Hut by Hut

I was glad (and sad at the same time) to read an article about South Africa in the New York Times.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/international/africa/28swazi.html?th)

Glad because some qualified people, who can connect deep into the heart of the West, spent 5 weeks and got to know what is happening in rural Southern Africa. They learned people's names, and their personal and private struggles. They got so close to the local people that they were able to report the following:
"Wheesh! Now I can feel the hardship," Nomfundo said. "Who is going to pay my school fees? Even the clothes. Where am I going to get them?" She tugged at her school uniform skirt, riddled with holes and hemmed several times to hide tears.

The article (by Michael Wine and Sharon LaFraniere)says that the life expectancy in the particular town they visited Lavumisa, in Swaziland )which borders South Africa in the far north east)has plummeted to 34 years. That would mean, if I lived there, I'd have about another year or two left of my life to live. The people dying today are dying from infections in the early 90's. Infection has spread and risen sharply since then. This bodes ill for 2010. The dire situation that the AIDS epidemic brings about will continue to unravel, and no one can predict just how devastating. What we are talking about is communities that become completely wiped out.
Imagine a small town. Then imagine you return to this town 7 or 10 years later, and no one is here any more. Here are a few shacks, a few signs that people once lived here. It is not a question of why they left. It is the fact that everyone here died.

So I am glad that attention is being drawn to this area. There should be a war on AIDS, and on poverty. These are the real terrors, the real scourges of our time.

It makes me sad to see and to know that in South Africa the haves are pretty unaware of the the terrible conditions the have nots have to endure, day in and day out. As a white South African, I know all too well how wealthier people isolate themselves in their wealthy enclaves and pursue their ambitions, and have their fun.
It's also true that if you want to help the poor, how and where do you start? I'd like to answer that question. I'd like to bring about an everyman answer. I don't feel there is anything like that in South Africa. Is there? I'd like to invent an identity, or a brand, which is accessible and transparent to the wealthy, and recognisable as a simple mechanism designed simply to alleviate suffering. It may be providing materials, or food, or clothes, or medical treatment.

It's fine to be successful in South Africa. It's fine to enjoy the fruits of one's success. That's fine, but not when you live right next door to people starving, and dying. That's the Holocaust Part II. That's really no exaggeration. More people will die in South Africa alone, from AIDS, than the Jews who died in the Holocaust. Yes, more than 6 million. The numbers are so large (currently 38 million infected in the world, 25 million infected in sub-Saharan Africa) that they defie the imagination. If you really want to enjoy yourself, first help someone out. Then maybe you can feel a true sense of fun, a true sense of the joy of living.

I don't mean to hold myself up as a Poster Child for human rights. I am also not going to be the first one to donate $1000 to a poor and suffering South African. But I do ask that we'll stop ignoring the situation that lives next door to us. I do ask that people stop sending emails saying how wonderful our lives are in South Africa. I remember someone forwarding me an email which was all about how lucky we are in South Africa. Not a whisper about AIDS in it of course.
Sure, let's be optimistic and grateful for what we have. But let's have some critical thinking too. Let's recognise that something extremely serious requires our urgent attention right now.
Let's have every neighborhood, or community setting up a fund, so that everyone can provide resources and help for those who can't help themselves. Not church based, no affiliation, simply a group called HELP: Help Every (poor)Local Person. It's delusional and misguided to believe you can find happiness in your own life, if right beside you, people could really use your help because they are weak and dying. That's my idea.

The idea is not to be emotional, or dramatic, or even heroic. It is simply to recognise what is happening and doing something, taking some kind of action, no matter how small. This needs to start happening with increasing urgency back home, and the first, and most important step, is just knowing, just recognising, that some people, and we know where, are having a really hard time. Then it is up to the individual to contribute according to conscience or ability. Civilization, after all, is the degree to which we show to what degree we are capable of taking care of the weak that live amongst us.

Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Barbee of the New York Times.