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| Malaria is no fun. Trust me on this. |
"Bernie" over at Planck's Constant seems to think it is though.
Apparently, mosquitoes don't cause malaria*, but poverty and ignorance do. Bizarre.
If an almighty God came down from heaven and magically removed poverty and ignorance, malaria would remain. If He instead chose to remove mosquitoes, malaria would be eradicated overnight.
Back in 1933, 30% of the residents in the Tennessee River valley area were affected by malaria. Due to the cooperation of thirteen south-eastern states and the extensive spraying of DDT, malaria was all but eliminated by 1947.
Even today, malaria still has a presence in the States. It is kept in check by extensive malaria control programs in California, Florida, New Jersey, Louisiana, Minnesota, Michigan, North Dakota, and Texas, among others.
I wonder how Bernie - a resident of the States (judging by his blog) - would feel if he were present in the Tennessee River valley area in the '30s and the government let him wallow in his "poverty and ignorance"?
Or how would he feel if his aunt contracted malaria after one of the aforementioned states pulled its funding?
Folks like Bernie tend to repeat the mantra that the market will solve everything: Don't send nets to Africa and some entrepreneur will step forward and sell nets to the locals. Ta da! Problem solved without foreign intervention.
News flash: There is no market in many parts of Africa! The residents of Buyaya - where Meaningful Volunteer is based - cannot participate in a market based economy because they have no discretionary income.
Most residents survive as sustenance farmers, harvesting fewer and fewer crops as the years go by as the soil gets depleted. They are - in effect - spending more than they make and are caught in a poverty trap. They cannot buy nets because they have less-than-no-money.
Ideally, Africa would become self-sufficient and market forces could kick in. Meaningful Volunteer tries its best to create disposable incomes through initiatives like Mama Pamba and Grassroots Uganda.
But, in the meantime as residents of Buyaya struggle everyday with malaria, Meaningful Volunteer will continue with its malaria program as Bernie looks upon dispassionately.
* Technically true. The malaria parasite that lives in mosquito saliva causes malaria
And yet before all the volunteers like you came along, Africa was the food basket of the world. Now it is the basket case of the world.
ReplyDeleteAs we sent in free food, the local farmers found less and less market for their produce and consequently could not afford fertilizers. Lack of money also meant lack of proper crop education so they also lacked the knowledge to properly rotate their crops.
As for Tennessee or anywhere else in America, they did not eliminate malaria with mosquito nets, so it is a bit disingenuous to mock me by saying that spraying eliminated malaria, when I suggested that African farmers do that very same thing. But they do not do that same thing because no one will hire him to do spraying when they get free nets.
I notice that you did not say anything about the fact that there is more malaria in Africa today as compared to 70 years ago.
Keep making yourself feel good as people die. Who is the person who is more concerned with saving lives? You who ignores empirical evidence because you want to go to bed at night feeling as if you did something or me, who really wants lives saved in Africa?
There are - of course - many problems surrounding the large aid organizations and their tendency to not hire local labour. You won't find me defending their actions.
ReplyDeleteSo you really want to save lives in Africa? Good for you. I guess your happy for a million people a year to die from malaria until its takes its course. How long will that take do you think? 5 years and 5 million lives? 10 years and 8 million lives? What's your bottom line here?
For every 1,000 nets distributed, 3.3 lives are saved. I'm going to keep on distributing the nets if it is all the same to you. It is a very humane way to reduce the population.
(You do get that right? Saving lives actually reduces the population.)
By the way, Robert Mugabe says hi from the Zimbabwe, the bread basket of Africa.
ReplyDeleteNo, Bernie - the essence of your post was more "we're not finished, let's give up."
ReplyDeletegreetings....
ReplyDeleteI have read both this blog post and the comments following and would not normally comment on such things, for i speak from an emotive viewpoint rather than a knowledgable one.
I just have a question for "planck's constant" based on a direct quote from him....and i quote..."Who is the person who is more concerned with saving lives? You who ignores empirical evidence because you want to go to bed at night feeling as if you did something or me, who really wants lives saved in Africa?", and that question is: what makes more sense, someone WANTING lives saved in Africa, or someone WORKING to save lives in Africa. Take me for example, i WANT to one day be a brilliant pianist, but that is not something that will happen merely because i will it, or want it, or even tell others how my way of it happening is so much better, it will happen when i work at it, one lesson, one note at a time.
It seems to me that it is often easier to blame others and mock them for their action, to assauge our own deeply harboured and hidden guilt that we ourselves are not out there actually doing some good, and it is good work. Is not one life saved important? Is not that one person who's life is helped important to their friends and family?
Now i have been told on occasion that i have a rather utopian view of the world, and that i live in too much hope for humanity, and that may well be the case, but i applaud those out there actually doing the groundwork, those sweating it and those setting aside their own selves that others have a chance. So given the choice, what would you rather be? the one who sits there mocking, or the one who stands there doing.
I know which i would rather be.
Keep going Meaningful Volunteer, you give us all hope that humanity may just have a chance of surviving its own idiocy!
@planck's constant. Please go take your constant ramble and view points somewhere else. At the end of the day its just a waste of our time and yours.
ReplyDeleteDesi, what chance would you have of being a pianist if someone brought you food every day, and took away the incentive for anyone else to grow food and so there is no money to hire the local piano teacher and so he too gives up his career?
ReplyDeleteObviously you people have not read my blog articles on Africa nor did you look up links and reports that I cited. I am not offering my opinion I am merely reporting what is happening in Africa. Excuse me for wishing to disseminate the truth.
The ugly truth is, that you would prefer to shoot the messenger than face the fact that Africa, after 70 years of do-gooders, is worse off because of it.
I run a business that has hundreds of African entrepreneurs making money on their own without help from all your good intentions. Contrary to what you people think you are doing, I am actually helping them earn money to put food on their table, pay for school for their children, and pay a local pay to spray against malaria while teaching them how to be self-sufficient.
Sadly, the average, lazy reader sees an article title and formulates an entire worthless argument because he was taught that good intentions is more important than actual results.
The reason I spend time here, crying in the wilderness, is that I hope to convince even one person that they are harming Africa not helping with their thoughtless actions.
I learned long ago that if you want your children to succeed in life, it is better to stay out of their way than to interfere with your "help."
Malcolm Trevena, you mean Zimbabwe, the former "Breadbasket of Africa?"
ReplyDeleteI also miss the point. I was speaking of the entire continent as once being the food basket of the world, what has Zimbabwe got to do with the conversation?
Yep, that Zimbabwe.
ReplyDelete"And yet before all the volunteers like you came along, Africa was the food basket of the world. Now it is the basket case of the world. "
My point was that places like Zimbabwe have done a great job of shooting itself in the foot without foreign aid. It's not all "volunteers like [me]"
Wasn't Mozart a great pianist born with a silver spoon in his mouth? (This made for a hell-of-a-delivery for his mother btw).
"The ugly truth is, that you would prefer to shoot the messenger than face the fact that Africa, after 70 years of do-gooders, is worse off because of it."
This is just not true. We have made huge gains in literacy, life experimental, disease control (polio and smallpox being the most noteworthy), reduced fertility, school attendance, HIV rates, the list goes on.
Moreover, places like Korea, Taiwan, China and India have all been the beneficiaries of external assistance. To say that foreign aid is fundamentally bunk is just not true.
The big-aid industry needs a kick in the butt regardless. Very inefficient. Too much bureaucracy. Too corrupt. But fundamentally bunk? I don't think so.
Hundreds of African entrepreneurs? That's great
(seriously).
I agree that volunteering has caused a lot of harm. Heck, my own experiences in the Philippines and Ghana were next to worthless. We're trying our best at Meaningful Volunteer to help address that.
You failed to address my market point which is my main problem with your approach. The people we work with have no market because they earn less-than-nothing. We try to address this in two ways
1. Income streams through fair trade projects.
We have two of these, about to bring in a third. This give at least a little money in people's pockets. One lady built a house with the money she made and has a small farming operation going.
2. Prop them up in the meantime.
Through (gasp) giving them mosquito nets and (double gasp) saving lives. Our approach is a lot more complicated that just "giving out nets". See our "Malaria Operation" project for for details.
Empowering Africans is the best way. No one disagrees with this. If market forces could kick in and Africans took care of Africans, then we'd all be happy.
A million people a year are dying from malaria in Africa as they wait for the revolution. In the meantime, let's distribute the nets.
Planck's Constant--I think you need to go back to your so called evidence and re-evaluate the data. Perhaps a course on global health would be helpful as well? If you look at economic and life expectancy across many African nations you see a steady increase from "70 years ago" as foreign aid was increasing and then you see a sudden drop in the 1980's...if you look at data from 70 years ago and you look at data from today then you might see that some of these countries are "worse off"; however, that is not in any way due to a steady decline as foreign aid increased. Obviously, the two are not linked, at least not to the extent that you can make the assumption that increasing aid has directly led to decreasing GDP because the graphs just do not line up that way. As I said before, there was a sudden and quite dramatic drop in many countries right around the 1980's...so what else could have caused this decrease in both life expectancy and GDP? Well one graph that lines up quite nicely is the start of the AIDS pandemic and, following shortly behind, a steady increase in TB infections. Now it is easy to see how AIDS and TB have dramatically decreased life expectancies in Africa (indeed, many of the countries with the highest HIV rates also have the lowest life expecancies!) but to explain how this then effects GDP requires an understanding of the poverty cycle, which, based your previous arguements, you seem to be unaware of. The basic premise is that a family(or individual or community or country) who is poor will have less access to food and safe water, this will lead to disease, disability and death, this will lead to a decreased ability to work and be productive, this will lead to a decreased economy, this will lead to poverty and the cycle continues. No one here is arguing that we should just close our eyes and keep throwing money and food at Africa but we are arguing that we need a multi-faceted approach to deal with the inexorably complex issues that are plaguing Africa today. We DO need programs that will help lift them out of the cycle of poverty and one of the most cost effective break points is the prevention of disease. We also need programs that empower and educate so that once the cycle is broken, these people have the skills to move on and not fall back into the cycle. From what I have read, Meaningful Volunteer seems to be doing both of these things--they are lifting the burden of disease with Malaria Operation and they are empowering and educating through their fair trade and school projects. These things WILL have a positive impact on Africa.
ReplyDeleteIt is absurd to me that anyone could make the arguement that Aid is destroying Africa when it is so clearly obvious that preventable diseases are destroying Africa. AIDS and TB have effectively wiped out much of a generation in their prime(effectively wiping out the workforce) and have left a second generation of orphans in dire need of assistance. These orphans are left susceptible to malaria and diarrheal diseases that are devastating to children. Foreign Aid is far from effecient and in some cases is barely effective, but it is not killing people and decimating the economy, no, preventable diseases(and ALL of the diseases mentioned are preventable) are doing that job.
Regarding those commenters that still insist that Africa is not worse off because of aid: as I've written before, that is not my opinion, but the opinion of those who know better: Dambisa Moyo, Zambian economist and author writes that "evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that aid to Africa has made the poor poorer, and the growth slower. The insidious aid culture has left African countries more debt-laden, more inflation-prone, more vulnerable to the vagaries of the currency markets and more unattractive to higher-quality investment. It's increased the risk of civil conflict and unrest ... Aid is an unmitigated political, economic and humanitarian disaster."
ReplyDeleteFrom Never Changing Headlines: Africans are Starving Send Money