"Nations are mythical creatures, gaseous, and sometimes poisonous. But they start to solidify when diverse people have moments where aspirations collide."
----Binyavango Wainaina
In the next 1-2 years (or so), I hope to gain perspective on the unwieldy and daunting topic of 3rd world poverty, from a combination of travel experiences, work experiences, and a thorough attempt to abandon my "1st world" perspecetives on what conditions are necessary for "prosperity." In pondering a future in the field of international development, new ideas developed and explored will serve a dual and valuable purpose; to make me more worldly and in touch with humanity (a personal goal) and increase my understanding an effectiveness in any future endeavors in the field. Living for two years in the Peace Corps has certainly been humbling, but there is still a long way to go on this path....
Looking at the future, my eyes and my mind keep veering off to a vast land which has captivated my imaginations as of late...a place where humanity began eons ago, a place that forms the common bond between all of us on this planet....Africa.
A place of most of the development debacles of the last 50 years, place of crushing poverty and breathtaking corruption, of dispair, and, increasingly, of promise. One of the current bright spots, Rwanda, a place racked my genocide only 13 years ago, is highlighted in Nicholas Kristoff's blog to a much better degree than I could ever hope to undertake...(www.nytimes.com/ontheroad)...a very interesting take on matters, if you have a minute.
However, for every bright spot in Africa, there is also much trouble. At a recent Harvard commencement speech, Bill Gates summed things up pointingly..."We (he and Paul Allen) had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them....but it did not."
Where is this priority? This assumption stretches to the suffering and plight of billions of people, children and their parents, in this world, in the year 2007. Where is the priority, where is the concern, where is the simple dissemination of information? Why are we more concerned with celebrity gossip and sports cars? These things are hard for me to understand. Have we been so callosed by the debacle that is Iraq that we have no more room for dispair?
Let's look, for instance, at the Democratic Republic of Congo (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cg.html).
This is a land the size of Western Europe, with only 300 miles of paved roads, no electricity outside of the capital city of Kinshasa, a place where the deadliest war in the world since WW2 has raged for over a decade, with more than 5 million people killed and countless displaced. Most Americans could not locate this country on a world map. Why the indifference? When people begin to care, major things can happen. Where is the DRC's George Clooney? I did notice press lately (worthy press, I might add) on the conflict that has been renewed in the east of the country, detailing a recent spate of killings. However, those killed were a group of mountain gorillas. Where is the press detailing the human suffering? People need to be informed to begin to care. And people need to care to enact any kind of change. We need to remember that we are all born with the same heart, the same lungs, eyes, ears. Yet some struggle even for the most basic level of survival. A great program that has been getting a lot of press lately, which is a worthy capitalist model, if you have a minute..... (www.joinred.com)
Whats the answer? Many people believe they have it. I don't. I do know that handouts do not work in achieving anything lasting; they serve a purpose, but they do not provide any means for progress, merely survival and stagnation. True development and poverty alleviation means giving those, so motivated, the means to help themselves. A bright spot in this field is the area of Microcredit, which has been getting a lot of attention since Muhammad Yunus & Grameen Bank
were awarded the Nobel Prize last year. (www.grameen-info.org) Empowering the rural poor has a lot of potential for a grass root and widespread lifting of living conditions for those so inclined to participate. This is what I will be exploring in the months to come in southern India.
