From celebration to sorrow...

I have just returned from my first Tanzanian funeral. We woke up to an e-mail from the Programme Manager telling us that one of the children of Yoram, one of our hangar workers, had died.

He lives about 15km outside Dodoma (up a big hill - he cycles to and from work every day on an old bike). A big contingent of us drove out there for the funeral, which started at 3.00pm. the structure was not dissimilar to an English funeral (not that I have much experience to go on); there was singing, sermonising and praying.

There were many differences though; the separation of the men and the women; the sitting on mats (or the floor); the riot of colourful clothing; the wailing; the dancing and singing; the long hot walk through the bush to the graveside; the fact that almost everyone from the village was there (there must have been between three and four hundred people).

It was Yoram's youngest child (out of 7 or 8), a little girl of 18 months, called Faraja ('Comfort'). She had apparently died of pneumonia. Seeing the tiny coffin (and the sweet-faced child inside it) made me realise that in Europe, children don't die. I know that is a sweeping statement, but here it is a commonplace occurrence, whereas in Europe if you know of any children who have died, it is the exception that proves the rule. It goes to show that where you have generations of malnutrition, it doesn't take much to kill.

It reminded me a bit of a 'parable' from the book I was reading this morning. This was written by an American, about America, but I am not sure any of us in the West can really plead innocence:

"Imagine that you come from a large family in which one brother ended up with a whole lot more than the rest of you. Sometimes it happens that way, the luck falling to one guy who didn't do all that much to deserve it. Imagine his gorgeous house on a huge tract of forests, rolling hills, and fertile fields. Your other relatives have decent places with smaller yards, but yours is mostly dust. Your lucky brother eats well, he has meat every day - in fact, let's face it, he's corpulent, and so are his kids. At your house, meanwhile, things are bad: Your kids cry themselves to sleep on empty stomachs. Your brother must not be able to hear them from the veranda where he dines, because he throws away all the food he can't finish. He will do this favour: He's made a TV program of himself eating. If you want to, you can watch it from your house. But you can't have his food, his house, or the car he drives around in to view his unspoiled forests and majestic purple mountains. The rest of the family has noticed that all his driving is kicking up the dust, wrecking not only the edges of his property but also their less pristine backyards and even yours, which was dust to begin with. He's dammed the river to irrigate his fields, so that only a trickle reaches your place, and it's nasty. You're beginning to see that these problems are deep and deadly, that you'll be the first to starve, and the others will follow. The family takes a vote and agrees to do a handful of obvious things that will keep down the dust and clear water - all except Fat Brother. He walks away from the table. He says God gave him good land and the right to be greedy."

Makes you think, doesn't it?

The author writes elsewhere that "the UN estimates that $13 billion above current levels of aid would provided everyone in the world...with basic health and nutrition. Collectively, Americans and Europeans spend $17 billion a year on pet food."

Maybe the death of one little girl in a small dusty corner of Africa doesn't mean much in the big scheme of things, but just think how easy it would be for this not to have to happen - if the political will was there. I have never been particularly militant about these things, but I don't think it's something we can turn a blind eye to.

Ideas for saving the world on a postcard...