he would see the tree for himself” (264). [Note: the tree mentioned here is the new tree, not the original one.] I think that this is a very nice way to end the book. It gives a pleasant feeling of peace and hope. Maybe Bashir seeing the new tree some time in the future is also a metaphor for the hope that the Palestinian and Israeli communities see peace in the future.

The Lemon Tree Response #4

One of the parts in the book that stood out to me was when Dalia describes a memory she has from when she was around seven or eight years old. In front of her house in Ramla there was a star and a crescent made from iron (the symbol of Islam). ” ‘This is not an Arab house,’ she said to herself, and she grasped the delicate crescent and began wrenching it back and forth, back and forth, until it came loose in her hands. She clambered down and threw the crescent away” (115). This part of the book brings up some interesting questions. What makes a house an “Arab” house? Is it the physical design of the building and the furniture inside, or is it who lived there? Obviously there is an Arab-style, so Dalia/Bashir’s house is Arab in that sense. But since Bashir left, is it really still an Arab house in the non-literal way? Or is it a Jewish house, since Dalia’s family moved in there? Can a house really go from Arab to Jewish? I believe that it is both a Jewish house and an Arab house, even though Dalia threw away the star and crescent.

Also, I think that it is important to make a distinction between the words house and home. When Dalia lived there it was certainly a Jewish home and I believe that it was no longer an Arab home, even if it was still an Arab house, both literally and non-literally.

One pages 116-117, one of Dalia’s memories is described, and is another point in the book that stands out for me. In the spring of 1957 at Dalia’s school, one of Dalia’s friends, Jew from Poland, declared that there was a “white group” and a “black group” of Jewish girls. The white group would obviously have come from Europe, and the black group would have obviously come from Asian and Africa. Dalia remembered being disgusted by the idea, as I am. Generally one thinks of young children as being extremely open socially, because they have not yet had enough time to form biases and be influenced that much by the ones around them. So, it surprises me that eight and nine year olds would think so much about race.

The Lemon Tree Response #3

In this response, I am going to discuss two different songs that are mentioned in the book – one song sung by the Jews, and another one sung  by the Palestinians.

The first song is called “Hatikva”, and appears on page 84-85:

“And towards the east/ An eye looks to Zion/ Our hope is not yet lest,/ The hope of two thousand years,/ To be a free people in our land/ The land of Zion and Jerusalem.”

This song sings of  the hope that the Jewish people have – the hope that they’ve had for two thousand years. In this song it states that this hope is not lost now, and it is inferred that it will never be lost. It is interesting that the lyrics say that the Jews are waiting to be “free” people, as if they have never felt free before. To some extent I believe this to be true – the Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years.

The second song  is one sung by Palestinian refugee children before school each day, entitled “Palestine is our country”.

“Our aim is to return/ Death does not frighten us,/ Palestine is ours,/ We shall never forget her./ Another homeland we shall never accept!/ Our Palestine, witness, O God and History/ We promise to shed our blood for you!” (100)

This song has the same general tone as the Jewish song above, although this one seems a little more intense, especially the line about promising to shed blood for Palestine. I find it a little disturbing that children would sing this, but then again, many Western nursery rhymes and fairy tales are also very dark and disturbing, and people generally think nothing of them.

The Lemon Tree Response #2

One line in the Lemon Tree that caught my eye was when Tolan says that a French newspaper called the ship, Exodus, that brought the 4,500 rejected Jews from Israel/Palestine back to Germany a “floating Auschwitz” (46). These two words have so much meaning. This past summer for school reading (for my school in New York) I had to read “Survival in Auschwitz,” the autobiography of an Italian Holocaust survivor who spent about a year in Auschwitz. Obviously, when I read it, I was hit again and again with depressing facts and descriptions about Auschwitz and the Holocaust. To call  that ship a Floating Auschwitz is horrible, yet accurate. Besides the living conditions on the ship, which were probably equal to that of the concentration camps, the author of the newspaper article is basically inferring that because those 4,500 Jews were rejected from Israel, they will all most likely now be forced into the concentration camps – as if by being rejected, the British authorities who turned them down also signed their death sentences. This in itself is depressing – the fact that the British, who were supposedly in support of the Zionist movement, turned down Jews seeking a better future, even though they probably knew what would happen to them.

Another quote that caught my eye was when Tolan writes how “Jews represented about one-third of the population [of Palestine] and owned 7 percent of the land” (49)  While it is sort of expected that the Jewish families wouldn’t immediately become extremely successful in their new foreign homes (which in itself sounds paradoxical), it is surprising that about 66.6% of the population owned a whopping 93%. Also, it is important to think about how the settling of the Jews in Palestine affected Palestinian landowners. In the same paragraph, Tolan states how 80 percent of Palestine’s cultivated citrus and grain plantations would go to the Jewish state. Imagine if the United States, which according to Wikipedia got $817,939 in exports in 2004, lost 80% of that money – a startling $654,341.2. It is surprising to me how little the UN seemed to take into considering Palestine’s economy.

The Lemon Tree Response #1

Right from the very first chapter of The Lemon Tree, I could tell it was going to be a book like no other I had read. I really liked the seamless connection between the history and the narrative. Being able to get first hand views from the people involved in the book, such as Dalia and Bashir, as well as the voice of the author, which is both informal yet sophisticated, allows us to get  riveting accounts of what really happened during the mid-20th century in the Middle East that sticks in our minds.

One such account that stuck in my mind was, on page 28, ” ‘Jewish Residence’ signs were required on every Jewish home. Jews were subject to strict curfews and were no longer permitted to be members of political parties or professional associations. Jews could not…enter air raid shelters, or own cars, telephones, or radios.” I obviously know about the atrocities relating to the Jews during the Holocaust, but I had no idea about how much the German and Bulgarian governments controlled the Jews’ lives (before they went to the concentration camps). It was really surprising to me that Jews could not even own something as simple and  basic as a telephone. This quote shows just how paranoid that the nazis and various governments really were. It’s both interesting and funny how the German and Bulgarian, along with other, governments believed themselves to be might, strong, and powerful, yet they were too afraid to allow any Jews, who they believed to be inferior, to own cars.

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