| This child has kwashiorkor. Kwashiorkor,
in the Ga dialect of Ghana, means "the
disease the first child gets when the second
is on the way" and is largely due to
deficiency in proteins, vitamins, and trace
elements. We have seen this picture so often
we are immune to the horror of it. For many
years UNICEF reported that everyday 40,000
children were dying of malnutrition or malnutrition-related
diseases. Now UNICEF reports around 30,000
deaths a day due to malnutrition. Since World
War II this calculates to about 700,000,000
being allowed to die of malnutrition.
Everyday these children go through the agonies
of hunger, the tearful
weakness of wasting
away for lack of
proper nourishment.
In fact, however, there
is no good reason
why anyone should be hungry
-especially not
the children for they are
helpless, we invited
them and they are our tomorrow.
Hunger is
caused by greed and misplaced
priorities
- and this is quite clear
to everyone who
opens his eyes to the truth
and forces his
mind to accept it. |
The people of all countries are confronted
by a single problem: The world is made of
gardens where food grows in abundance; it
is made also of rock and desert and ice and
angry oceans. Man's struggle to feed himself
is not a fair struggle. Some must spend their
entire time gathering food; while others
have time to farm, to learn, to build wondrous
things, time to enjoy, to celebrate and to
invent new pleasures because they live near
the gardens.
The unfairness of nature has helped to create
those who have, and those who have not. What
could be more natural than for those who
have not to desire what those who have have
?
As little as a century ago nations lived
so far apart from each other that this resentment
rarely boiled over. Now it is an everyday
problem as the haves and the have nots are
constantly rubbing shoulders through radio,
television, travel, literature, etc.., and
the problem is how to keep peace between
the two groups.
Complex answers to a complex problem, instead
of confronting the problem, create further
problems. The answer to establishing and
keeping peace is quite simple: one side must
give, in order to let the other side catch
up; and the other side must strive to run
faster. There is no other way to knock down
the mountain tops and fi1l the vaIleys of
inequality.
The most obvious part of the problem is
food. Nothing else brings discontent more
quickly than hunger. |  |
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