When I was in Class-10th, I read a chapter as part of our coursework, “The Ultimate Safari”. The chapter was a story about a young black Mozambican girl living with her grandmother and brother in a refugee camp. The story described how she lost her parents, how her village was burnt down by bandits, and how they were forced to flee to a refugee camp in order to save their lives. The way the author had narrated the story was extremely gripping, it used to make me cry and I just loved the story. But I always read it as a fictitious story. I used to assume that such a situation can never occur in reality in the recent times where everything around the world is so well organized. But my delusion was broken when I came across some of the recent happenings in Somalia and the harsh times people are facing there. In case you haven’t still guessed it, this post is going to be about the recent issues in Somalia. I by no means intend to propose solutions for the Somalia crisis in this post, I hardly know much about the issues, to suggest anything. This post is just going to express the views towards the Somali happenings from a lay-man’s perspective.
For those who abhors coming face-to-face with newspapers or news-channels, let me start with describing where Somalia lies in the world map. Well, Somalia is an African country and lies in the eastern-most part of Africa. It shares its borders with other countries like Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. Somalia lacks a concrete government since 1991 and has been one of the most poorest and violent countries since then. Most of the southern parts of the country are controlled by the Islamist group Al-Shabab, which has been declared as a terrorist group owing to its connections with Al-Qaeda.
The conditions in this war-prone and poor country have further been worsened by the long-lasting drought in major parts of the country. There is hardly any food to eat or proper shelters to live. Millions of people have already died and even more are on the verge of death because of starvation. Parents are watching their children die and children are losing their parents every day. There are only meager hospitals around and even they lack proper equipments and medicines. Cholera and diarrhea are spreading like an epidemic. Most of the people are fleeing to refugee camps across the borders to save their lives. These camps are already over-crowded and living in horrid and stinky conditions.
The worst part is that this is not all. Had this been any other country of the world, there would have a hope of amelioration. But Somalis have yet to encounter their most terrible nightmares. UN has already declared famine in many regions of the country. Government and UN aid organizations are trying to help, but they are facing severely hard times because of the regions controlled by the Shabaab group. The leaders of the group are stubborn to accept that Somalia has been famine-hit and they are hostile against the aid agencies and their workers. People are also not allowed to leave the Shabab territory and most of them are living as prisoners. The group’s activities are turning Somalia’s famine into the worst humanitarian disasters mankind would ever face.
I always used to think the world has evolved as a great place to live as compared to ancient times. The world is advancing in every sector. We are all living in the most digitalized times, with the coolest of the gadgets, sophisticated vehicles. We are exploring the space, the moon and designing innovative colossal buildings and structures. Luxuries are being defined and redefined. Sophisticated chips are being fabricated, super-computers are becoming more powerful and humane-like robots have hit the market. But the Somali crisis have made me ponder that all these advancements fail to serve their purpose if we could not save tens of thousands of fellow human beings from dying in the most unacceptable conditions. There were immense number of warnings issued by United Nations about the drought hitting Somalia, but still we failed to take the right measures to prevent or at least deal with it correctly. The countries around the world have the most advanced armies, highly sophisticated weapons, but we still fail to curb a small terrorist group from some remote part of the world. I wonder why US doesn’t play their Godfather role here and jumps to save the Somalis, as they faked to do in Afghanistan. May be because they cannot find any immediate political interest in the Somalia crisis. Anyways, we should let poor US deal with their own debt crisis firstly.
I think it is time for me to end this post, I need to take rest, need get up early tomorrow, lots of work to be done. Well, this sounds to me like an irony. When I am working towards improving the shopping experience of people living in one part of the world; there are millions of people in other part of the world who are dying of starvation. Makes me laugh at myself and the kind of work I am doing. But it also raises an important question in my mind, “Are we born equal?” What fault do these Somalis have apart from being born in part of the world which is poor?
The Somalia crisis calls for the powerful countries worldwide to get unified and provide Somalia with the military, monetary and medical aid that the country beseech at this time. All the constitutions of the world stand void, if we cannot provide all the people of the world the basic “Right to live”. I believe that we do not have the right to claim that “we are advancing” or at least to claim that “we are advancing in the right direction”, until we can ensure that each and every individual in any part of the world has an equal right to live and an equal opportunity to grow. If we still haven’t achieved this goal, then mankind certainly has a long journey to complete.
After reading Acts: 16:31 of Bible, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved, and thy home”, the only prayer I can do is that God, please help these people strengthen their faith in you.
PS- 1) Frankly I did not write this post as an appeal for people to donate money primarily because I am not sure how much that could help. But still if you feel like you could donate, then here is one of the sites I found - http://givethemshelter.org/donate .
2) My knowledge about Somalia and recent issues is demarcated by whatever little time I get to read newspapers and Internet news articles. It is by no means exhaustive and I really apologize if I have unknowingly shared a wrong fact in this post.
2) My knowledge about Somalia and recent issues is demarcated by whatever little time I get to read newspapers and Internet news articles. It is by no means exhaustive and I really apologize if I have unknowingly shared a wrong fact in this post.
3) As always, pardon me for any grammatical or spelling mistakes. Drowsy I am.
have been waiting for a new blog post from you, specifically your experience of job so far. Any plan to post about it? It has been about 2 months since your last post! :)
ReplyDeleteAtul Goyal