Spring arrives and the earth shows its renewal in the Northern Hemisphere. The news in America focuses on the approaching Presidential elections and on the state of the economy, which seems to be hitting a speed bump on the high-speed expressway into the future.
The Economy! Some people are saying things are not good. Others say they are downright bad. Gas prices are too high. Food costs too high. Wages too low. But wait a minute. Let’s take another look, a real look from the standpoint of the economy of the entire world not just the affluent western part of it. Those who have grown up in the prosperous west have little real world ability to compare against when it comes to their well-being and position in life. Thus a downward bump feels like a catastrophic fall. In reality the fall they are feeling has little real comparison to what most of the people on earth today are living in and suffering with.
Drinking From a Dirty Pool
Take for an example this little girl and her brothers and sisters who live in a mud house with broken windows and a leaking roof in a non-descript place in sub-Saharan Africa. They have no heating stove for cold nights and her six brothers and sisters must share the only two tattered blankets the family possesses. She walks a mile for a drink of water from a dirty pool near the trading center. The water is not filtered after the farm animal’s up-steam come down and muddy the flow from the contaminated stream. There are no health service or enviournmental people who will watch out for her well being from pollutants in the air, land and food around her. Her only meal today will be a small bowl of ground up maize and perhaps one of the bananas that is ripening on the tree near her house. Her clothes are dirty (she has no change of clothes) and the only place they can be washed is that same dirty stream from which she obtained her drinking and bathing water a little while ago. She has no hope of ever going to school so this means her entire existence will be a continuing repetition of what today is like. Her parents have both died and her aged grandmother may die soon. Her.jpg)
grandfather is also gone and the only thing the family gets is what her brothers and sisters can get from others. There is no welfare system to provide a protective umbrella over her and no one to care for her and her brothers and sisters. They will just have to plant some grain and harvest some food and feel the pains of starvation from time to time. No one around them can help if they get sick. They must walk a long distance to get even the most meager form of healthcare. And often the small clinic is out of supplies and they get nothing. If their house catches on fire it will burn to the ground. There is no fire department. She has no snacks and will never see a real television or play with a real brand new doll. Their family does not even have a radio.
Yes, the economy is bad, maybe getting worse for some. But for others, like this little girl in Africa, there is no economy at all!
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