Fill up your water bottle and get ready for an awesome way to help provide kids in Africa with clean water. For the next couple of weeks, I challenge you to drink only water. No juice, no soda, no sports drinks, no (gasp!) coffee, no Jamba Juice—nothing but water for two weeks.
Why do we keep on going towards the Middle East? Do they want our opinions, religion, and our presence there? Apparently not.
Then why keep on going back? It is to make ourselves look better, and to prove to the world that we will not back down from anything.
A few months ago I had the opportunity to chat with Kendall Ciesemier, the 15-year-old founder of the Kids Caring 4 Kids organization, which provides impoverished African children with food and education. This past September, she appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” with former President Bill Clinton, who came to her high school and spoke at a surprise assembly.
Kendall felt moved to fight for justice in fifth grade, when she watched an Africa special on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” about orphans. One girl her age had lost her family to AIDS, and now she carried the responsibility of raising her younger sibling. Compelled by the orphan’s pain and grief, Kendall signed up to sponsor a child through World Vision that day. Later she expanded her sponsorship to include an entire Zambian village. Her charity eventually grew into a nonprofit organization, Kids Caring 4 Kids.
“It’s gotten so much easier for people to join the force to fight AIDS,” Kendall said at a coffee shop in January 2008.
Why is our country so busy with the Iraq War, when their are so many people in Africa starving and dying of disease? We are so busy massacring the Iraqi people, and covering up our search for oil with the stupid WMD excuse, that we don't even notice that there are bigger fish to fry. We should be spending our time and money on disease research and feeding the poor.
Two decades of violence have drenched Uganda in blood. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) have captured children, forced them to become soldiers, and brainwashed them with terrible lies. They define training as killing another child, murdering those who refuse to comply. They rub shea nut oil on the children’s skin, and say the bullets will bounce off.
What do you know about Liberia? Or do you even care?
Americans pay little attention to Liberia, and most Europeans think of the country as a joke. […] In case of apparently friendly relations between that country and European powers there has usually come to the surface some design to deprive Liberia of its territory or to secure some economic advantage. The American’s endorsement of the Firestone invasion of that African area shows that on this side of the Atlantic the same attitude has developed.
(Azikiwe 352)
The above quote best exemplifies what happened in Liberia in the 1920s in regards to the selling out of elite Liberians to US capitalist interests. Exploring the past is key to understanding how and why the exploitation of Liberians continues to happen today. Beginning as a colony for African-American settlement on the continent of Africa, Liberia grew from a small community of hopefuls into a nation rife with exploitation and a class system that denies the existence of, as Marcus Garvey might say, a “United Negro State.” With much help from the U.S. the new nation of Liberia was established and it started its long journey into the world of nations. (Pham 12) As it embarked on this journey it was not without the typical bumps and bruises. As Liberia encountered financial troubles it turned its back on the country’s founding principles. Thus the economic interests of the U.S. and the black Liberian elites superceded the facades of black-nationalism and Garveyism in the ‘black nation’ of Liberia.
I'm having a little trouble with my defining progress blog, so I thought to myself, why not talk about an entire continent that is seemingly devoid of progress? Africa seems pretty stagnant!
In Northern Uganda, the streets are filled with blood. Children are forced to be soldiers, killing relentlessly for the sake of survival. This war has been going on for more than 20 years. America claims to be this powerful, compassionate country. We try to be the heroes, helping out the underdog. But what about Africa?
