Posted on 07/30/2005 1:34:58 PM PDT by bill1952
DAKAR, Senegal (AP) - In Niger, a desert country twice the size of Texas, most of the 11 million people live on a dollar a day.
Forty percent of children are underfed, and one out of four dies before turning 5
. And that's when things are normal.
Throw in a plague of locusts, and a familiar spectacle emerges: skeletal babies, distended bellies, people too famished to brush the flies from their faces.
To the aid workers charged with saving the dying, the immediate challenge is to raise relief money and get supplies to the stricken areas.
They leave it to the economists and politicians to come up with a lasting remedy.
One such economist is James Shikwati. He blames foreign aid.
``When aid money keeps coming, all our policy-makers do is strategize on how to get more,'' said the Kenya-based director of the Inter Region Economic Network, an African think tank.
``They forget about getting their own people working to solve these very basic problems. In Africa, we look to outsiders to solve our problems, making the victim not take responsibility to change.''
-snip
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Just think. If Atlas Shrugged was required reading in public schools of the world, none of these problems would exist.
Yeah, I never understood that. Most women will stop having a period after dropping to a certain weight, if these are walking skeletins how are they still having sex and recreating.. and how can a starving mothers body even produce a baby with no nutrition to make it grow...? I'm confused.
Yes, that is exactly the problem. Their women are essentially always pregnant from puberty onwards, and the only checks on their population are starvation and disease. Western aid does not make them any less poor, or any less hungry - it makes more of them the same level of poor and hungry.
The domestic economy and resources that keep 11.5 million Nigeriens on the verge of starvation would keep half that many living almost decently - but not while their women squirt out 6.75 children a piece.
In Kenya, a white man will be approached by anyone - waiters, bellboys, and "friends" - and asked for financial assistance.
Most claim they need ongoing help to get through the university. It doesn't take long before you come to the conclusion that everyone simply wants a free ride.
Since the un-derf-ed are children, they must be un-derag-ed, no?
Every African missionary I've talked to in the last fifteen years is somewhat discouraged. They don't discuss it much, but going there reveals the problem.
It is a cultural plague. Here in the West, we have age-old ideas about what it means to be a real man - provider, protector, etc.
In parts of Africa, a "real" man has five wives, countless children, and NO job or responsibility.
Work? That was for suckers!
We took what we wanted, and everyone loved us."
Why Africa goes hungry: http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050731/why_africa_goes_hungry.html?.v=3
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