The Horrors of Africa Should Not Happen Again
It's a rainy Hong Kong day prompted me to stay home and scan my television for any interesting programs. As I only had a handful of free channels on top of my subscription of ESPN, BBC and Star Sports, I had few options and almost half of them are broadcast in Cantonese. I picked BBC because sports channels have been filled with those boring golf tournament coverages.
I found myself watching the horrors of poverty in Africa that triggered the dramatic act dubbed as the biggest concert ever held in history. It was 1984 that the starvation in Ethiopia moved Boomtown Rats vocalist Bob Geldof to appeal to fellow artists in encouraging people to show support by donating funds. In return U2, Spandau Ballet, Madonna, David Bowie, Duran Duran, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Sting and many others performed trans Atlantic and generated millions of dollars in the project called Live Aid.
What I discovered was that there was a time in Europe that crops stored in European Economic Community's Belgium warehouses were rotting while Ethiopians have nothing to eat. Geldof confronted Margaret Thatcher and asked why this is happening. Indeed, poverty is a total human embarrassment when people should not be left starving to death in a world not yet in ultimate need of food that struggle to buy has become a challenge.
What is touching is that one dying little girl who was randomly picked by a Red Cross volunteer grew up to be a lovely lady and even went in front of the crowd during Madonna's performance to remember that momentous event 20 years ago. The Red Cross volunteer would even considered her superhuman effort analogous to the Auschwitz camps of the invading Germans in World War II when prisoners are picked up for execution. In Ethiopia, children had to be picked for medication since there is scarcity of supplies. Weaker children are not picked "because they will eventually die" and the healthiest in the pack becomes the luckiest as well. Too bad.
I also watched the movie "Hotel Rwanda" where I thought Don Cheadle performed an award-winning role as a hotel manager in time of the massive genocide that took place during the last decade of the millenium. As it's also a true story, I now come to realize how greed and indifference can cause destruction of unimaginable proportions. It is believed that about a million men, women and children of Tutsi and Hutu tribes perished in Rwanda in 1994. I was in college at the time tired of hearing the news about the death of thousands in a process called ethnic cleansing. (In a lesser number but of equal importance, the news about US troops killed in suicide bombers, car bombs and ambushes in Iraq is also a boring news but sooner than later I will realize the evils of war)
Why does Africa have to suffer this fate? People there are mostly poor and underprivileged. While the rich and famous are enjoying their fortunes in their luxury yachts in the Caribbean or burning their crisp bills in Las Vegas, these human beings in their think skeletal frame, begging for bread crumbs, almost unable to speak. And as this article is being prepared and as you are reading this blog, people there are dying. Niger and Sudan becomes the latest countries afflicted by this starvation curse. Diseases as cause of their death is an understatement.
It's a world far from being perfect. And I believe it's designed to work that way.
I found myself watching the horrors of poverty in Africa that triggered the dramatic act dubbed as the biggest concert ever held in history. It was 1984 that the starvation in Ethiopia moved Boomtown Rats vocalist Bob Geldof to appeal to fellow artists in encouraging people to show support by donating funds. In return U2, Spandau Ballet, Madonna, David Bowie, Duran Duran, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Sting and many others performed trans Atlantic and generated millions of dollars in the project called Live Aid.
What I discovered was that there was a time in Europe that crops stored in European Economic Community's Belgium warehouses were rotting while Ethiopians have nothing to eat. Geldof confronted Margaret Thatcher and asked why this is happening. Indeed, poverty is a total human embarrassment when people should not be left starving to death in a world not yet in ultimate need of food that struggle to buy has become a challenge.
What is touching is that one dying little girl who was randomly picked by a Red Cross volunteer grew up to be a lovely lady and even went in front of the crowd during Madonna's performance to remember that momentous event 20 years ago. The Red Cross volunteer would even considered her superhuman effort analogous to the Auschwitz camps of the invading Germans in World War II when prisoners are picked up for execution. In Ethiopia, children had to be picked for medication since there is scarcity of supplies. Weaker children are not picked "because they will eventually die" and the healthiest in the pack becomes the luckiest as well. Too bad.
I also watched the movie "Hotel Rwanda" where I thought Don Cheadle performed an award-winning role as a hotel manager in time of the massive genocide that took place during the last decade of the millenium. As it's also a true story, I now come to realize how greed and indifference can cause destruction of unimaginable proportions. It is believed that about a million men, women and children of Tutsi and Hutu tribes perished in Rwanda in 1994. I was in college at the time tired of hearing the news about the death of thousands in a process called ethnic cleansing. (In a lesser number but of equal importance, the news about US troops killed in suicide bombers, car bombs and ambushes in Iraq is also a boring news but sooner than later I will realize the evils of war)
Why does Africa have to suffer this fate? People there are mostly poor and underprivileged. While the rich and famous are enjoying their fortunes in their luxury yachts in the Caribbean or burning their crisp bills in Las Vegas, these human beings in their think skeletal frame, begging for bread crumbs, almost unable to speak. And as this article is being prepared and as you are reading this blog, people there are dying. Niger and Sudan becomes the latest countries afflicted by this starvation curse. Diseases as cause of their death is an understatement.
It's a world far from being perfect. And I believe it's designed to work that way.
posted by Unknown at
8:43 PM
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