Sad men cry tears,
Mad men cry blood
of others.
Looked for a picture to match this poem and I found this with the description of the poem:
My close friends know that I love Africa -- the entire continent. In fact, I'm going to Uganda for three weeks in just a few days and when people ask me why I am going, I am just left speechless. There are so many atrocities, problems, and reasons, I want to look at them and ask them why they are not going.
In our society, we claim ignorance as a valid reason to ignoring things like genocide, rape, mass murders, poverty, malnutrition, kidnapping, etc. We hear about it on the nightly news while eating our dinners and feel sad for about 30 minutes until the next big sitcom airs.
Here is a list of problems that I am putting up so that you can no longer claim ignorance as an excuse:
- 315,000,000 people in Africa survive on less than 1 US dollar per day. (Per capita income of the US is over $40,000. Average personal income is significantly less, but not so small that we can't spare a dollar a day.)
- 184,000,000 Africans (that is 33% of the entire continent) suffer from malnutrition.
- As recently as 2000, over 300,000,000 did not have access to safe drinking water.
- Average African life expectancy is 41 years old. (That is less than 66% of the most pessimistic life expectancy numbers for the average American.)
- 1 out of 6 African kids never make it past the age of 5.
- 50% of civilian causalities in African wars (and there are always multiple African wars going on at any given moment) are children under the age of 13.
- Of 1,000 Africans, statistically, only 200 have any electricity at all, only 15 have access to a telephone, and only 7 can use the internet.
- 3,000 children under the age of 5 die from malaria EVERYDAY in Africa -- that's over a million CHILDREN a year. (Only 8 people -- all together -- in the US died from malaria last year.)
- 12,000,000 children have lost their parents to AIDS.
- At least 25,000,000 people in Africa are HIV-positive.
There are plenty more facts like this. Educate yourself.
Know the facts. Stop ignorance. Support Africa. Spread the love.
I think he wants you to check out his photostream, maybe. He has some pretty thoughtful photographs.
Peace'
