Impressionable Minds

First, sorry for this being brief since this is a subject that deserves more explanation. I will have to do that later.

This morning we visited a Dhaka slum where the World Food Program is providing fortified cookies that deliver 67% of the key vitamins and minerals the kids need everyday. This is necessary because their only other source of food is the small amount of rice that their mother can afford to buy and cook every day. On really special occassions, they manage to round up some vegetable scraps and spring for a small sachet of spices to cook a "curry". Most countries refuse to allow NGOs to introduce nutrition vehicles like cookies because they fear sending the wrong message and building bad habits, e.g. eating "junk" foods. Bangladesh is so poor and the government is so weak and ineffective that they are thrilled to have the cookie program.

I was in the slum this morning, but I still can't believe that they exist. It was like being on a movie set... impossible to process as real. We were for the first time literally in the heart of the slum, walking through the tiny alleys, stepping over the cooking fires, having to politely decline residents' invitations to step into their homes (which were maybe 4ft x 4ft tin rooms with maybe a 6ft ceiling height and a mattress if they were lucky), etc..

(I don't have time to post all the pictures on the blog yet, but for an unguided tour, check out http://picasaweb.google.com/ckurasek/CK361BSelectedPhotos and start with the picture of the tiny, black and white baby goat... that was when we arrived in the slum. Also a couple of brief videos at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCNBpZGxeOQ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCOcv6kV5SM)

But the kids were remarkable. They were happy, energetic, and full of hope, despite the fact that they quite literally were the poorest of the poor humans gracing the face of the Earth, packed into the world's most population dense country (the city states like Singapore are more dense, but they are generally more middle class and living in high-rises). When I asked what they want to be when they grow up, about 80% said doctors. A few said teachers, a few others scientists, and one boy a mechanic.

I asked one of the officials from the NGO that was running the informal schools in the slum (there are four covering 10%-15% of the kids in the slum... the WFP cookie program is funded through their emergency relief fund - triggered by the spike in commodity prices last year - and is set to expire in June of next year... if they can't find more funding, the kids will go back to being malnourished and spending their days working in the markets with their parents instead of attending school... providing food is one of the only ways to get families to send their kids to school in slums) what the realistic odds were of any of the kids making it to high school (grade 6+ in Bangladesh), much less making it into a profession, and she said, "Honestly, the odds are not a single one will make it."

One of the things that struck me though was the lucidity and intelligence of the kids, even those who were only in the equivalent of the second grade and received three hours of informal education a day. They were as sharp and vibrant as any kid in any school in the West, whereas the adults were much more in a stupor, much more difficult to communicate and interact with (through a Bengali translator, of course), and much more clueless about the world. I get the impression that their lens to the world is mysticism and most think that Westerners have magic powers (like the Kenyan cab driver who handed me his cell phone and said, "It's broken. Virus." Totally perplexed, I stared at the phone, looked at him, turned back to the phone and said, "Um. Ok. Yeah, it looks broken." "Press the buttons, the numbers don't come up." "Hm, yep, you're right." "Can you fix?" "Can I fix your phone??" The Kenyan consultant with us got mad - "He doesn't know how to fix your phone! Why would he know how to fix your phone?!" I figured he thought that all Westerners built their own computer chips or something).

For various reasons I've previously discussed, I am convinced the number one intervention that can have the biggest, broadest, most permanent impact on the lives of the billions suffering around the world is rudimentary education. If our brains are not shaped by the right stimulation, behaviors, experiences, and knowledge by say age five, an educated child and an uneducated child might as well be different species of animal. It seems like there's a point of no return whereby you can no longer have rational discussions based on the simple understandings of the world that we take for granted.

Things like sanitation - how can you convince a mother that the way to keep her kids from dying is to simply make sure she uses water from a "special" source, when she thinks you're crazy for trying to tell her that there are invisible bugs living in the well water that are trying to kill her family? How can you convince her to send her child to a room full of paper to sit around for three hours playing and drawing when that kid could be helping earn extra grains of rice by begging in the street?

The lack of basic education underlies virtually every problem faced in the developing world to some extent. This is particularly relevant given a proposed bill currently being debated in Uganda's Parliament that makes homosexuality and being infected with HIV crimes punishable by death.

CNN's coverage can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/12/08/uganda.anti.gay.bill/index.html

Maggie brought this to my attention, indignant and perplexed at how a modern government could even be considering something like this. Perhaps cynically, I was not as shocked - yes, they are putting in motion an egregious evil, but I don't think it stems from hate as much as it stems from ignorance. If they believe HIV is God's way of punishing the sinning homosexuals of the world, then in their minds, they are doing something holy.

But can we really expect to change their ways of thinking when one of their national newspapers publishes garbage like the following article? "How to tell if someone is gay"... consider this quote from one of Uganda's budding legal scholars: "I know what gay people are like. Controlling the issue of gays is hard because there are no stringent laws against it. So many high profile people including Pastors have been suspected but government never investigates." If someone had shown me this article printed out without any identifying text, I would have bet a lot of cash that it was from The Onion.

The full article can be found here: http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2773:how-to-tell-that-someone-is-gay&catid=40:street-talk&Itemid=73

Clearly there are tools at the disposal of the more human rights-oriented societies in the world, such as sanctions and other punitive measures (or war when all other options are exhausted), but these are only stopgap measures... they work only as long as someone is vigorously pursuing / enforcing them. I don't see how we ever put an end to cancerous ideologies like these unless we get to the minds of future generations before they're permanently molded into vessels capable of nurturing and propagating ignorant, dangerous, self-destructure belief systems and incapable of nuturing and propagating belief systems based on the branches of accumulated human wisdom that foster a more just, peaceful, propserous civilization.

So, upon relating to folks my first-hand experiences with the world's organizations and programs dedicated to development and the conclusions I am evolving that they are all utterly hopeless, set up to fail, and misguided, several people have asked me, "Ok, so then what are we supposed to do?" I'm not totally sure I have tactical recommendations at this point, and I do think we who have also have an obligation to help those who don't with their immediate needs, but a long-term, permanent solution has to start with universal education.

Until 95% of the world's 14 year-olds have the equivalent of at least a fifth grade, secular education, I really don't think we can realistically expect to conquer the seemingly simple, endemic problems at the root of humanity's worst ills - hunger when there is enough food out there; diseases when there are simple preventions and treatments; war based on silly, misunderstood anecdotes of history; hate based on ignorance and fear; etc.