[Dialogue] African infant mortality a second look.

[george]

Let me turn this argument a little.  True enough the US has thrown a 
lot of money at problems around the world, and true enough local 
practices block a lot of changes.  One of our discoveries, if you can 
call it that, is that in the 3rd World there are three major 
contradictions that little has been done to correct over the years and 
I doubt the issues we'd like to see change will actually do much 
changing until they are addressed.  The first is real property laws.  
People in the 3rd world who want to change things, set up a business, 
make a difference, can find their property, both land and business, 
taken away either by the courts -when someone richer than they pay the 
judge to find something wrong with their title or business rights and 
assign them to his benefactor.  This is one of the main reasons why so 
little development happens in the 3rd World.  Their entreprenuer class 
will try to leave the country and come to the U.S. or Europe, and 
generally do well here.  The second is transparency of the financial 
system.  In most countries, banks or financial companies have no 
liability to disclose their assests or liabilities, and banks are quite 
often run for other purposes, such as getting advance financial 
information, political power, deal making, etc.  The third is a 
protected and objective justice system.  Judges and the way courts are 
run in 3rd World countries ensure the continuation of corruption and 
prevent real development.

We could develop a village and get it to a certain point fairly 
quickly, however when it's economic and life style levels rose to a 
point above poverty political corruption both within and without the 
village, protection claims from military, local police and thugs, etc. 
began to kick in and many of the practices that Ken talked about 
multiplied by 10 would slow or turn the clock back.  Where villagers 
learned and used the methods in particular getting authorization that 
could ameloriate the effects to a certain extent development could 
occur at a low level.

The U.S. and European governments, from some of the studies I've been 
told exist, have poured about 3 trillion dollars to deal with poverty 
since the 1960's.  We now have more poor by count and percentage than 
in in 1960's, and the bottom most, which seemed to be getting addressed 
in the 90's, seem to be coming back now.  One needs to look at the 
money trail into 3rd World countries.  The only people that can handle 
big chunks of money or aid products are the very rich of those 
countries, usually about 3% of the population.  They own the truck 
fleets, warehouses, have the professional staffs, etc.  They make 
profits off of handling the money and products, housing the aid groups, 
etc., which is invested in the U.S. and Europe and they control access, 
finally who gets what.  Major corporations and others have leaned on 
this control to do profitable business in these places at their 
pleasure, and governments have used these contacts for their own 
purposes.

The IMF, WB and others are asked for funds repeatedly, since the last 
batch didn't do much.  The IMF institutes "reforms", devalues the 
currency and other manipulative tricks to supposedly get capital out to 
pay back loans, which has been found to lower the value of those 
nations exports, and make life harder for the poor.  The IMF and WB are 
now looking for other means of washing the egg off their face for past 
blunders (though you'd think they are the most successful things in the 
world to read their propaganda).  But no one is looking at dealing with 
the major contradiction (hopefully our team of consultants at the WB 
can have an impact there).  This issue isn't simple and it won't be 
solved by money, nor by shifting some cultural practices here and there 
(though all these things would help), as we know, it requires a genuine 
comprehensive approach, and a real desire from both developed and 
undeveloped nations and the global corporations to turn things around, 
build some Just structures.

Whether Kerry or even a Nader has the interest or energy to lead on 
this is, or could get beyond all the "rice bowls" that would be broken 
in the process is a good question.  I don't think either side is going 
to make this much of an issue, except maybe prices of AIDs medicines or 
how to handle Sudan.


All the best

George Holcombe
14900 Yellowleaf Tr.
Austin TX 78728
512/252-2756
512/294-5952

On Aug 5, 2004, at 9:07 AM, Karl Hess wrote:

> 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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