Tumblr is going to kill me in the end

Polish sculptor Malgorzata Chodakowska creates exquisitely beautiful and dynamic sculptures of bronze and wood that each feature water flowing from their limbs, waists, hair, or clothing. One figure features water flowing up from her shoulder blades like angel’s wings:

Watch this video to see Chodakowska’s beautiful and energetic water fountain sculptures in motion:

If there’s a thing where I noticed a big cultural difference between me and him is what we laugh about. Norwegians are much less politically correct than we are in Italy. They laugh about everything. And while I can understand that that can be a good thing so as to put everyone on the same level, sometimes I really don’t get it :P

For example, every time we listen to Jan Egeland by Ylvis and the sentence “he breaks down just like a homo” comes up, I cringe. He laughs a lot. I felt embarassed when I made my gay best friend listen to it and apologized. He laughs like it’s the best line of the entire song. For me it kind of ruins the song. He giggles a lot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn-oemgzlEU

I also notice it when we watch movies or TV shows. Even when we read something together. As an Italian exercise we started reading a comic with Rat-man and I kept laughing my guts out and he would stare at me with blank eyes and face.

Eritrea is one of the most repressive countries on earth, regularly referred to as Africa’s North Korea. Reporters Without Borders ranks it 179th among 179 countries when it comes to freedom of expression, lower than North Korea itself. 

Barely anyone is allowed a mobile phone. You need a permit to host a dinner party. A permit to travel to an adjacent village. Writing down a song or poem on a piece of paper could see you jailed for producing anti-government propaganda.  Even reporters for state-run outlets live in constant fear of arrest. The UN, in a report last year, concluded the population is kept in “a permanent state of anxiety”.

Extra-judicial killings, torture, enforced disappearances and arbitrary arrest are commonplace. There are at least 10,000 political prisoners in jail to silence political dissent (x)

There is mandatory indefinite military conscription from ages 18 through to 55 (in a country where life expectancy is 61) where 1 in 20 of the population currently serve.  The regime keeps the state on a war footing so it can conscript citizens into a form of forced labour, spending more time building homes for officials and officers than defending the country. There is also systematic sexual abuse of women in the military and pregnancies are banned.

One soldier complained about lack of vacation time and was jailed for two years, where he got one meal a day and one shower a month. He said “Hell is better” than Eritrea (x). Prisoners are regularly and systematically beaten, bound and tortured.

It accounts for less than 0.1 per cent of its continent’s people, yet last year there were more Eritreans arriving in Europe than from any other nation apart from refugees escaping war-torn Syria. Every month about 5,000 people flee the repressive nation.