Stopped at the Costco with my bro the other night for some cheap hot dogs. We ran inside to browse a bit first, and Ian picked up The Economist, which had Jacob Zuma, the leading candidate for the presidency of South Africa, on the cover with the headline “Africa’s Next Big Man: Trusting Jacob Zuma.” To which Ian responded, “You’ve got to be kidding me. Trust this guy?” and proceeded to explain to my ignorant self who Zuma was. Among the topics, beyond the several hundred corruption charges he’s had brought against him over time, was Zuma’s acquittal on rape charges a couple years ago; he admitted to consensual unprotected sex with a woman he knew to be HIV positive, noting that he showered afterward to reduce the risk of transmission, despite being head of the National AIDS Council. And we wonder why Africa is such a hornet’s nest of atrocities and depraved humanity. Maybe I’m being harsh. But this launched us into a discussion of how messed up the continent is and how unjust it is that humans have to live in the conditions they endure there.
I told him about Kevin Carter’s Pulitzer-winning photo of a starving Sudanese girl stalked by a vulture. It’s an image I often come back to; the horror of it is unreal. I find it unfathomable that in a time when information is so readily available to so many people, there is still such a Dark Ages mentality in so many places. Obviously those who wish to retain power have a strong motivation to keep people in the dark.
Which took us to what we take for granted. A rundown: I get to eat every day. I have a bed I can sleep in every night. I have fresh drinkable water available whenever I want to drink it. I can take a shower as long as I want to; I don’t have to bathe once a month in the river. I have enough clothes that I could probably go several weeks without wearing anything twice. I own a car, I don’t have to live in it, and I can afford the gas I need to run it. We use our tap water for almost nothing but running down the drain—flushing away excrement, washing dishes. I in fact have dishes, and cupboards to keep them in.
It’s almost obscene, the contrast between the lives of people in developed countries such as ours, and those in crumbling backward countries in which the “governments” are at the mercy of rebels. The people, many living in desolate, drought-ravaged areas, are dependent on shipments of aid food and medicine, which are quickly commandeered by warlords. One might ask why these people don’t simply move on to areas that can sustain them. Here’s where the problem of borders, even environmental preservation, comes in. It negates the possibility of returning to the nomadic lifestyle that our predecessors relied upon. You go where the game is, you follow the water. But when hunting on the animal preserve is illegal and there’s a border you can’t cross, what do you do? When aid food is shipped in, one may become reliant upon it; you might liken it to the line that welfare walks. In a book-on-CD I listened to last year, Po Bronson’s What Should I Do With My Life?, he told the story of a Native American man who went out and educated himself in a number of administrative and financial areas, then brought that information back to the reservation to help his kin learn to support themselves, make their own money, rather than relying on handout restitution from the U.S. government. It was the taking of this money that kept them under the thumb of someone else.
I’m getting off track here. It’s a true conundrum, how to deal with places where inhabitants don’t have access to basic amenities and are simultaneously prevented from pursuing a more primitive way of life in which they could attempt to provide those needs for themselves. It’s an atrocity that in the 21st century, any human doesn’t have clean water to drink.What can be done? I titled this post the way I did because it’s hard after pondering these things to go back to the life you take for granted every day. I can devote my time and donate my money to charities that do work in these destitute places. But it seems paltry. Little wonder so many people stick their heads in the sand about it. Living in L.A. is a strange thing, that I both adore and abhor at the same time. Never have I been in a place where you can see so many so clearly self-involved. Here they live in a metropolitan conglomeration with a population nearing 18 million, yet each person’s world includes but a fraction of that. I hate self-involved people at the same time that I love them: It’s truly as if they believe they are the only people on the planet who matter. But can you blame them?
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