meeting in the aisle

Villages in action - or TEDxpoor

Ever since I made the decision to focus on international development both personally and professionally, I have been very aware of the “White man’s burden,” or “white man in shinig armour” element. Like little else in this world, there is no clear answer, and the world continues to be coloured in shades of grey - and that goes for development issues too. Generally though, I prefer not to be paralysed by uncertainty.

So when I read about Villages in action, which is happening on November 27, 2010, I was very pleased. The more things like this that happen, the more open the debates, wide range of opinions and experiences are aired, and varied solutions proposed, the better.

I am beyond excited about the chance to hear what people who’ve never heard of the MDG’s think about community development. Villages in Action will feature speakers, panels, music, and all the other sorts of activities that one sees at a fancy summit. The only difference here is that the voices will be those of people who actually live in poverty, who know what it is like to live on $1-2/day, and who some how figure out how to raise children and get by in the most difficult of circumstances. In other words, the experts. - Texas in Africa

There’s also a backgrounder in the Huffington Post - A Voice of the voiceless: villages in action

“The world is living through a moral crisis”

An excerpt from Jeffrey Sachs’ opinion piece Millennium Development Goals in an age of fear and loathing, paints a rather alarming picture of the direction of our world that is worth highlighting:

The world is living through a moral crisis, in which our societies are struggling to adapt to new realities of globalisation.

The MDG summit took place in the same days that Sweden saw a far-right, anti-immigrant party take seats in parliament. France is harassing the Roma for local political gain. The US is in the throes of anti-Islamic fever, a rightwing Tea Party challenge and anti-immigrant fervour. High unemployment, economic uncertainty and political manipulation of the public by various interests threaten our very social stability. For many, Africa is a target of racism and opprobrium, not partnership.

The moral crisis in Europe and the US is even deeper than ethnic and racial divisions. An age when we should be celebrating our unprecedented affluence and productivity has become an age of fear and even loathing, when basic values of social solidarity, compassion, succour for the poor and mutual responsibility are under unprecedented threat. It is all the more remarkable and important that the millennium goals still attract our focus, as an inspiration, challenge, and as a reminder of our common humanity and shared responsibility. They may yet save us all, rich and poor together.

Jeffrey Sachs is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University

You can read the full article here, or check out my weekend links for more MDG-related news.

Weekend reader - links, because they’re worth it

- Can you be a ‘homeless’ homeless person?

- This could possibly be the best advice I’ve ever read on presenting and audience (Chris Brogan)

- Sex with drunk girls is funny, according to Amazon (Sociological Images)

- The Guardian shows you what it is like growing up in Africa as part of its coverage of the UN MDG Summit in New York this week, but there has been criticism of the media for largely ignoring the summit, and the standard criticism that famous people have no business fighting poverty (which I disagree with, but that’s for another time).

- Speaking of the UN, did you know the UN has a 24hr webcast? This morning I listened to a session about stabilising Sudan (and found out that violence here is escalating, again).

- Why having a writer in the family can suck for everyone - Emily Gould & The Rumpus

- Hate overhearing people’s conversations on the train? This is why

- An interactive literary map of Manhattan? Tres cool.

- And finally, I can’t work out whether Penelope Trunk is insanely brave or insanely annoying (or both), but I read her e mails in full every time:

“You have two names, you claim you’re a millionaire, and you’re lying on the floor taking drugs.”

p.s. like links? Here’s some from last week.

p.p.s Africa is not a country, but Burundi is.

[Photo: one of my favourites from Kolkata, India]

Top 5 - if i could be everywhere at once

It’s been a damn busy week, and as I type I’m curled up on the couch, the soothing voice of David Attenborough on the TV telling me the world is weary of all the humanity weighing it down, and I’m all worked up over a TV program which was debating the ban of the burqa*.

It is under these circumstances I bring you my top 5 places I would be this week if I could be everywhere at once.

1. The UN Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York (Sep 20-22). Two of my dreams colliding - watching the sun set over skyscrapers listening to this song, and halving extreme poverty by 2015 - would be about as close to heaven as I could imagine getting this week. Sigh.

2. This is not art festival in Newcastle (Sep 30-Oct 4, Aus) sounds pretty darn cool. Writing, theatre, criticism, sounds and sights and colours and, no doubt, full of people you’d love to have in your phonebook.

3. Not to be outdone, the shiny city of Sydney is throwing up Art and About. I’d make sure I saw the bike bike, probably enroute to the oh-so-Melbourne sounding:

check out the oft-neglected Sydney laneways - a maze of history and urban appeal…Are You Looking At Me? breathes new life into these dark alleyways as nine contemporary Sydney artists inject them with sound, light, imagery and projections.

4.One of my new favourite songs is by a Melbourne band called The Spoils, and they’re playing at Old Bar tonight. I’m not there, but I wish I was.

5. And last but not least, with all the cement in my life lately, I would love nothing more than to get lost among the trees, fall asleep to the sounds of a waterfall, and wake up to a herbal tea and a hike in the Dandenong Ranges. Bliss.

*No, I don’t in any way support the banning of the burqa, in case you were wondering.

p.s. That’s me admiring the sun rising over the Annapurna Ranges in Nepal. More bliss.

Africa is not a country….is it? - Burundi!

This post is part of my ‘A Country in Africa’ series.

I need you to do something for me. Sit back and take a deep breath. Inhale deeply, fill your lungs all the way up, let your chest rise. And now exhale slowly and say “we can end extreme poverty in our time.”

Now come with me. We have a lot to discuss when it comes to Burundi.

Quick facts:
    •    Burundi is one of the smallest countries in Africa, but also one of the most overpopulated
    •    It is landlocked (and we know what that means…)
    •    The capital city is Bujumburu
    •    French comes in handy there, as does Kirundi and Swahili, none of which I speak.

The pain

How else to describe what has happened in this tortured part of the world? War, genocide, conflict, extreme poverty, refugees, violence against women, death, disease. Everything I read about Burundi is devastating.

The warring between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes has decimated the country in almost every way, and continues to plague the region. I can’t quite understand how I studied the Rwandan genocide at university and yet know so little about the situation in Burundi. I mean, I knew a bit, in fact the only thing I did know about Burundi before this was that the Hutus and Tutsi conflict was present there too. But I had no idea how extreme the situation is.

Nor did I understand that it is this conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi that continues to ravage the Democratic Republic of Congo today. Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda are all affected by the class-based conflict, and peace still looks to be a long way off. A new report by the United Nations into war crimes in the Congo is further revealing realities of Hutu-Tutsi atrocities.

The fighting continues.

The money

And here it is - the country with the lowest GDP per capita in the world (shared with the Democratic Republic of Congo). If you’re from Burundi, you can expect to live off $300 per year. This seems like a good time to say out loud ‘there are 365 days in a year.’

The ease of doing business in Burundi is incredibly discouraging, with Burundi ranking 176 out of 183 economies around the globe.

Corruption is also yet another bad indicator, with Burundi ranking 168th our of 180 ranked economies.

Health
War, HIV/AIDS, and serious infectious disease have taken a huge toll on life expectancy and health indicators. If you are born in Burundi today, you can expect to live until the age of 51. Infant mortality is poor, at 64 deaths/1000 live births, and 46% of the population are aged 14 years and under.

 
Burundi compared to Australia and Burkina Faso - life expectancy & GDP from 1900-2009 via Gapminder.

Looking at the Gapminder graph above, it’s clear that Burundi has never been on a great trajectory, but things started heading dramatically backwards in the decade from 1987-1997. War, genocide and HIV/AIDS. Burundi (like Burkina Faso) has not experienced a substantial increase in health or GDP in the past century.

In terms of the Milennium Development Goals - there is virtually no such thing in Burundi. Burundi isn’t even listed on the site I normally use for this research and I had to use the official UN data site, which is not user friendly. I ended up visiting over ten different sites and can conclude that there is very little information available, and what is available is depressing. Burundi is off-target for every single MDG, and has only made a slight gain in the education of boys and girls.

While I could go on and on with more and more facts, I am summing up all my research by asking myself two questions based on what I have learned:

Would I travel to Burundi? Sadly, no.

Would I want to live there? No. But I would consider it in the capacity of aid and development work so I can tell more stories like this one.

This post is part of my ‘A Country in Africa’ series, see also: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana and Burkina Faso.