Do Goodery Message

I drive past the Ikea/Ikano/Curve area every morning on my way to work. Ever so often, there’d be groups of security guards walking to their respective mega-stores. What strikes me each time I see them, is the fact that they carry their possessions (likely a bottle of water and lunch) in plastic shopping bags in lieu of knapsacks, satchels or even those cheapo blue-white-red stripey market bags that you wish your mum would stop using.

Someone once quite proudly declared that when her mother used the infamous “children are starving in Ethiopia” blackmail line to guilt her into finishing her meal, she replied “why don’t you send this to the children in Ethiopia then?”. Apparently sass in that context was something to be proud of. No wonder children these days think it’s uber cool to swear and cuss.

In response to the South Asian Tsunami disaster of December 2004, too many Malaysians responded to the call for donations by doing a spring-clean of their homes and donating stuff that are about as useful to the victims as a tin of expired caviar is to a starving African child.

I am not for one moment suggesting that one should run out and buy a carload of backpacks for those security guards, or that one ought to be guilted into finishing every scrap of one’s La Bodega breakfast or even that one should risk whiplash of the wrist from tearing out a check in the name of the charity of the month.

I am not advocating knee-jerk responses that are often motivated by our own need to stop feeling bad/helpless about world poverty. Poverty on our very doorstep, even.

Twenty one years ago, the British music industry, led by Bob Geldof, said “Feed the World” (aside: Don’t They Know It’s Christmastime is a much better and more appropriate song than that drippy We Are The World) and raised millions for relief of the Ethiopian famine in a precursor to Live Aid in 1985.

Over the past weekend, Sir Bob’s Live 8 concerts went underway in cities in Canada, USA, Italy, France, Japan, Russia, Germany and Africa. This time, it’s not a fundraiser. Sir Bob wants to push a point across to the leaders of the G8 countries that the people of the developed world want to help to end poverty in Africa. The crowd turnout for the free concerts plus the online name pledging would serve as a pressure group for the G8 to send aid, forgive the national debts of the poorest African nations and initiate free trade to allow Africans to compete fairly on the world markets.

Live 8 is essentially therefore a political lobby backed by a global show of people power. Cynics would undoubtedly have a field day however, given that there’s been no shortage of reports of the concert-attendees admitting to not knowing the history behind “Live 8”, what cause the concerts were for or even what G8 stands for.

How relevant to African poverty can a bunch of performances and crowds of people who lack even the rudimentary knowledge of the issues at hand (what more an understanding of the sheer enormity of the problem) be?

I didn’t watch the entire 11 hour telecast, but from what I did catch, I was disappointed that hardly any footage of the dire situation in Africa was shown to the crowds. How powerful though, were the clips that they did show in Hyde Park; a haggard Annie Lennox on the ground in Uganda highlighting the extent of devastation brought about by HIV/AIDs, and the heart-rending pictures of starving children who have barely the energy to stand, much less walk.

For many though, the concerts were more a chance to catch a free performance and to be able to claim participation in a media event or a historic cause. In the euphoria that only being present in such a massive swell of humanity can bring, it is easy to feel a passionate, yet paradoxically detached, solidarity with Africa’s poor. How emotionally attractive it was to three-click along with Will Smith and the rest of the world to convey the message that an African child dies every three seconds.

But powerfully symbolic gesture as it was, how many stopped to reflect on the reality of the math? How many watched those clips and felt the reality of the situation with their hearts?

Throwing money at the governments of Africa and forgiving their debts is a solution that doesn’t address the reality of how atrociously corrupt many of the African governments are. Mugabe, Barre, Mbotu Sese Seko, Mengistu and Mswati III, to name but a few garden variety despots, openly pilfered the aid monies received by their respective countries and decimated their economies in the name of arming the military and living in blatant luxury.

There is a fine line between Pity and Compassion. Knee-jerks are often motivated by pity and are just instant remedies to shoo away the bad feelings you get from being confronted by a less than rosy picture of reality. Pity is detached, and doesn’t have time to think about the realities of life. Pity demands that somebody ELSE does something about it.

The knee-jerk reaction to Live 8 is to ride the wave of theoretical solidarity and head up to Scotland this weekend to protest as the G8 leaders meet, or if you’re not so militantly inclined, to send a cheque to your nearest African charity. Will all that really make a difference? Will the protests all just amount to a traffic and security inconvenience? Will your money go towards paying for the charity’s brand new corporate office, or worse, be channelled towards terrorism financing (sorry, I work in a bank, these things slip out)?

Distributing free backpacks to the earliermentioned guards can be a slap to their dignity. They don’t need our pity. Suggesting that your plate of unfinished food be sent to Ethiopia isn’t realistic and paints you as a smartass. Donating your garbage isn’t altruism, it’s just gobsmacking opportunism and outrageous idiocy. The starving and homeless deserve more than our scraps and hand-me-downs.

The more important and fundamental feeling that something like Live 8 ought to inspire at the very least, is simply - Gratitude. We need to truly reflect on the things that we have, in the context of what most of the world don’t. We have to be genuinely thankful for the lives we lead. From humble gratitude, compassion will stir.

Compassion, unlike Pity, moves you to reach out and do something or give something of yourself, on the ground, in the dirt, though not necessarily the actual situation that sparked your compassion. Compassion accepts the reality that life can suck really really badly for some, and that if you look at the picture as a whole, it really IS a losing battle. But that doesn’t mean that smaller skirmishes can’t or shouldn’t be fought, at another time even.

Recently, I saw a CNN news interview with a 17 year old American high school student, Kristen Karinshak. Author Sobonfu Somé had given a talk at Kristen’s school about the conditions in her village in Burkina Faso in West Africa where her village’s women and children had to walk for as much as 6 hours to the nearest water source for their daily supplies. The water would then be carried in heavy containers on their heads as they trekked another 6 hours back. Imagine doing that every other day.

Kristen was moved. How easy it was to take for granted the water that comes from her house taps. She enlisted 15 other teenagers and organised a Walk For Water campaign to raise money for Somé’s Dagara tribe. From this campaign, they raised USD45,000, enough to build 6 wells in Somé’s village. CNN followed Kristen to Burkina Faso where she would stay for a few weeks to oversee the construction of the wells.

A handful of teenagers may not have made even a microscopic dent in the overall standard of living of all impoverished Africans. But their small efforts went directly to the heart of the problem and made all the difference in one village. Can’t say as much for the billions in foreign aid monies that never reached the villages of Africa in the 20 years since Live Aid. Let’s not even think about our own tsunami relief funds.

Policyplanners will never affect the same kind of grassroots change as those, like Kristen, who actually address and fix the problems in the field, piecemeal as it may be.

Reality is, not all of us can be as altruistically inclined or action-oriented. But the very, very least we could do, is to be thankful for the life we lead, and to respect the dignity of those who aren’t as fortunate.

In case you think I’m getting all sappy and do-goodery, gag not. I must confess that only 2 days ago I wanted to shoot several shrieking-for-fun children. Cartoon-style of course, with no blood, damage, death or suchlike. Oh, the satisfaction.

Bratty screamers deserve no compassion.
(why do I get the feeling that all comments will be in respect of this last 2 paragraphs only?)

P/s - somewhere along the way, I lost a point I was intending to make. Live 8 should have been more about what's going on in Africa than what Coldplay is going to perform. That being said, my gosh, Beyonce's thighs are really rather chubby, no? And Sir Bob needs some shampoo.