Showing posts with label African social issues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label African social issues. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
African Adoptions Up
The rise in African adoptions is hitting the headlines--especially adoptions from Ethiopia.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Because We Can, We Must, or Bono and Africa (again)
I think every time I post something on here it's about Bono. Oh well. Has anyone ever read the commmencement speech he delivered at Penn in 2004 (BTW, the one where he received a honorary doctorate--I forgot about that)? It has some similarities to his prayer breakfast speech from 2006, but one anecdote not in that speech stuck out to me as I read this earlier piece. It's about how he got involved in Africa in the 1980's--after his participation in Live Aid, etc. I thought it was a particularly moving story--especially for those of us interested in Ethiopia and adopting little ones from there:
What are the ideas right now worth betraying? What are the lies we tell ourselves now? What are the blind spots of our age? What's worth spending your post-Penn lives trying to do or undo? It might be something simple.
It might be something as simple as our deep down refusal to believe that every human life has equal worth. Could that be it? Could that be it? Each of you will probably have your own answer, but for me that is it. And for me the proving ground has been Africa.
Africa makes a mockery of what we say, at least what I say, about equality and questions our pieties and our commitments because there's no way to look at what's happening over there and its effect on all of us and conclude that we actually consider Africans as our equals before God. There is no chance.
An amazing event happened here in Philadelphia in 1985--Live Aid--that whole We Are The World phenomenon the concert that happened here. Well, after that concert I went to Ethiopia with my wife, Ali. We were there for a month and an extraordinary thing happened to me. We used to wake up in the morning and the mist would be lifting we'd see thousands and thousands of people who'd been walking all night to our food station were we were working. One man--I was standing outside talking to the translator--had this beautiful boy and he was saying to me in Amharic, I think it was, I said I can't understand what he's saying, and this nurse who spoke English and Amharic said to me, he's saying will you take his son. He's saying please take his son, he would be a great son for you. I was looking puzzled and he said, "You must take my son because if you don't take my son, my son will surely die. If you take him he will go back to Ireland and get an education." Probably like the ones we're talking about today. I had to say no, that was the rules there and I walked away from that man, I've never really walked away from it. But I think about that boy and that man and that's when I started this journey that's brought me here into this stadium.
What are the ideas right now worth betraying? What are the lies we tell ourselves now? What are the blind spots of our age? What's worth spending your post-Penn lives trying to do or undo? It might be something simple.
It might be something as simple as our deep down refusal to believe that every human life has equal worth. Could that be it? Could that be it? Each of you will probably have your own answer, but for me that is it. And for me the proving ground has been Africa.
Africa makes a mockery of what we say, at least what I say, about equality and questions our pieties and our commitments because there's no way to look at what's happening over there and its effect on all of us and conclude that we actually consider Africans as our equals before God. There is no chance.
An amazing event happened here in Philadelphia in 1985--Live Aid--that whole We Are The World phenomenon the concert that happened here. Well, after that concert I went to Ethiopia with my wife, Ali. We were there for a month and an extraordinary thing happened to me. We used to wake up in the morning and the mist would be lifting we'd see thousands and thousands of people who'd been walking all night to our food station were we were working. One man--I was standing outside talking to the translator--had this beautiful boy and he was saying to me in Amharic, I think it was, I said I can't understand what he's saying, and this nurse who spoke English and Amharic said to me, he's saying will you take his son. He's saying please take his son, he would be a great son for you. I was looking puzzled and he said, "You must take my son because if you don't take my son, my son will surely die. If you take him he will go back to Ireland and get an education." Probably like the ones we're talking about today. I had to say no, that was the rules there and I walked away from that man, I've never really walked away from it. But I think about that boy and that man and that's when I started this journey that's brought me here into this stadium.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Bono and the RED campaign
I watched an interview this evening that Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News did with Bono. It it, Bono provides some encouraging statistics in regards to the effect the product RED campaign is having upon the issues facing Africa. For now, you can find the interview here. Sorry there's no direct link to it yet. I guess it's too soon to find it on YouTube.
Friday, September 7, 2007
"Why Ethiopia?"
.....Someone asks me this nearly every day. I am always somewhat at a loss, except to say, "We just felt inclined toward Africa." Knowing the curious probably don't really want to hear about all the myriad ways in which we've been led to this decision over years of time, I usually don't say much more than that.
And there are, of course, other, more concrete reasons for choosing Ethiopia:
One in ten children in Ethiopia die before their first birthday• One in six children die before their fifth birthday• 44% of the population of Ethiopia is under 15 years old• 60% of children in Ethiopia are stunted because of malnutrition• The median age in Ethiopia is 17.8 years• 1.5 million people are infected with AIDS (6th highest in the world)• 720,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS alone, and there are 4.6 million orphans in Ethiopia.• Per capita, Ethiopia receives less aid than any country in Africa• In the 90s the population (3%) grew faster than food production (2.2%)• Drought struck the country from 2000-2002 (first year no crops, second year no seeds, third year no animals)• Half the children in Ethiopia will never attend school. 88% will never attend secondary school.• Coffee prices (Ethiopia’s only major export) fell 40-60% from 1998-2002.• Ethiopia’s doctor to children ratio is 1 to 24,000.• In 1993, after 30 long years of war, Eritrea broke from Ethiopia and became an independent nation leaving Ethiopia landlocked without any major seafaring ports.
And there are, of course, other, more concrete reasons for choosing Ethiopia:
One in ten children in Ethiopia die before their first birthday• One in six children die before their fifth birthday• 44% of the population of Ethiopia is under 15 years old• 60% of children in Ethiopia are stunted because of malnutrition• The median age in Ethiopia is 17.8 years• 1.5 million people are infected with AIDS (6th highest in the world)• 720,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS alone, and there are 4.6 million orphans in Ethiopia.• Per capita, Ethiopia receives less aid than any country in Africa• In the 90s the population (3%) grew faster than food production (2.2%)• Drought struck the country from 2000-2002 (first year no crops, second year no seeds, third year no animals)• Half the children in Ethiopia will never attend school. 88% will never attend secondary school.• Coffee prices (Ethiopia’s only major export) fell 40-60% from 1998-2002.• Ethiopia’s doctor to children ratio is 1 to 24,000.• In 1993, after 30 long years of war, Eritrea broke from Ethiopia and became an independent nation leaving Ethiopia landlocked without any major seafaring ports.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Primer #1: A long post....
....but worth the time.
In 2000, when Melissa Fay Greene began to learn about the plight of Africa, there were 12 million AIDS orphans living there. She read how the UN described Africa as a "continent of orphans."
From Melissa Fay Greene:
By 2010, between twenty-five million and fifty million African children, from newborn to age fifteen, would be orphans......Human beings are not wired to absorb twelve million or eighteen million or twenty-five million bits of information; our protohuman ancestors never had to contemplate more than about ten or twenty of anything......Twelve million orphans today. Twenty-five million orphans tomorrow. And those were just the numbers of AIDS orphans; if you added in the orphans from malaria and TB, you hit thirty-six million sub-Saharan orphans, and those numbers didn't include children deprived of the adults in their lives by war and famine.
Who was going to raise twelve million children? That's what I suddenly wanted to know. There are days that Donny and I thought we'd be driven insane by five children. Who was teaching twelve million children how to swim? Who was signing twelve million permission slips for school field trips? Who packed twelve million school lunches? Who cheered at twelve million soccer games? (That sounded like our weekends.) Who was going to buy twelve million pairs of sneakers that light up when you jump? Backpacks? Toothbrushes? Twelve million pairs of socks? Who will tell twelve million bedtime stories? Who will quiz twelve million children on Thursday nights for their Friday-morning spelling tests? Twelve million trips to the dentist? Twelve million birthday parties?
Who will wake in the night in response to eighteen million nightmares? Who will offer grief counseling to twelve, fifteen, eighteen, thirty-six million children? Who will help them avoid lives of servitude or prostitution? Who will pass on to them the traditions of culture and religion, of history and government, of craft and profession? Who will help them grow up, choose the right person to marry, find work, and learn to parent their own children?
Well, as it turns out, no one. Or very few. There aren't enough adults to go around. Although in the Western industrialized states HIV/AIDS has become a chronic condition rather than a death sentence, in Africa a generation of parents, teachers, principals, physicians, nurses, professors, spiritual leaders, musicians, poets, bureaucrats, coaches, farmers, bankers, and business owners are being erased.....
To be continued....
In 2000, when Melissa Fay Greene began to learn about the plight of Africa, there were 12 million AIDS orphans living there. She read how the UN described Africa as a "continent of orphans."
From Melissa Fay Greene:
By 2010, between twenty-five million and fifty million African children, from newborn to age fifteen, would be orphans......Human beings are not wired to absorb twelve million or eighteen million or twenty-five million bits of information; our protohuman ancestors never had to contemplate more than about ten or twenty of anything......Twelve million orphans today. Twenty-five million orphans tomorrow. And those were just the numbers of AIDS orphans; if you added in the orphans from malaria and TB, you hit thirty-six million sub-Saharan orphans, and those numbers didn't include children deprived of the adults in their lives by war and famine.
Who was going to raise twelve million children? That's what I suddenly wanted to know. There are days that Donny and I thought we'd be driven insane by five children. Who was teaching twelve million children how to swim? Who was signing twelve million permission slips for school field trips? Who packed twelve million school lunches? Who cheered at twelve million soccer games? (That sounded like our weekends.) Who was going to buy twelve million pairs of sneakers that light up when you jump? Backpacks? Toothbrushes? Twelve million pairs of socks? Who will tell twelve million bedtime stories? Who will quiz twelve million children on Thursday nights for their Friday-morning spelling tests? Twelve million trips to the dentist? Twelve million birthday parties?
Who will wake in the night in response to eighteen million nightmares? Who will offer grief counseling to twelve, fifteen, eighteen, thirty-six million children? Who will help them avoid lives of servitude or prostitution? Who will pass on to them the traditions of culture and religion, of history and government, of craft and profession? Who will help them grow up, choose the right person to marry, find work, and learn to parent their own children?
Well, as it turns out, no one. Or very few. There aren't enough adults to go around. Although in the Western industrialized states HIV/AIDS has become a chronic condition rather than a death sentence, in Africa a generation of parents, teachers, principals, physicians, nurses, professors, spiritual leaders, musicians, poets, bureaucrats, coaches, farmers, bankers, and business owners are being erased.....
To be continued....
Monday, June 11, 2007
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Bono and Africa
Others out there in the Ethiopian-adoption-blogosphere have posted this, so I figured I'd do the same for those viewing our blog and just getting themselves introduced to Africa, etc.
Bono (or Paul Hewson, for those on a non-stage name basis) of U2 has, in recent years, increasingly put himself at the forefront of issues regarding Africa--AIDS, fair trade, debt relief, etc. Statesmen here in the United States have been impressed by his knowledge of the issues and his conviction. I thought I would embed this footage of Bono speaking at the prayer breakfast held by President Bush over a year ago. It's just over 20 minutes long but worth your viewing.
I have long been a fan of U2. From when I first heard the Joshua Tree and felt a deep connection to its sentiments at 10 years old (I had older brothers) to my more recent enjoyment of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, I have (in hindsight) always been inspired by Bono's desire for unity--not just in a political or social sense but in a deeper sense--the unity of heaven and earth. Most good lyric poetry is written with this same desire. While I don't know if U2's work will prove to be music for the ages, they have, nevertheless, produced music that has consistently echoed the sentiments of good lyric poetry from the past (here and here are two classic songs--and videos!--of theirs that perhaps illustrate this best). Enjoy the prayer breakfast footage.
Bono (or Paul Hewson, for those on a non-stage name basis) of U2 has, in recent years, increasingly put himself at the forefront of issues regarding Africa--AIDS, fair trade, debt relief, etc. Statesmen here in the United States have been impressed by his knowledge of the issues and his conviction. I thought I would embed this footage of Bono speaking at the prayer breakfast held by President Bush over a year ago. It's just over 20 minutes long but worth your viewing.
I have long been a fan of U2. From when I first heard the Joshua Tree and felt a deep connection to its sentiments at 10 years old (I had older brothers) to my more recent enjoyment of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, I have (in hindsight) always been inspired by Bono's desire for unity--not just in a political or social sense but in a deeper sense--the unity of heaven and earth. Most good lyric poetry is written with this same desire. While I don't know if U2's work will prove to be music for the ages, they have, nevertheless, produced music that has consistently echoed the sentiments of good lyric poetry from the past (here and here are two classic songs--and videos!--of theirs that perhaps illustrate this best). Enjoy the prayer breakfast footage.
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