Two days ago ABC’s Nightline was about the crisis in the central African nation of Niger, where several million people are in danger of starvation—including 800,000 children. I didn’t want to watch the program when it first ran. I didn’t want to see the faces of dying children.
Last night I did. I forced myself to watch the recorded episode, which centered on video reports by the BBC’s Hillary Anderson. I saw starving children covered in sores, too weak to move or even drink water. I saw a family cooking a rat, their only meal of the day; the image of an emaciated child eating a single bite of rat isn’t going to leave me soon. I saw people eating rotting carcasses of cattle that were covered with flies and maggots.
And I saw myself learning the truth about a catastrophe that I had been reluctant to open my eyes to. Along with most of the rest of the world. A United Nations food aid official said that his agency had been warning other countries about the Niger crisis since at least the end of 2004.
Little was done. Now it’s too late to save many people, even though emergency food shipments have begun to be sent (probably not coincidentally, just a few days after BBC and ABC put faces on the heretofore faceless who are starving in Niger).
Nightline told viewers that they could go to the show’s website and find links to aid organizations if they wanted to donate money. That’s great, but after seeing all those images of starving children my more honest emotional reaction was: “That’s bullshit.”
The UN representative was begging for a few million dollars to help the people starving now. He said that a $100 million revolving fund for food aid would save countless lives, enabling the UN to get aid into a country before the crisis became as severe as Niger’s. A billion dollars in such a fund was his wildest dream.
That’s how much money the United States Congress wastes in a couple of lines of a pork barrel bill. That’s how much money this country fritters away every few days in Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans like me shouldn’t have to dig into our checkbooks so that food can be sent to starving children in Africa. We already pay plenty in taxes. If you asked citizens where they’d prefer to have their tax money spent, there’s little doubt that saving starving children would be at the top of the list.
So, what gives? I don’t know. All I know is that it’s horribly easy to ignore human suffering such as that going on in Niger right now. Most of us like to believe that we’re loving, caring, compassionate, spiritual people, but really, we’re not. We love and care for the few who are right around us, but we don’t give a damn about millions of people starving in Africa.
I blame myself for letting children die. And I blame you too. We sit on our hands instead of doing something. However, I don’t blame us nearly as much as I blame those who have the power to truly do something: President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, and all the other politicians and government officials who spout platitudes such as “I respect the culture of life” while letting a child die needlessly somewhere in the world every three seconds.
1…2…3 Die 1…2…3 Die 1…2…3 Die 1…2…3 Die 1…2…3 Die 1…2…3 Die
That was one of the messages of “The Girl in the Café,” an HBO film about—of all things—a romance in the midst of a G-8 summit. The girl gets to go to the summit after meeting an older British bureaucrat. Rather unrealistically, she is able to bluntly and passionately speak her piece about global poverty to high-ranking officials before, entirely realistically, she’s thrown out of the proceedings.
We need more people like her. Real people, not HBO people. People who aren’t afraid to speak up and tell the truth: 800,000 children and several million adults are at risk of starvation in Niger. The world is looking elsewhere, just as I did the evening of the Nightline program, for two simple reasons: (1) we don’t give a damn; (2) it’s too painful to know the truth, because then we’d be confronted with the blunt fact of our don’t-give-a-damnness.
A hundred years from now, hopefully sooner than that, the let-them-die world of 2005 will be looked upon in a fashion akin to how we perceive the let-them-be-slaves world of the American South of 1855. People of the 22nd century will wonder, “How could citizens of that time be so insensitive, so unfeeling?”
I don’t have an answer for them. What I do know is that it sickens me to watch our nation’s President and Congress bend over backwards in a yoga of hypocrisy to try to prolong the suffering of a single brain-dead woman (Terri Schiavo), while turning away from an opportunity to save tens of thousands of human beings who would have a full life ahead of them.
If they weren’t starving.
Dear Brian,
I did not see the show on Niger. I have been following the coverage on BBC's website. At some point I had to turn away for the sake of my own sanity. I see an unbearably thin child and I see my own daughter - I can imagine all too easily what it must be like for their parents, watching their children waste away and not a goddamn thing they can do about it.
And more money isn't going to fix the problem. Like so many catastrophes, it's a complex issue. Politicians and the MSM don't see images of starving children as newsworthy - we've been turning our backs on our own starving people for so long that a whole population on the other side of the planet is hardly an issue.
Genocide by means of neglect.
I want a paradigm shift in this world, and I want it NOW. We have got to stop thinking in such narrow tracks. The children in Niger and Ethopia and Darfur and Rwanda are MY children, they are your children, and they are George Bush's children, too. But it's pretty clear to me that the ruling class here doesn't think that way.
It's our job to protest. It's our job to talk to other people and help them understand, if they can, that issues are global, not just national, and that simple solutions aren't going to work.
And it's our job not to shut our eyes and our hearts, no matter how often we're accused of being overly emotional and therefore irrational. Feeling is not necessarily mutually exclusive to thinking. You can, despite the myth, do both at the same time.
Posted by: Andi Allen | July 29, 2005 at 05:21 AM
Plain and simple: Worry about ourselves (U.S.A)first. We (U.S.A)have enough to worry about. Screw Iraq, Africa, N.Korea; bring home our soldiers to protect us (U.S.A citizens)from those whom want to harm us.
Posted by: Jeff | August 12, 2005 at 12:57 PM
Hi Brian, I totally agree with you. The only way we can help these neglected people is by doing something about their government!
Posted by: Laura | September 29, 2005 at 07:28 PM
All of the problems that have arrisen in Afica are because of other countries. slavery, debt, unfair trade... we caused all of these problems. and we're still causing more.
by sending food to the contenant, we are putting the African farmers out of business. who would buy goods grown near them when they can buy the same goods for half the price? The U.S.A and Europe need to send equipment and emergeny aid, but sending food all year round only does harm in the long run.
everybody in privalidged countries likes to think that they do their best to help people unfortunate enough to be born into these conditions, but how many of us would actually go there for a few months, spend time with the locals, do what they do- without taking along afew of our own luxuries.
people like to be idealistic, but the world is not perfect (and at this rate never will be).
Posted by: Stephanie wilson | October 14, 2005 at 11:17 AM
P.S. i am fourteen years old and have a typically optamistic, teenage veiw of the world... but at least i know that what needs to happen just isn't.
Support a charity. you can donate as much or as little as you want to one of many chariteries:-
Oxfam
Save the children
Unicef
the choices are endless.
make a difference today.
you could help to save a child, a whole family.
reach for the stars and eventually you'll get there.
Posted by: Stephanie wilson | October 14, 2005 at 11:22 AM
I'm a college student in Kansas. That's right. I live in the middle of no where and you know what I think of people who say screw the other nations? I think they are just being heartless. People talk all the time about world peace, but who does anything about it? No. World starvation is just another problem. I agree that this century and those past have the "don't-give-a-damn-'cause it's not me or my family" additude. It is SAD that people are so selfish. To be honest. I am ASHAMED because of people like that when they should really be the ones ashamed. Yes, the U.S. has problems, but who doesn't? This entire PLANET has problems from the richest person to the poorest.
I hate it when people use that as an excuse. So they have problems. BIG deal. There are millions of people who HELP and they have problems too. They somehow manage to scrape up the time, energy and money to GET things done. Too bad there are more people who procrastinate using those lame excuses then those who actually do something. Me, I participate in the 30 hr famine every year. I take time out of my busy schedule to go from door to door out in the country to ask people for donotations for the starving people. I also ring the bell for veterns every x-mas. I'm a FULL TIME college student who has to look after her grandfather, who has chores to do, friends and almost virtually no time to play around most days and SOMEHOW I manage to do my part in helping those in need. Everyone else who opens their mouth to say "I can't because..." is just making excuses.
It seems mankind as a whole is GREAT at making excuses. Reasons to do or not do something. I remember reading about a time when starvation wasn't because someone was poor, but because a whole village was suffering from the crops. Yeah, I'm talking about the times when America didn't even exist. Times where people truly cared for one another and didn't turn away strangers when they asked to work for a simple meal a day and a place to sleep. It's become clear that generation after generation has only gotten worse and worse as we start to become suspicious of others. A person can't even walk by an elementary school anymore without being suspected of being up to something devious. Honestly. What has this world come to where just WALKING in a neighborhood has become almost a crime? Pathetic... pathetic indeed.
Posted by: K. W. | April 26, 2006 at 01:26 PM