Thanks to Susan Burger for posts which, while very disturbing, are
informative and enlightening.  It is always worse when you know the people
behind the headlines.  I also worry about what happens when the headlines
start being about some other catastrophe, because the international
attention dwindles and finally just stops, while the dying continues.
Particularly in Africa, the Northern/Western press seem unable to keep more
than one story going at a time, so that numerous other crises on that same
continent recede into the invisible background while the one
crisis-of-the-week is where the action is.
That's why it is so essential, as Susan says, to channel help through
organizations that have a plan for the duration, not just a stop-gap crisis
measure while the press is there.  I will go one step further and say that
if more countries in the part of the world where overeating is the big
problem would dedicate just one percent of their GNP to real development
aid, it would be a lot easier for the agencies on the ground to get their
work done.  Most of us have one thing and one thing only, between our lives
and the lives of the mothers in Niger, and that thing is our sheer dumb luck
not to have been born in rural Niger.  With such good fortune comes
obligations, as I see it (heaviliy inspired by Andrew Carnegie).  Some
people will consider this a political post, which it is not; it is a
humanistic and an economic one.  That still may offend some subscribers, but
I'm taking the chance anyway.  Sometimes you have to not just think outside
the box, you have to consider the room the box is in, and the building the
room is in, and the city the building is in, as well.
Rachel Myr
Kristiansand, Norway

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