I just visited this link, sent to me by my friend Charles Howard. This is a powerful set of videos put together by Doctors Without Borders to bring attention to the issue of malnutrition. Two videos have been made available, and more will come (see website):
Malnutrition is both simple and complex. The solution appears simple: give the kids food. But the REAL solution to providing food is not so easy. It's not that there isn't enough food in the world. Just walk into Wal-mart. Really, though, the issue is not about the world's supply of food. It's about whether almost 200 million people have the ability to GET the food.
In Pestel malnutrition is a huge issue. Walking through the village of Pointe Sabe on the island we did a quick malnutrition survey of 50 kids along the street. We found 22 of them with some degree of malnutrition (mild, moderate, severe). That's 44% of the kids in that village.
I was shocked and still am shocked.
A group of volunteers is right now entering the data on 11,000 kids that we just brought back from Pestel. Eyeballing the data it's obvious that certain sections are far worse than others.
How do you solve malnutrition? It's a bit like asking, "How do you solve poverty?" Extreme poverty where people (like the majority in Pestel) live on <$1US per day can be defeated. We used to have extreme poverty in the US, but no longer. We eliminated it during the last century.
But that also means we lived with it as a nation for over a century, and that was part of our reality.
I hate the images, I hate the statistics, and even more, I hate the reality of malnutrition and what it means for parents and their kids.
For me this is part of fighting the good fight to which God has called me. I pray that I would be faithful. Please continue to pray for endurance and faith
Ben
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