[Dialogue] African infant mortality a second look.

[Karl Hess]

Ken,

First of all, I don't think anyone said this was 
Bush policy.  It has been US policy for a very 
long time.

Second, yes there has been a lot of progress in 
reducing infant mortality in the last 25 years.

Third, obviously it is more complicated than any 
of us understand or have the patience to write or 
read.

Your post reminds me of a passage from Zen and 
the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence.  Discussing 
dealing with the horns of a dilemma, Pirsig said 
that one strategy for escaping the charging bull 
is to throw sand in his eyes.

Do you have any facts to illuminate the question 
of the role of US trade policy in mortality from 
hunger in Africa?

Karl

>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
>>>
>>>
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