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I noticed that some of the searches bringing people to this blog are (in no particular order):

famine in africa, africa famine, child of africa, images famine africa

I don’t know who’s searching these terms but a couple of them are disturbing for reasons inherent in the search terms themselves. You can infer why that is later on.

But as far as where I left off on my last entry…Well, I think it’s sunk in.

Here we go.

How do you separate the problem from the solution? International development is the new foreign policy and foreign policy is what impacts governments and their people. However, if we’re going to place strict conditions (beyond accountability measures) on the help/aid that provided, and threaten to withdraw aid because the government receiving it doesn’t fit the government that the aid has been prescribed for, then how much good are we doing? We would argue in fact that a lot of damage is being done.

Then there’s the individual. There’s a certain level of guilt associated with what I do and aspire to do. If in global health, for example, the goal is to put ourselves out of work, why is it that in many of the projects we work on we pessimistically anticipate that we’ll be working on some of the most basic issues (dealing with disparities and inequalities) in 20, 30, 40, 60 years. This can’t be healthy. It’s as if the same sub-par ideas are being copied and dragged out for even longer amounts of time.

I had an interesting chat with a friend.  Another ‘neo-colonialist’ global health do-gooder as it were. How can you feel good about working in a system that you know is broken and that, in so many ways, perpetuates the problems? I mean, I think I’m working in it to change it, but how do I look past the possibility that I may be doing more harm?

I think Africa has become a kind of caricature.

I’m so touched by this famine because in many ways I’m inherently connected to it. Not because I’m stubbornly committed to the issues that flood many other parts of that beautiful continent, not because I was born on that amazing continent, but because I can’t imagine voluntarily detaching myself from a place that needs conscious involvement in it’s development.

I’m not imagining it’s permanent state of caricature-ness (for lack of a better word). It’s the ‘National Geographic’ syndrome. And yes NG syndrome is real. I know it’s real because I’ve had people close to me tell me that they have no interest in going to Africa, in seeing it, in feeling it. When asked why the best answer given is “I don’t know.” I guess I can’t really blame them, Africa’s paradises are rarely depicted in the media. Even if they were, how can you know Africa from afar? Because you know an African? Because you read news about Africa? It’s virtually impossible. No. It is impossible. While it helps it’s not the same. It’s no different from the person that views a documentary about London and has never been. They may know the history they’ve read in books or, heaven forbid, have seen in a film, but if they’ve never been then they can’t ever really know what it’s like. How it smells, and the sounds of the tube and the traffic, how the dawn rises and the sun sets, or the seasons and how they affect people’s moods.  You can’t really know what the man in the village feels if you haven’t gone to sit and talk with him about his feelings.

Everyone’s mindset should be on how we can have an impact that extends beyond merely good intentions. In the same way that money can’t by love or friendships, you can’t solve true problems by throwing a pile of money at them. Obviously. For example, the world is watching now as food shipments being thrown at the Horn of Africa are being stolen. And why are they being stolen? Because there’s a real problem of lawlessness. A problem that requires more than just money. A problem that requires conscious involvement. I’m not saying that funding is unnecessary. It certainly is. The problem I find with it is that not enough people, the right people, seem to be thinking ahead. To ensure that this doesn’t happen yet again. Rather than finding the causes and using the information to affect change, they’ve found some causes and this has become a type of blame game. And I too could keep ranting on about this but I am also a firm believer in the doctrine that talk is cheap. As I forge ahead with my personal goals – which I really do hope and anticipate will lead me in the path of doing something about these issues – I’m going to donate a bit more money and send some emails to some of the ‘right people.’ As soon as I figure out exactly what that means, and who they are.

What are you going to do?

In the meantime, I wonder how many people know where Somalia is, or was. I mean, how many can point out the affected region on a map?

Projections. On a map.

And a map with more detail…Somalia Food Security Outcomes.

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