Monday, April 12, 2010

"Young Superheroes in a Hut":

Bookmark and Share
"Why is Africa Poor?"





Why is Africa poor? Is it a legacy of diseases and parasites? Or is it that local mammals, zebra and the African elephant, were difficult to domesticate and harness in agriculture?

There’s truth in each of these explanations. But a visit to Zimbabwe highlights perhaps the main reason: “Bad Governance.” The tyrannical, incompetent and corrupt rule of Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Mugabe, has turned one of the Africa’s most advanced countries into a shambles.

This was the article written by a journalist who had a trip across Africa. He says like this “In a village less than a day’s drive from Victoria falls, I stumbled across a hut that to me captured the country’s heart break and also its resilience and hope. The only people living in the hut are five children, orphans from two families. The children aged 8 to 17 moved in together after their four parents died of AIDS and other causes.

The head of the house was the oldest boy, Abel a gangly 10th grader with a perpetual grin. He has been in charge since he was 15. At one time, the two families reflected Zimbabwe’s relative prosperity. One mother was a business woman who travelled abroad regularly. One of the fathers was a soccer coach who named his son Diego Maradona. The household stirs to life each morning when Abel rises at 4 a.m and sets off on a nine mile hike to the nearest high school. He has no watch, so he judges the time from the sun, knowing that it will take three hours to reach school.





After Abel leaves for school, Diego Maradona, who is 11, wakes the three young children, feeds them cold cornmeal much left over from the previous night’s dinner, and walks with them to the elementary school which is few miles away. When Diego and young children return in the afternoon, they gather firewood, fetch water, tend the chickens and sometimes search for edible wild plants. Abel returns over by 7 p.m and cooks more cornmeal mush for dinner. He dispenses orders and affections, nurses the younger ones when they are sick, comforts them when they miss their parents, coaches them with their school work, and rules the household with tenderness and efficiency. His goal is to graduate from high school and become a policeman, because the job will provide a steady salary.


Westerners sometimes think that Africa’s problem is a lack of initiative or hard work. Nobody think that after talking to Abel and Diego or so many other Zimbabwean who display a resilience that left me inspired.”

Zimbabwe’s tragedy isn’t its people, but its leaders. It is telling that Africa’s greatest success story, Botswana is adjacent to one of its greatest failures. The difference is that for decades Botswana had been exceptionally well and honestly managed, and Zimbabwe pillaged.






The Bottom Line:

Friends let me tell you one thing, the total world population is 6,814,200,000 millions and African continent population is just 973 millions. Even if each and every individual give just a grain per day all the Africans can have a sumptuous feast. Is that true? Just imagine how our life would if we are in the same critical position. I know because i already imagined and its for you to imagine that. Come on Friends "Discover the joy in Helping."

1 comment: