It's the Simple Things

So here I am spending a year in the world. Actually I think really I spend every year somewhere in the world. That would make sense. I am spending a year out in the foreign world, exploring, learning, and working (to some extent). My year in the world involves me spending a lot more time in one specific location than I am used to, one that will allow for a ton of writing, reading, and some self-reflection. I am learning quickly that I pretty much need to be by an ocean; I am becoming rather tired of the dry cough attacks that keep me from my much-needed sleep. I am also learning through my process of writing that sometimes I am afraid to really “take a stand.” I am afraid to say what I really want to say about different issues and problems because I fear everyone’s responses. Well not everyone’s, just those who disagree with my perspective and what I have to say. I guess that comes with the territory of writing your thoughts and posting them on the web for all to see. Luckily for me, most people don’t comment or have much to say at all to my perspective on the world. I don’t know yet if that is a good thing or a bad thing; we will just have to see.

Thanks Mom for all the informative articles about the continent I am living on so that I may continue to educate those following me this year. For those who don’t know and I would assume that is most people reading this, everyday my mom sends me 3-5 sometimes more emails from her new favorite news source allafrica.com. The funny part is that I send her 3-5 sometimes more emails regarding news articles from the nytimes.com or cnn.com. The other cool thing is that she is sort of my personal research assistant. If I make a comment on something that I plan to discuss further at a later point, I can pretty much expect an email the following day with all of the news articles and information one could need to make their point, if you catch my drift.

One follow-up that I decided to discuss further relates to the number of funeral service businesses that we see around us at all times and sure enough I have a great article that informed me more on the situation. I made a comment earlier about the life expectancy and the prevalence of AIDS in Lesotho, but I never really went into a whole lot of detail about South Africa. I shared a personal story in a way, but then I received an email from my allafrica.com specialist discussing the mortality of children in South Africa and I have to say it is pretty distressing. So here’s the deal: about 75,000 children under the age of five die in S.A. every year; this means that nearly 200 children die everyday. It is interesting to find out that HIV accounts for a lot of these deaths because these are children born with the disease from HIV-positive women. Out of the 1 million babies born per year in S.A., almost 300,000 are born to HIV-positive mothers. Something else I learned, this comes from a local source, Thembi, to be exact, is that women cannot “have their tube’s tied” until they have had at least 4 children, 3 children if they are HIV positive or had C-sections. Now sometimes I think that unless there is something that can stop women from passing on HIV through childbirth, wouldn’t it make sense not to allow these women to have children. I mean reading that back, I know it sounds horrible, but there has got to be some way to stop passing on this disease and this could be a start. Actually, that just sound ludicrous because I have no idea how you could control that. I know there are things out there and in the works that are trying to prevent the mother-child transmission, but still…at least if the mother cannot afford proper medication for herself and the child. In the article the statement has been made that HIV was severely ignored for too long which allowed it to reach the levels that it has reached today and that there has been a delay in the strategies created to prevent the mother-to-child transmission. Hmmm, interesting.

So of the children that die every day and every year, 57% die from HIV. 100 of these children are dying from HIV and the other 100 are dying from completely treatable and preventative illness like diarrhea and pneumonia. These are things that could be prevented with proper housing, water, and sanitation. Simple basic human needs.