The Children Are Dying
Against the charity scandal that has exploded in my home country (which has resulted in my first rant), another news relating to something more dire has been hovering at the sidelines. A picture of a kid (not looking like a kid, but rather, a little alien with bulging eyes and a protruding stomach) has just stared at me in the face accusingly. Why is no one helping me? Why are you letting me die?
Due to drought and widespread famine, children in Niger are dying like flies. Yet unlike the Asian tsunami that overwhelmed a good part of the world and saw great acts of charity from all walks of life, regardless of race and religion, the world has barely responded to this crisis in Niger. According to an AP article I read today, it said:
“The warnings have been coming for months. The United Nations first appealed for assistance in November and got almost no response. Another appeal for $16 million in March got about $1 million. The latest appeal on May 25 for $30 million has received about $10 million.”
The Asian tsunami raised more than a billion US$. Of course scores of people died there as well, and the calamity was of an unprecendented scale. Still, one wonders where have all the charitable hearts gone to, mine included.
People like me - we live a very comfortable life in a first world country. Poverty seldom stares at me in the face, and when it does, I try to look away. Sometimes, to assuage my guilt, I make a few miserable donations, telling myself that I have done enough charity for this month, this year, etc., and I cannot save the world. Governments should be the ones helping, or Bill Gates have more money than I do and therefore they should help, along with many other excuses. And every second I try to avoid social responsibility, another child dies somewhere.
It is easy to criticise others for being selfish, stuck in an ivory tower, self absorbed. Just like the elite who can tell us US$400k is mere “peanuts”, we as the elite to the Third World are committing similar crimes or worse by ignoring their cries. Here we are constantly whining about the crappy state of our lives, and not having sufficient money to do this and that, there are people who struggle to peel barks off trees to eat as breakfast.
I feel like I am looking at myself in the mirror, and the reflection is not pretty. Worse still I know that after this blog, I may go donate another few dollars to Oxfam or UNICEF (likely to assuage my guilt - AGAIN!), but very soon I would have forgotten the dying children, and continue to live my comparably luxurious life. The very thought is downright callous, but that too, will be brushed aside quite soon. I am so sorry, kids. I am a selfish, heartless bitch.
What can we do as a society? Perhaps, a better tribute to their suffering, besides prayers and money, is that we should be more contented with our lives, and really, really appreciate what we have right now, and thank God for it every single day. Amidst our constant search for more of everything we need to remember that there are people out there who have nothing, and not even their fragile lives. Thank God that somehow, he has chosen to put us here, where we have education, houses, cars, foods, pretty clothes, because I could just have easily been that kid in the picture.
