[Dialogue] African infant mortality a second look.

[Ruth and Ken Gilbert]

Hello Fred.  ( and by inclusion, all those in this dialogue)

About your reference to Bush economic policy causing deaths of African 
infants.

The UN was estimating 20,000 African child deaths from malnutrition and 
malaria a day when I was in West Africa.

But it's way more complicated than saying it is due to US economic policy. 
As ICA West Africa organized baby weighings in villages where we saw 
obviously malnourished children, I realized that : 1) it didn't make sense 
that in these areas with in tact family units ( i.e. grandmothers around to 
advise daughters about how to feed children successfully) and           2) 
all the malnourished infants had well fed siblings.   ( there were 
exceptions to this statement - see below).  I came to realize that mothers 
were intentionally not weaning certain infants to solid food, but continued 
to breast feed them.  The result was that by the end of a year, they failed 
to thrive and died.  It takes a while to get into a culture deeply  enough 
to figure out what is going on.  It turns out that certain sequences of 
children are considered bad luck, and it is better to allow that child to 
die. For example, the third child of the same sex in sequence is bad 
luck.  The seventh child is bad luck ( I'm typing from memory, not my field 
notes, but I think that is right).  There were other calculations still 
more complicated.  We also knew that twins were always put out to the 
forest to die. The "given" explanation was that when twins came, it was an 
attempt by the devil to sneak into earth through a womb.  It was better to 
let both of them die than to risk that the devil would get into the 
village.  I suspect the real reason that twins are left to die is that the 
are is VERY poor agricultural land.  A mom has to pick up her child and go 
to the field and work the day after she gives birth. She can carry one 
child to the field, she can't carry twins to the field. Those of you who 
have traveled in Abidjan have noted how often a street beggar is a woman 
with twins.  This is a woman who has defied the upcountry wisdom that twins 
must be put out to perish in the bush and has elected instead to come to 
the city to beg.  Twins are not common in Cot DÍvoire. . In near by 
Nigeria, where the agricultural land is much richer, twins are cherished 
and welcomed. Twins are unusually common in the rich Nigerian Delta, and 
normally a woman's sister or other female relative will help care for the 
twins. The dominate tribal group in Cote DÍvoire got there because  they 
lost a political struggle in their original land in Nigeria and were driven 
to the harsh land of Cote DÍvoire.     In such a poor land, I suspect that 
the complex traditions about unlucky child sequence also have their actual 
base in the need for a mom to limit the number of mouths she attempts to 
feed. Those of us who live in a country where abortion is readily available 
are not in a position to judge how women on other situations make these 
complex and difficult decisions about controlling family size - especially 
where the actually farming to feed the children is done by that mom. The 
Baoule tradition is that they took their name from their great military 
queen who, in the process of the forced migration out of Nigeria, came to 
the river that is now the boundary to Cote D 'Ivoire. The river was 
swarming with crocodiles.  Their enemy was on their heels.  The queen 
grabbed her infant son, and held him underwater as a sacrifice to appease 
the river gods.  The word Baoule translates "He has died. These are the 
words that birthed the nation as the river allowed them to pass through - 
but served as a barrier to the oncoming enemy. Ït is clear in this harsh 
land, women are expected to make hard decisions.

The exception that I mentioned above. - in a village where a decision had 
been made to shift from mud houses to cement houses, EVERY family in the 
village agreed to scrape every single possible penny until there was enough 
money to invest in cement blocks and tin roofs.  In those villages, every 
infant and toddler was malnourished. It   usually took a village about 
three years to save enough money to convert to cement block.  Once they 
made the conversation, priorities shifted to children and the babies from 
that point on would be fed normally.

Can I mention that at one point in our village health program, we were 
easily distributing 20,000 condoms a month, most of which were used several 
times.  The official Government policy was that birth control, being 
considered unethical by Catholic authorities, had to be illegal in Cote 
DÍvoir.  We made it clear that we were not doing birth control, our condoms 
were indicated ONLY for child spacing to insure that the children who were 
born were healthy. With that little turn of the phrase, we kept officials 
happy in scores of villages two sous prefects, and in the ministry of 
health. We also distributed bead necklaces that helped women keep track of 
the menstrual cycles to allow them to practice natural contraception.   The 
demand for all of these was tremendous.  Given the technology to limit 
their families, poor women ( and men) quickly took advantage of them.

This note is not in praise of Bush economic policy.  I think that it does 
keep Africa poor ( as have the trade policies of all Western nations for 
the last two decades).  I prefer a trade policy that keeps them poor to a 
so called diplomatic policy that keeps them at war as proxies for the 
Western nations.  I think that other strategies are possible - and minimal 
cost in economic terms. Burt Western allegiance to "capitalism as an 
efficient market organizer" is applied as blind dogma all through our 
relationships with Africa. Even if half the trained and competent managers 
didn't have fatal  AIDS infections, it would be a multi generational effort 
to move Africa as a whole into the status of a capital based economy.  For 
a lot of reasons, African isn't Asia and isn't going to respond to economic 
incentives as Asia did.

E-mail is a rather harsh media.  Sometimes harsh concepts discussed frankly 
in e-mail seem sort of aggressive.  I'm a little worried that somebody will 
take my note as an aggressive one.  Please be assured its my best effort to 
share facts as I see them. You get to interpret them.   But your 
interpretation has to respect that I spent six years upcountry and a lot of 
that sleeping in mud walled huts trying to figure out what the H was going 
on.   Ken

But it's way more complicated than saying that Bush economic policy is 
killing babies in Africa.

Ken Gilbert


At 02:10 PM 8/2/2004, you wrote:
>I quoted this from memory and it is more like 250/hour.  Sorry.  I got the 
>number this way.  I've never seen any serious effort to quantify it.  It 
>just is too horrible to contemplate.
>
>The UN estimates 20,000 deaths from hunger per day.  About half of these 
>are in Africa and most are children.  That comes to 500/hr from 
>hunger.  Assuming no deaths from US trade policy in South Asia, I estimate 
>that half of all deaths of children from hunger in Africa are from US 
>trade policy.
>
>There are several policies which make major 'contributions' - debt and 
>other WB/IMF policies are the major ones.  I can expand on this if anyone 
>would like, probably off the list. (see www.jubileeusa.org) Most poor 
>countries have enormous debt due to careless loans and support for 
>dictators from the 70's and 80's.  Since they have not been able to pay 
>interest, the principal conntinues to mount.  The US Treasury insists on 
>maintaining the status quo and although other countries are willing to 
>eliminate the debt they are not going to if the US doesn't do its 
>share.  These debt payments are in most of these countries more than they 
>spend for education or health care. Those
>countries where the debt has been reduced - Uganda particularly - have 
>increased school attendance and health care substantially.
>
>
>Then there are agricultural subsidies.  Rich landowners in MS, for 
>esxample, get subsidies so that they can sell cotton at prices so low that 
>poor farmers all over the world cannot make a living.  When a fammily is 
>existing on $1/day, it doesn't take much of a cut in income to devastate 
>them.  There are lots of crops like this.
>
>Then there is AIDS policy, etc, etc.
>
>But even if I'm off 50%, and it is OHLY 125 children dying every hour from 
>the policies of our government, who is going to defend that?
>
>Like I said, this election is life and death.
>
>Karl
>
>>On 8/1/04 5:44 PM, "Karl Hess" <khess at apk.net> wrote:
>>
>>>  For example, as far as I can calculate, the US trade policy kills
>>>  about 500 kids in Africa per hour.  Some of us are horrified by that.
>>
>>The question about the focus of this list and now Karl's posting above,
>>suggests to me a very, very important function of this list that is closely
>>aligned with my values.
>>
>>If we sight sources for information like '500 kids per hour,' and if we link
>>our political commentary to value declarations and faith statements, we'll
>>simultaneously ground and deepen a conversation that sometimes does stay
>>just ten feet off the planet and sometimes does reduce history to politics.
>>
>>David
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Dialogue mailing list
>>Dialogue at wedgeblade.net
>>http://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/dialogue_wedgeblade.net
>_______________________________________________
>Dialogue mailing list
>Dialogue at wedgeblade.net
>http://wedgeblade.net/mailman/listinfo/dialogue_wedgeblade.net