Malawi pictures in People magazine
From People
magazine:
A Village of Hope In the African nation of Malawi, families toil in
fields as malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases go untreated. But
hope is within reach: The Millennium Promise, a philanthropy run by Dr.
Jeffrey Sachs and supported by Angelina Jolie, is working with 60
villages (so far) to make them healthily self-sufficient through such
simple tools as schools, seeds and clean drinking water. Here is what
PEOPLE reporter Mary Green saw in the village of Mwandana.
Click on this link
to see some of the pictures. Apparently the hardcopy has even better
pictures - maybe someone could pick this up for me and set it aside?
Thanks to Geeta for the
discovery.
magazine:
A Village of Hope In the African nation of Malawi, families toil in
fields as malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases go untreated. But
hope is within reach: The Millennium Promise, a philanthropy run by Dr.
Jeffrey Sachs and supported by Angelina Jolie, is working with 60
villages (so far) to make them healthily self-sufficient through such
simple tools as schools, seeds and clean drinking water. Here is what
PEOPLE reporter Mary Green saw in the village of Mwandana.
Click on this link
to see some of the pictures. Apparently the hardcopy has even better
pictures - maybe someone could pick this up for me and set it aside?
Thanks to Geeta for the
discovery.
Mike,
some of your links are not posting correctly.
the opening are missing
n.
Sorry, Mike, According to the table of contents here:
http://people.aol.com/people/articles/0,19736,1169095,00.html
The Malawi article was from last week's issue. I stopped into the store on my way home from work to get a copy but it's only got "Oscar"(TM) stuff in it. Oscar, one article on the net worth of the British princes and something about "surviving against odds". I was dissapointed. I'm sure I can read the library's copy but I can't send THAT to my mother-in-law, or you for that matter.
Jeff
Fixed that link. My blog via email plugin chokes on line endings. Jeff - bummer you missed the People magazine issue! Someone gave a copy to my Mom, so I found one. Think about who you know that would read People - I bet you can find one!
I just went through the People pictures. What irks me a lot of the time is how the media portray Malawi. We always hear how poor and impoverished the country is. These things are often linked to people having "resorted" to eating grass seeds (which maize, sorghum, and rice are all technically a part of), eating tree roots (like cassava?), and even eating mice (a delicacy here). In the pictures it talked of people living in leaking thatched roofs and mud huts. When in reality, these huts are some of the most sustainable dwellings in the world, 100% biodigradable. Good thatch can last upwards of 20 years and won't leak. Living simply doesn't neccesarily ineed to imply poverty. Unfortunately, Malawi is faced with a number of serious problems. Dr. Sach's project, however, seems to lack a sustainable component to its proposed solutions. Offering handouts of fertilizer and maize seeds is a large part of the dependency problem that farmers here are now experiencing. This way of thinking is so ingrained by politicians, NGOs, and donor agencies that it has become the only solution that people can come up with. So it is not surprising that Dr. Sach's delegation heard pleas for more seeds and fertilizer. To his credit, my wife met with Dr. Sachs and his group while here in Malawi and they seem open to new ideas and helping to break this cycle of dependency that we are seeing. There are so many local resources that are continually overlooked, especially when it comes to food crops (over 500 different foods) that could be used to sustain a healthy and productive Malawi, that I cringe when I hear of more foreign donations being brought to the country. There are many well-intentioned programmes throughout the country that could benefit a great deal by taking time to learn more about Malawi's aboundant natural resources and work towards teaching and promoting the use of these resources before "resorting" to handouts. I hope that Dr. Sachs Millenium Project will continue to do this and strive towards creating truly sustainable approaches.
Kristof