How to Matter, Part 1

Last post I extolled that "America Matters." Here's Part 1 in "How to Matter." The fetching Mrs. Guano (not her real name!) and I sponsor a Hope Child in Uganda. A "Hope Child" is one that lost both parents to AIDS. Tuesday night, I noted Gwen Ifill batting away the topic of African AIDS as if it were a pesky mosquito in favor of AIDS in America. That was American self-indulgence at its worst. In this "educated" country, AIDS is the most preventable disease there is. In Uganda, where some customs dictate a man can cure himself of a venereal disease by having sex with a virgin, it isn't as preventable. It takes more work. Africa doesn't have effective AIDS cocktail regimes for the afflicted. These people just die. Tuesday night we also received an update on how things are going in Uganda from the National Director, Robby Muhumuza:

Dear Sponsor,

Greeting from Uganda!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for the support you have extended to your sponsored child and your child's community in Uganda.

Your support has enabled us to build better schools in the communities thus enabling children to study in a conducive learning environment.

Families that had a scarcity of food were taught new farming skills and practices, which provided agricultural inputs. Many of them can now have two meals a day and sell some for an income.

World Vision Uganda also supported infrastructure developments in health. As a result, most communities can now access better medical services in the health units we built and supported. In addition to this, the fight against HIV/AIDS has continued to get special focus in all our interventions.

Water development has been one of our key interventions in various programme areas. This has enabled various communities to access clean water for use, and has been possible as a result of your support.

We also emphasized giving people awareness skills and resources to take care of their children or orphans, so that they have a brighter future.

Thank you very much for your great support in helping us realise the interventions highlighted in the community update report.

Yours Sincerely,

Robby Muhumuza

National Director.

World Vision is a FBO (Faith Based Organizations). That's a four-letter word in some circles. But FBOs seem to be the ones paying more then lip service to the suffering masses of the world. As a FBO, yes they do preach the Gospel (gasp! How horrible!). The postmodern gibberish here would be we have no right to impose our values and culture on them. Well, the ingrained culture there is what's killing them in some circumstances. Whole villages and communities have been laid nearly to waste by the spread of this evil disease, by what we would call promiscuous behavior, but is part of the culture. Either that culture will change or it will go extinct, but lots of people here will feel better about themselves that we dared not impose our values on another people. That mindset is worse than cowardly - it's evil.

Another difficult question gets Malthusian. The Bush Administration has pledged $15 billion to halt the spread of AIDS in Africa. It's taken heat for not spending enough on medication. If AIDS cocktails must be taken on a strict schedule to maintain design concentration in the blood stream, how are these poorer parts of Africa to stay on that schedule? If the culture hasn't changed, by prolonging the life of infected people, does that help increase the spread of the disease? Ouch. How do you answer THAT question? The strict multiculturalist would say that's not up to us. Then the people will die when we could have lifted a finger to stop it. I'll stick with the program of changing the culture and mindsets over there to help stop the spread of a very preventable fatal disease. Want to help? Want to matter to the world? Go here and keep going.