"The Fire in Africa"

At the recent National Prayer Breakfast Bono (yes thats right, like from U2) spoke to President Bush about thw work that still needs to be done in Africa. After a year of The One Campaign putting pressure on the government and the people to pay attention to the needs of Africa, especially when it comes to poverty and HIV/AIDS, i wish to add a little personal antidote. I've spent the past 6 months in Africa, the first 4 in South Africa, a month of travel throughout Southern Africa and I am one month into a spring semster in Ghana. Sub-Saharan Africa is plagued with many problems, malaria (a preventable and treatable disease) continues to claim millions of lives a year, especially pregnant women and young children. HIV/AIDS has already killed 25 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa and nearly 26 million are currently HIV positive, with that number rising every day.
Bono spoke about the three most important things of OUR generation will be remember for in the history books
1. The response to the war on terror
2. The digital revolution
3. What we DID or DID NOT do to help put out the FIRE ragging in AFRICA

Well clearly, if your reading a blog, you are well-versed on the second topic, and media coverage bombards us with minute by minute updates on the middle-east (and I know I will never forget where I was on September 11) But how much does the third influence your daily life?

Of course, I am passionate about the third topic. I spent much of my time in South Africa researching the effects of HIV/AIDS on developing (and therefore fragile) democracies and I am now doing education in the Ghanaian community about HIV/AIDS.
The Tsunami last year killed approximentally 150,000 people, it was a global tragedy no doubt. Each month, HIV/AIDS kills as many people, and malaria more. Perhaps this will help put the depth of the problem to all of you.
Why am I telling you this?

We, as educated Americans, and as compassionate democrats (for I have very little faith in the compassion of most republicans) . Most Americans, democrats in particular, would pride themselves on being non-racist, but would they sit idly by as 6500 Europeans died every day of preventable diseases? I do not think so. Americans would be instantly mobilized to provide the life-saving medication and supplies to slow the spread of any such disease. That is what malaria is doing in countries like my beloved Ghana.
Perhaps to say it is racism is to harsh...perhaps it is ignorance. I am a firm believer that ignorance is dangerous. Educate yourself, and help make sure that the people around you are educated.

It may be cliche to say, and we have all heard it a million times, but we ARE the future. The eminant social, economic, political COLLAPSE of Africa is a realitiy that WE are going to have to deal with as the next wave of politicians, businessmen and woman and as citizens of the most powerful and influential nation in the world.

Educate yourself about Africa, please. And help Africa to educate itself...support the work of NGO's in DC and around the world that help educate. Great work has already been done, but there is so much more to do. In places like South Africa, where racial divisions have scarred generations there are so many things to overcome.

Thabo Mbeki, the current president of South Africa, has publically called into question the scientific basis of anti-retroviral drugs that help prevent Mother to Child transmission. He had to be brought to court and forced to provide these drugs to his people. International pressure is KEY to make sure that people are getting ACCURATE information from KNOWLEDGABLE sources. We were all lucky enough to have HIV/AIDS education in school. We are certainly more knowledgable as a generation then our parents are. (Ask an "average" 50 year old about HIV transmission and they may very well have wrong information, many I have spoken to do)

So I pleed with you. This is a fight that I will be fighting for decades to come, but please do your part as citizens of the global community.
1. educate yourself about Africa
2. understand the complexities of problems
3. Donate however you can to organizations doing work on the ground
4. put pressure on our government to do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING it can to help


Remember, we can move mountains