Quote:
Originally Posted by legion
A good friend (actually, more of a mentor) went on a trip from Texas to the tip of South America and back after college (30 years ago). He had no real plan of how to accomplish this. He took very little money and a book bag full of necessities. He left the U.S. a hardcore liberal. He arrived back two years later a hardcore conservative.
|
Is your friend named "AP"?
APn 09/27 1206 Horn-Relief Workers
Copyright, 1992. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
DAGAHALEY CAMP, Kenya (AP) -- Habiba Ali, 20, lovingly holds her son
Mohamed as a doctor with a large syringe feeds him
through a nasal tube. The 2-year-old is little larger than a
newborn.
Like so many others in this eastern Kenya camp for Somali
refugees, Mohamed may have arrived at the feeding center too late.
Scores of tiny mounds in a graveyard 300 yards away attest to his
probable fate.
"We have social workers who go tent to tent, finding kids
whose mothers wouldn't bring them in for one reason or another,"
said Eddie Kangara, a Kenyan official with CARE International who
supervises the camp. "It's often too late."
Elodie Martel, a Montreal native who is in charge of social
services for CARE's camps in Kenya, said many of the Somali women,
traumatized by the anarchy they left behind to seek safety, are
desperately afraid of authority figures, even doctors.
But she also spoke of the ultimate desperation of some
parents.
"She will come and say, `My child died.' But really, the
mother or father has pushed with one hand over the child's eyes, and
put the other over the mouth," Miss Martel said. "I've talked to
doctors who have seen it done. They say the baby doesn't fight at
all.
"Apparently they figure why give medicine to my child --
she's hopeless -- when others can be saved."
No matter how professional the charity worker, the pressure
of seeing dead children every day is telling.
Riding on the back of a pickup truck into Liboi camp just
east of Dagahaley, regional camp coordinator Gail Neudorf of
Vancouver, B.C., pointed to a group of men standing and talking.
"Look at those men. Do you see anybody malnourished? No," she
said.
"That's because the men eat first, the women eat next, then the
children eat -- if there's anything left after the animals eat.
That's what really hurts: The animals eat before the children.
"It makes sense for survival in the nomadic culture. But not now."
--------------------------------------------------------------