How many mornings start off with a sense of despair as I open my computer to learn what has happened around the planet as I slept the night away peacefully in the bosom of my beautiful little family? Far too many.
The world is for more people than not a terrible place of unimaginable pain and suffering where each day brings yet another hurdle to jump or cross to bear … one after the other until there is no more jumping or bearing to do.
The headlines give indication of misery enough, but my mind always wanders a bit further down the road and often ends up dwelling on whatever impact the attention-grabbing event that leads a report has on the children caught somewhere way down the story and living the consequences of religious fanaticism, ethnic intolerance, political unrest, greed, corruption and all the other horrors self-imposed by the human race upon itself.
Occasionally, a news item addresses the effects on innocents directly, as was the case in this article. Although designed by the United Nations propaganda machine for self-perpetuation and circulated through IRIN, the UN’s “humanitarian news and analysis” branch of the Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the report does manage to pass along information without too blatant a tooting of its own horn … mainly because there is absolutely NO reason to credit the organization with anything positive under this circumstance … or make a begging plea for additions to its bulging coffers.
The story is on how the unrest in Kenya is impacting the vulnerable in the country, widows and orphans.
When the violence broke out immediately after the election, at least two of the people we support were killed by rowdy youths in their homes. One of our widows was attacked and her home was torn down to the ground; she was very lucky to escape alive. One child-headed household had their home invaded – they were chased away and when they came back everything had been stolen.
This, of course, is one tiny example in a country where millions are at risk any time the boat is even slightly rocked, so precarious is the semblance of stability.
Kenya has long been held up as a positive example of democracy in Africa, a model for other countries more obviously in danger of a rapid downward spiral into chaos. But Kenya has been corrupt as hell for years, and no one with the slightest knowledge of the place could pretend not to notice that the average Kenyan has been getting screwed by their government for decades while the powerful are creaming off the top and living like royalty.
With Zimbabwe just down the road a piece getting a complete pass from the “global community” on everything from its flagrant violations of human rights to blatant corruption, where could impetus possibly come for rising above?
Does the world care? Face it, folks, the answer to that is: Not really.
Pretending otherwise appears to be an unhelpful practice that works pretty well to keep the levels of hell stable for the majority while the minority takes expensive vacations.
Think about this …
At the moment, the population of the USA is somewhere around just over 300 million. Although numbers are hard to come by, USAID estimates that by 2010 25 million children in the world will have been orphaned by AIDS alone (Some suspect this number is a low guess, with estimates up to 200 million circulating.), and although that pandemic does take a hefty toll, added to numbers of children losing parents to other diseases, alcoholism and drug abuse, grinding poverty, famine, violent conflict, the total global population of children forced to fend for themselves could easily approach the number of people living in the United States in any given year.
Orphans, of course, aren’t the only people suffering … billions of children with parents suffer alongside their mothers and fathers … yet no small number of humans blithely go through their lives under the illusion that life is relatively fair … and is meant to be so … and that for the most part justice somehow prevails. Decisions on everything from product purchases to elected official to laws addressing adoption tend to be based on the false sense that happiness is a logical consequence of life for everyone finding the wherewithal their own bootstraps should provide, so consequences are slow to come to those living off the backs of the downtrodden … and that is often not only an expression, but a reality … and remedies too often have more to do with alleviating the little guilt that comes with plenty than actually addressing the real issues others face every day.
Forcing ourselves to wake up and smell the toast is a first step to taking the problems on full frontally, as we will never come to grips with something we have refused to see in all its naked ugliness.
A collection of my short stories:
I'm in this one, too ...
And I'm in here, as well ...
Paradise Preoccupied 
This won’t be as well thought out a question as I would like it to be, but I am curious about how you talk to your kids about these things. I’m not thinking that you sit down with the youngest and review miseries, but I wonder what frameworks you do work within.
If this seems out of left field, let me explain that a year or so ago I got into a heated exchange (about which I still don’t feel good) with a fellow who basically summed up humanity be saying “you’re never safe, people will always stick you for what you have, most people will never feel anything for you, and will screw you over if they can to their own benefit.” Most specifically, he said that he was raising his (very young) child to this reality. I was shocked in part because he was someone I knew to have traveled joyously in the muck of other cultures and because, well, gee, I had thought it kind of basic that one tries to raise one’s children to believe that they are safe-heck, the greatest privilege of his and my ethnicity and economic status is that we pretty much ARE safe.
I’m blithering-but sincere.
Interesting thoughts, Menchu …
Personally, I don’t burden my kids with realities they can’t do anything about until they are old enough not only to handle the information, but also to contribute something for the positive.
For example, my son Sam is now five and understands broadly that there are children in the world that have no one to care for them properly. On a regular basis, he goes through his toys things and picks nice ones to donate to the orphanages here in Seychelles. He doesn’t give away the things he really loves, that’s true, but he does carefully choose those in great shape that he thinks others would like to have.
He also knows that war is terrible, that many people don’t have enough food, that the sea can be dangerous, to watch out for cars, not to eat things he finds on the ground and to refrain from trying to pet strange dogs.
I will not pretend to be able to present a planet where everything is rosey, but neither will I condemn kids to no-hope scenarios. Our children are the future, and the more aware they are, the better armed they will be to take on the issues we end up dropping in their laps.
Few things would be as shocking to a child, I would think, as learning for the first time at some age … 12? 13? 16? … that the planet is as full of suffereing as it is, and I consider it very unfair and irresponsible to choose not to prepare our kids for the world they will inherit. We do our children a great disservice by sheltering them completely from reality and encouraging them to grow in a rarefied atmosphere that cannot, and should not be sustained lifelong. Compassion and understanding are great gifts that can only be conveyed through honesty and education.
Oh man, when I think about how sheltered we are in the US (with all appropriate exemptions for race and class and specific circumstances), I wonder how many never do learn-and, yes, I think that the comfort of that ignorance is at the loss of compassion- that and power, I suppose, in that one cannot exercise the power one has to effect change if one can’t see where change is to be made.
I feel tonight like I am operating my rain without a license-meds do that to me. Sorry.
I suppose another piece of that is that one (and one’s children) can’t really appreciate-and protect-what they have if they learn a world view so narrow that their privilege is invisible to them. I like what you say about Sam and his understanding; he isn’t powerless, he can share with compassion.
Exactly.
The “comfort of that ignorance” also continues to reforge the divisions, widen the gaps, and create even more opportunites for useless diversions of attention that pay less than lip service to real issues, but give a flicker of guilt-reduction to those feeling less guilt every year over obscene consumerism and all that goes along with.
The world can be horrible, even among people who are priviledge and should be happy for it. I still believe in hope though, that we can push to make the world a better place… There really has to be a way.
These are interesting questions to raise about how we teach our children about the world. In one sense I can’t really disagree with the man who chooses to teach his child about how mean the world really is. He is in fact being truthful. We also teach our children all of those truths, and for our adopted ones, it takes nothing at all to convince them how unsafe or mean the world is. They have experienced it far too much.
On the other hand, we must also balance our teaching, by showing them that the world is also full of beauty and kindness, and self sacrifice…often right alongside, or all mixed up in the meanness. And we must somehow convey to them, that they can choose to be part of the one or the other, but to make no mistake…being good is very hard. Beauty, and kindness, and self sacrifice are all well and good when you are on the receiving end. Courage and heroism inspire us all. But they cost a great deal, and we must make deliberate choices about how we will live our lives.
This is why, as Sam grows older, it might be worth encouraging him to give that which he truly loves as well. And not that I am lecturing you on this, as I am quite sure you understand this, and will attempt to raise him to be a good man. It’s just a fine illustration of a principle that even a child can begin to understand.
Scraps,
I agree that balance is the key, and only a healthy child will have the luxury of growing to adulthood comfortable enough in their own skin to allow themselves to feel outside of it … to feel compassion. Those too frightened and too hopeless will never allow themselves the pain of extending their world far enough to develope empathy.
Sam and Cj will most certainly learn to contribute from deep places, and my hope is that they give what they love lovingly and with a great sense that by giving they are getting. That, I think, is one of the keys … to teach our children to give because it is right, because it a duty, because it is a joy and because it is expected of every person who understands that being a waste of space on the planet is a waste of time.
I have no doubt that your children will (and have) grow up to be very thoughtful, inquisitive, and compassionate people!
Thanks S.
There are times, though, when I wonder if I will have done them any favors. It often seems that the dull plodding sheep who could care less about others end up rulling the world, or are the happiest in it.