Tarnari
2020-10-29 00:13:33
- #1
I stood nearly 30 years ago as a fresh teenager during the great famine in Zimbabwe on a truck with an NGO, distributing sacks of rice flour to villagers. I remember as if it were yesterday how the people looked at me. Me, up on the loading platform as about a 14-year-old, below the people who were truly suffering real(!) hunger. They looked at me as if I were a god. Not that I felt like one. But I could physically feel that these people believed I was saving their lives. Which, broadly speaking, I was. During the 10-day stay, I lived at the brother of the Zimbabwean finance minister’s place. A huge estate with a pool and three Great Danes as guard dogs. We wanted to make a “trip” to neighboring Mozambique but were stopped by militia armed with Kalashnikovs wearing flip-flops at the border. That was too risky even for the NGO’s managing director. What I want to express with this: I have never, never, never in my entire life experienced more extreme misery or more extreme contrasts than back then. That shaped me. Yes, we can all do our little part to make things better. I try to do that every day within my own scope. But the real problems of this world will not change unless others who hold the reins take action. Africa, for example, is a forgotten continent. Forgive my sentimentality at this point. But the whole discussion reminded me of these experiences.I see the dilemma as you do and also have no answer at hand. To really help structurally, we need to reach a broader consensus of sharing. Just continuing to spin the wheel can’t be the answer. What each of us individually accomplishes and contributes is good and yet always just a drop in the bucket. In a few years, we will want and have to discuss this differently.