Christian charity feeds non-gay African famine victims

When I was in Tanzania, which now seems like eons ago, one of the hot news items in the papers there was from neighboring Uganda, whose government, with valuable assistance from American evangelicals, had passed one of the most virulently anti-gay legislation in the world.  There I was comfortably seated inside the newly constructed Doubletree and having coffee in the morning admiring the scenery when I almost spilled that bloody strong coffee when I read about the death penalty for gays!  If it was that shocking to a straight guy, I could only imagine how absolutely threatened gays felt in Uganda ...

Well, that was then ... and the following is now (from, ahem, America's Finest News Source) about a Colorado-based Christian charity that raises money to feed non-gay famine victims in Sub-Saharan Africa

Christian Charity Raising Money To Feed Non-Gay Famine Victims
Note how this charity "does not discriminate"--helped non-Muslims in Indonesia :)

Ethics in giving to the poor in Africa, and elsewhere ...

Two interesting reads on the same day, from two different perspectives, and both adding to the increasingly loud arguments on why financial aid to the poor, especially in Africa, might be more harm than good--at least in the way we have been doing it.
First, from an NGO field worker/volunteer, Andrew Morgan (ht to you-know-who-you-are for the link):

“I was shocked when I saw my family not digging,” my Ugandan friend Joseph said. “It was the start of the rainy season. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked them when I saw them sitting at my mother’s hut. I asked, ‘Why aren’t you preparing your fields?"
He stared out at the black ribbon of asphalt ahead of us, a narrow road that connects Gulu to the nation’s capital, Kampala. We had a few more hours to go before reaching home, and with a busted radio in the car, words were our only comfort. I waited for him to continue as he dug through the memory.
“You know, they had just returned from life in the camp. For ten years plus they were receiving food from the World Food Program. One of them said to me, 'We are not foolish. We decided not to farm. We are still waiting to meet the right NGO that will help us with food.’ Tssssssk! Can you imagine?”

Yet, despite such ground-level experiences, Morgan writes:

Sure, my money could end up reinforcing negative stereotypes on the ground. And some of it might even be used to line the pockets of a local government official somewhere. But despite this, I made the donation because I still have faith in giving. I am still convinced of its potential, its ability to catalyze opportunity.
I keep this faith even though I don’t take charity at face value anymore; I’m more critical now, and this, I think, is a good thing.

I suppose at an individual level this might be ok.  We make lots of decisions in life that are faith-based.  How much ever those decisions might come across as "irrational," well, those are the individual's decisions.

Now, add up all these individuals, and we get an entire country.  When the country has to decide whether or not it should allocate some of the common money to such causes, then it cannot act merely on faith, can it?  In democratic societies, most resource allocation decisions have to go be justified, and we hope that notorious wastes like the Bridge to Nowhere are in the minority.

Collective resource allocation requires, and rightfully so, evidence-based decisions not faith-based.  Then it is the Dambisa Moyo kind of people that appeal to me, who point out that aid in its old format is a colossal waste..  To add to that growing list is the "Dutch journalist Linda Polman, who draws on decades of experience of reporting from wartorn disaster zones" whose book War Games has been reviewed in Spiked. 

The question Polman wants to raise – and the one she urges aid workers, journalists reporting on aid operations and the governments and individuals who donate money and resources to ask – is if Doing Something is always that good when attempts to do right can go so wrong. War Games suggests that international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) have exacerbated tensions, poured money into the coffers of war lords and rebels, prolonged conflicts and contributed to entrenching an image of the ‘Third World’, particularly Africa, as a basket case for the wealthy nations.

Later, even while bursting a few bubbles in the book, the reviewer writes:

Aid is indeed Big Business today. Since the end of the Cold War, the number of INGOs has mushroomed. In the 1980s, around 40 were active in Cambodian refugee camps set up by the Thai border. Today, by contrast, the ICRC estimates that each major disaster attracts around 1,000 national and international aid organisations. In 2004, some 2,000 organisations descended on Afghanistan.
It is the somewhat luxurious job of journalists to raise tough questions without having to provide any solutions. But considering how willingly journalists generally go along with accounts of war and famine provided by INGOs, and how much they have abandoned their job of investigating, questioning and interrogating the complexities of conflicts, then we should welcome the publication of Polman’s book, or at least parts of it, as an example of when Doing Something is very worthwhile.

I can already imagine the shocked expressions of most of my students when I respond with all these and more ammo to their remarks in favor of more aid.

Ug99 Fungus: big ag problems ahead?

A neat follow-up to my eggplant post, with respect to how important the agricultural battles are going to be:

The enemy is Ug99, a fungus that causes stem rust, a calamitous disease of wheat. Its spores alight on a wheat leaf, then work their way into the flesh of the plant and hijack its metabolism, siphoning off nutrients that would otherwise fatten the grains. The pathogen makes its presence known to humans through crimson pustules on the plant’s stems and leaves. When those pustules burst, millions of spores flare out in search of fresh hosts. The ravaged plant then withers and dies, its grains shriveled into useless pebbles.

On the one hand, the rising population and their affluence will trigger higher demand for food of various types. On the other hand, the possibility of pests causing large-scale problems.  The report at Wired.com continues:

While languishing in the Ugandan highlands, a small population of P. graminis evolved the means to overcome mankind’s most ingenious genetic defenses. This distinct new race of P. graminis, dubbed Ug99 after its country of origin (Uganda) and year of christening (1999), is storming east, working its way through Africa and the Middle East and threatening India and China. More than a billion lives are at stake. “It’s an absolute game-changer,” says Brian Steffenson, a cereal-disease expert at the University of Minnesota who travels to Njoro regularly to observe the enemy in the wild. “The pathogen takes out pretty much everything we have.”

These are the kind of reports that make me dismiss the extraordinary events that Hollywood movies, for instance, portray as our huge dangers.  In contrast, it is such "small" and "old" problems that I worry will cause large-scale havoc on this planet.  It turns out that Yemen is at the nerve center of this problem too:

The fungus is also an efficient traveler: A single hectare of infected wheat releases upwards of 10 billion spores, any one of which can cause the epidemic to spread. The circumstances have to be just right, though — the prevailing winds must blow toward an area of wheat cultivation, and the P. graminis spores must survive the airborne journey.

That is precisely what happened in the case of Ug99. Two years after its initial discovery at Kalengyere, the pathogen drifted into the fields of central Kenya, where it caused major losses and wreaked havoc on thousands of subsistence farms. The pathogen’s next stop was Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest wheat producer, followed by eastern Sudan. (So far, those two countries have escaped major damage thanks largely to dry weather, which tends to hinder.) By 2006, the pathogen had hopped over the Red Sea into Yemen, a disturbing migratory milestone. “I look at Yemen as the gateway into the Middle East, into Asia,” says David Hodson, former chief of Cimmyt’s Geographic Information Systems unit and now with the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, where he tracks global wheat rusts.

East African Community--signs of hope

I think back in India we still have a couple of stamps in our collection that refer to the Kenya-Uganda-Tanzania alliance that later collapsed.  Now, the alliance is regrouping, with Rwanda and Burundi also in the mix.  Good for them, I say.  You--the reader--ought to be happy too.  (editor: what makes you think that this blog actually has readers?  Well, the site traffic data?) 

The note accompanying the photo at the source reads:
Leaders of the Eastern African Community sign the common market treaty

Of course, this will not be a common market when I am there in Tanzania in, oh my freaking life, two weeks!!! 


It was interesting to read in that news item the following quote:

"From 36 million people in the Kenyan market we are moving to 126 million. The impact is going to be great," said Vimal Shah, the chief of a giant Kenyan beverages and food manufacturer.
"We cannot remain an island anymore. The key now is to become competitive."

Vimal Shah! 
How much ever I am familiar with the idea that there are people of Indian origin scattered all over the planet, it continues to amaze me that it is such a global group.  When I was young--a long time ago--a new kid (Belliappa) who joined our school had spent a couple of years in Kenya because his dad was working there.  That might have been the first time I came face-to-face with what was otherwise merely  news reports.  I wonder what that guy is up to now .... 

From Neyveli to America to Tanzania ..... I would not have imagined such a life journey .... awesome!