Just a few days ago, a well educated, (unnamed) Internet researcher actually typed the following into an email discussion thread: "have you ever been to Africa? ...those $100 laptops would only get stolen if sent to children in Africa". Ouch. I don't recall the last time that I went from stunned to angry in such a short time span...and I have worked hard for years to be a slow to anger kind of person. The very idea of condemning an entire continent (and essentially labeling Africans as thieves) is so wrong on so many levels. After I challenged his generalization, he added that his point was that African poverty is overpowering, social problems horrendous, infrastructure is fragile, disease is rampant (ad nauseum)...and a laptop in a child's hands, walking down the street to school would be nothing more than a target...adding that these are people who are selling their own sisters into prostitution in order to survive, they do not need laptops. While there are areas in Africa that he described correctly, his stereotypical and fatalistic view still bothers me (translation: I am not quite as angry as I was earlier).
Hundreds of millions of dollars will go into the laptop program for underdeveloped countries...could that money be better spent on other types of humanitarian aid? I would turn that question around to ask, will hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid reverse a nation's dependency on humanitarian aid? I do not have the answer to either of those questions. I do believe that there are success stories that need to be emulated all over the world where people can claim their dignity and be more self-sustaining. My wife pointed me to a recent Woman's Day article on the Blessings Baskets project as one such example.
In a few months, I plan to head off to the highlands of Honduras with a group of Belmont and MTSU folks to begin a dialog with people in a very poor village about becoming more self sufficient. I have no delusions of saving the world...but I do believe that standing on the sidelines shouting stereotypical insults at a nation or a continent will do absolutely nothing to improve individual lives. The need for both humanitarian aid and stimuli to break the cycle are not all or none propositions, they should (and do in many cases) work hand-in-hand.
The odd result of my harnessed indignation: I am apparently no longer a member of the particular discussion thread that has filled my email box for the last year or so. I'm taking that as a sign...and a good one at that.