Stewart Botting is currently in Andhra Pradesh, India, as his Right Now Foundation helps C.P. Kumar of HEARTS India to build new homes for children orphaned by AIDS. At the epi-center of the Indian AIDS epidemic, Andhra Pradesh has the highest prevalence of HIV in the country.

Here is an excerpt from a letter Stewart sent to us supporters back home:

Everyone is waiting for water!  What comes out of the taps at sporadic times of the day is brown.  There are power cuts in the morning and evening – though how that relates to the water I am not sure.  I hoard buckets of water to wash everything in from myself to pots and pans!  I plan my life around available buckets – is there enough to have a rinse after some exercise?  Is there water to slush the toilet in the morning, have a shower and wash the dishes?  Washing clothes becomes an art form in water preservation.  Water becomes a preoccupation for me, but nothing new to the village women who have always queued by the pump in the morning, who know about scarcity of every kind.   

I am moved in these villages by the hardship of life and by the dignity of the people who have to endure it.  They do not complain of their lot but they do at times ask for help if the conditions of their life have become overwhelming.  I am in the places to hear these stories when they happens.  I hear stories from grandmothers who in the course of the telling become tearful, such is their despair – these women never cry!  Their children are dead from AIDS. They have been left with the grandchildren but they have no money – they are barely capable of going to work in the fields as labourers, all the work available to them in these rural areas.  They had expected to be looked after by their children in their old age but now must try and be the providers.  Some battle on – but some simply can’t cope.

There are stories of suicide and murder, of men just leaving home one day and never returning, abandoning their wives who must fend for their children on her own.  Alcoholism is rampant and often part of the tale of woe. The men die young, poisoned by the local liquor, exhausted from a life of hard labour – they die in their forties and fifties – men in their sixties look like octogenarians, stooped and addled.  Seventy is a grand old age to be celebrated for reaching. There are suicides and many a tale of despair, especially among those with HIV.  Life is so precarious that any calamity can tip ones sanity over the edge.  Hundreds of millions of lives are lived in this precarious manner – eight hundred million in fact – more than the whole population of sub Saharan Africa.

And yet still the kids run and laugh and wave!  I am opening five children’s homes in the Nellore District of Andhra Pradesh in South East India,  small, intimate homes, not big unwieldy institutions.  I am trying to do the right thing by the children. I am trying to put them front and centre of the work.  I am being careful to ensure the children remain firmly rooted in their local context.  The homes are in small towns neighbouring the villages where the children come from – they are not removed from their environment and the extended family remain key in their lives.  In our homes, we can ensure they are literate and numerate, we can encourage abilities and channel them toward higher learning – they can be encouraged and nurtured in a way that makes them recognise that education is a way out of the cycle of poverty in which their relatives are trapped.

The other day I heard that an HIV woman, who was losing weight by the day and  whose HIV positive children we support on an HIV nutrition programme we run, committed suicide.  Had she done it, I wondered, so that her children would be taken into care?  No. Surely not?  And yet her dying wish was that her children should be taken to “Sir’s house.”

This all sounds overwhelming – and I paint a grim picture – but it does not feel like this – not least, because the kids are great and inject life with a simple unquestioning vitality – they just have energy and curiosity!  They are just themselves, little people, who muck in and get on with it and who seem as aware as the rest of us that life needs to be taken one step at a time, for no one knows what tomorrow brings.

And still, we are all waiting for water.

Go to the Right Now Foundation if you’d like more information or to help.

Faiza Jama Mohamed and Janet Nkubana were named co-laureates of the 2008 Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger.

Last week I had the pleasure of watching live, these two magnificent women receive the Africa Prize, for their contribution to women’s rights and efforts at sustainability and an end to hunger.

One of these women empowered herself rising from a childhood of refugee camps and an unstable environment to return to her native home in Rwanda where empowered, she was dedicated to fighting hunger, poverty and hate. She reached out to the Hutu and Tootsi widows and help them see that behind the labels and pain they were all in need of the same things…love, hope, food, shelter and peaceful change. Together the troupe known as “Gahaya Links” -more than 4000 women- have utilized their basket weaving talent to bring sustainable change & micro-enterprising to a new level. BELIEVE ME…it’s a new level with commercialized CSR embracing the opportunity that neither these women nor the original sponsoring organization could foresee; their works can be purchased in the USA with proceeds going back into sustainability.

Our other equally talented recipient is a mover and shaker on women’s rights in Africa. This is no small task! To challenge not one system, but all systems in a region, to institute a effective declaration and protocol that recognizes women as contributors to change and to cease all criminal acts against them.

These women (2 and the 4000 plus behind them) have proven that sustainability comes from within and can be achieved with time, support & seed money from external donors/organizers who believe in them as much as they believe in themselves. Collaboration works and empowerment takes on a life of it’s own once the seed is sown.

So with all the efforts and arguments on ‘cures to global problems’… Globalhood IS RIGHT AND does have a point at the end of the day…THE seed sown through collaboration and empowerment (simultaneously) …yields a mighty damn forest…

I don’t know about you…but I see a forest planted by locals as far more effective in shielding from the rain storms than a few trees planted on untiled and unfertilized soil!!!

Another interesting read! http://proxied.changemakers.net/studio/01july/haque3.cfm

The women in Bangladesh have managed not only to become a driving force to promote economic independence for women, but have managed to set up a daycare center at work allowing them to multi-task while being the initiators of self growth and change.  They have protected themselves from scrutiny that they are not ‘following tradition’ and being ’suitable mothers’, challenged their position in the work force by being the sustainable force of Asia’s garment industry -which is tradition anyway, but now there’s credit!-, AND are motivating their daughters to want more for themselves than marriage and hand-outs from their husbands.

Talk about social change that is community driven, allowing slow but sustainable development, moderate challenges to the face of traditional roles, and opportunities for mutual gender respect.  These women have managed to manipulate their duties and roles to challenge economic conditions, ideology, gender stereotypes and create sustainable solutions, that may not be the kind of economic growth we hope for, BUT A GREAT START.

That’s motivation to do more and be the change you want to see!!!

If it’s not obvious why I’m reporting and not cynical but happy…women are the driving force and key to sustainability.  Positive changes in their roles reduce the cycle of early marriage, numerous unplanned pregnancies and continual poverty which is further correlated to diseases… which drives up the pharmaceutical industries prices…and thus the domino effect continues.  They are interrupting parts of the domino effect.

The effort of three House of Representatives members have not gone unnoticed; It’s time to pass THE RESOLUTION to cease China, Russia’s (and everyone else’s) arms sales to Sudan, but we need more supporting congress members.

This is where you take action! Call 202 225 5635 –representative Nadler- and ask to speak to the person who works on issues related to Darfur.

Tell them YOU WANT & NEED your congress man/woman to cosponsor Resolution 1462.

What you need to know:

Previous efforts to stop the influx of weapons of mass destruction via the Security

Council Arms Embargo was not successful…YOU CAN CHANGE THAT

People are being assaulted & murdered –locals and relief workers…. not just the locals!!!

-Darfur is only an area in Sudan…all of Sudan needs to be protected

War doesn’t affect only those living in the area…it’s a disease that spreads…WE TAKE ACTION to stop it or it eventually comes knocking at OUR DOORS.

Read more: http://www.humanrightsfirst.org

This is a commentary on the reports of the multitude of deaths from bottled milk in China.

A long time ago I read the reports on Brazilian children dieing after there was a push for baby formula because mother’s were too weak to breast feed. The problem with the push, was not that their was poison in the feed but that it was unaffordable. Today, more than 10 years later Western culture has managed to convince the world that ‘less breast is best’. For anyone with a medical sciences background, they quickly acknowledge the absurdity of moving away from breastfeeding to the bottle.

Children are sick and dieing because we’re ‘modernized’/'westernized’ -whatever you want to call it- in our eating and ‘feeding techniques’. We’ve moved away from maternal instincts and natural body productions that are designed to protect infants -though acceptance of natural defense factors called antibodies- to more commerical and ’sophisticated’ means of ‘nutrition’.

I won’t get into the different types of antibodies; what the reader who’s not medical oriented needs to know is that a baby is not born with natural defenses against antigens-foreign invaders-, but obtains the necessary protective factors from breast milk, which they will NEVER get from a bottle. In social sciences terms…babies get ground level support from the mother.

Rich Euro-Western society decided long ago that ’sophisticated’ bottle feeding is better, that only the ‘lower classes’ breast feed. Their convictions that have traveled through nations have continue to create a ripple effect in child heath and now we can add one more problem to the list. That said, 53,000 babies wouldn’t have been in danger of bottled milk poising if we weren’t so fixated on a ‘better body’ and ‘less breast is best’, ‘preserve the shape of your breast’ and trust technology over that which was created as a natural system that knows when to change according to an infants needs. A mother’s body & instincts knows what her child needs and puts itself into motion to provide those needs, whether or not the mother is aware or wants to. Don’t believe…watch the changes as she gets pregnant, and watch the changes as the baby reaches 6 months.

We’ve trusted infant health (internal) ‘ground level protection’ -breast milk natural growth factors- to machines and chemical engineers- a lot of whom probably don’t have any breasts (last line sheds a bit of humor on the situation). In the end ’sophistication’ has cost us more than 53,000 lives…I wonder what would have happened if mothers had stuck to proven method that have worked for centuries! If it’s not broke…don’t fix it!!!

Monday September 8^th, IRIN news reporter asked ‘how heavy is human trafficking?’, but the answer is not what is important. 

In paragraph two the writer reports that “ ‘trafficking is worth between US $7 billion and $12 billion dollars annually, making it the third most lucrative criminal activity after the narcotics and weapons trades…(yet) penalties for human trafficking in most countries are less severe, or non-existent’” . This serves to inform global readers that societies continue to value money more than people.  Humans are ready to sentence a man for 3-5 years for selling cocaine to someone who chooses to engage in hazardous behaviour to their own health and livelihood, but we fail to forcefully seek after prosecution for people who violate the bodies, minds and freedom of others for money (among other things), in the ‘developing world’.

Why are we only concerned when industrialized nations exhibit the above behaviour, or when people die internationally and locally?  A death is a sad thing, but the dead don’t feel pain like the living, so why are we so removed from addressing and seeking justice for ‘living issues’ outside of our immediate vision and affected spheres? 

Is it another episode of ‘I think therefore I am’, known also as…my reality is what I make it,

I –people- choose not to acknowledge the loss of dignity since there is no financial impact on “my sphere”?  Of course I’m not speaking about myself, but generally in regards to self identity and mass identity.  It leaves me to ask, how healthy is our construction of our own narrow spheres, to the well-being of others and how significant do we view others in relation to ourselves?

ISSUE 2

As we continue down the article, the fifth paragraph informs readers that “ ‘South Africa is commonly regarded as the main country of destination for trafficked persons in the region…women and children lured in search of jobs, education and marriage…’ ”  That statement speaks to the continued social expectations placed on women (i.e. “do what you have to do to get married!”… “marriage equals wholeness for a woman!”), and the economic constraints which continue to limit self and community development, leading men and women to explore ‘forbidden’ territories and endanger their welfare.  If there were existing economic opportunities men, women and children would not continue to migrate in search of domestic labour, farming, and other (non institutionally oriented) forms of economic ventures to provide family support.  So where’s the program for solution to the identity issues entwined with agricultural and economic issues?

The statement must be discussed because it is hidden with key facts.  It speaks to pressure a woman faces and the risk she takes to ensure that her ‘duties’ are fulfilled…. “first comes work, then comes marriage, then comes self sacrifice and the baby carriage.  O Wait…perhaps the order is reversed.”  Enough with the cynicism, I have no issue with choices of children, marriage, work or such endeavours.  My point is that the economic and continued social expectations placed on women continue to put them at risk for assault, trafficking, and challenges that diminish their capacity to live an equal life to their counterpart.  My point is also that such expectations continue to limit self development and community development; the expectation, needs and hopes continues to force migration and IF a survivor (of trafficking) returns, who is to say the community welcomes that which they do not want to address –violation of the body, human rights, rape of someone’s wife etc. 

I’m not creating suppositions I’m stating a fact, that in many places in the world, we –people- do not welcome “inside-outsiders” who have broken social expectations, whether it be by choice, or by force.     

ISSUE 3

If you think my thoughts are bold, imagine reading paragraph eight which states “Blackman told the workshop that three elements had to be present for the activity to be defined as human trafficking: recruitment, deception, and exploitation….(yet) the Palermo Protocol defines trafficking in detail. The question is not who is Blackman, the question is then is it being boldly stated that if someone is kidnapped off the street and sold it ceases to be trafficking, because there is no recruitment?  Are we limiting the ability to prosecute by changing the boxes, or are we limiting people’s response by changing their understanding of the boxes?

ISSUE 4

Wait, the best part has yet to be read, paragraph eleven states that “ ‘in the late 1980’s the rise of HIV/AIDS and activities such as sex tourism brought the trade (trafficking) under scrutiny’”.  As we can infer from such a statement, it takes a pandemic that affects everyone regardless of race, culture, age, sex and gender, for human rights specifically affecting women for it be addressed as a major issue.   It’s not as if trafficking didn’t exist before the pandemic (nor is it as if men weren’t affected by trafficking)!  This is just another illustration of where research and investigative efforts (in things related to health) continue to focus on things that affect the upper ‘echelon’…I don’t think I need to say anymore. 

Original Article:  IRIN Plusnews; South Africa: How heavy is human trafficking?  Monday 08, September 2008, ReportID=80229

Doing a lot of reading about water issues in China. Three articles caught my eye today. First, there’s a recent piece from the New York Review of Books by Dai Qing. Qing focuses on Beijing’s miserable water infrastructure and the (very temporary) glut of clean and abundant water being readied for the upcoming olympics. She writes that, normally, “people [in Beijing] have only three hundred cubic meters of water resources per capita, one eighth of the Chinese average—which is 2,200 cubic meters—and one thirtieth of the world average.” The full text of the article can be found here.

Then,from the IHT comes this about human displacement and the Three Gorges Dam:  

In his 2007 work report to the National People’s Congress, Prime Minister Wen noted that dam building, over many years, has displaced 23 million people in China.      

Full text here.

And finally there’s the latest form the Times Choking on Growth series which covers dwindling water resources throughout the country. 

I may be the only person in the world who missed this article in the Sunday New York Times. It was on the cover, so I’ve got no excuse. A friend mentioned it to me yesterday, and it’s wonderful. The article covers the recent turn-around in food supplies in Malawi, and I think very clearly recommends a reconfiguration if not a total dismantling of certain dogmas of international development.    

In Malawi…the prevalence of acute child hunger has fallen sharply. In October, the United Nations Children’s Fund sent three tons of powdered milk, stockpiled here to treat severely malnourished children, to Uganda instead. “We will not be able to use it!” Juan Ortiz-Iruri, Unicef’s deputy representative in Malawi, said jubilantly.

Farmers explain Malawi’s extraordinary turnaround — one with broad implications for hunger-fighting methods across Africa — with one word: fertilizer.

Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached.

Stung by the humiliation of pleading for charity, he led the way to reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical reception from the United States and Britain. Malawi’s soil, like that across sub-Saharan Africa, is gravely depleted, and many, if not most, of its farmers are too poor to afford fertilizer at market prices.

Full article here.

There hasn’t been a lot of energy talk here on the Globalhood blog. Let’s change all that and kick things off with a recent article from Chuck Squatriglia at Wired about bacterially developed hydrogen.

Researchers at Penn State University say they’ve developed a way to use bacteria to extract hydrogen from almost any biodegradable organic substance, from grass clippings to wastewater.

Hydrogen is often touted as a virtually limitless source of clean energy, but its ecological benefits have been minimal because it is often produced using natural gas in a process that releases carbon dioxide — a problem the new method seems to solve.
The discovery, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, holds great promise for advancing hydrogen as a viable sustainable fuel because, the researchers say, it uses existing technology and can be put to use immediately.

“It’s crossed the line from a science-fair project to feasible technology,” said Bruce Logan, a professor of environmental engineering who led the research. “You can do it from any renewable organic matter.”

Cool. Hit the link to jump to the full article.

Today was a biggish news day masquerading as a slow news day. Obviously, there’s some pretty big business going on in Pakistan, but lets bracket that now and move along to some stories from Washington.

(1)White Collar Meets Black Face. Okay, so a white employee at the Department of Homeland Security shows up to his boss’ (Julie Meyers, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Halloween party wearing a “striped prison outfit, dreadlocks and darkened skin make-up,” By the way, “darkened skin make-up” is a pretty paltry euphemism for black face. Obviously a horribly bad idea, but does it relate to development? Well, yes insofar as it stands as an indictment of the perception of the African-American male by a federal-level bureaucrat. I’d let it pass as a solitary idiot, but unfortunately this is just one instance of the simmering structural racism that’s been bubbling up in America lately: the hanging of a noose on the office door of a professor at Columbia, the nooses in Jena, Dog the Bounty Hunter (surprise suprise), Don Imus, Michael Richards, Katrina etc. etc. What’s up America?

(2)The War in Iraq Continues to be Waq. 2007 is now the deadliest year for American troops in Iraq. The administration has pretty much dropped the “making progress” line and is now focused the spectral threat of Iran to prop up what meager support remains for the war.

(3)Yahoo! Sounds Like Fun Until They Throw you in Prison. Kudos to Tom Lantos of the House Foreign Affairs Comittee for turning the screws on Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang over Yahoo’s complicity with the Chinese government in the arrest of pro-democracy political dissident Shi Tao. This line from Lantos really gets me: “While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies.” Snap!