9 de nov. 2008

Els inuit


Un dels primers paissos que vam visitar (abans de ser pares) va ser Canadà. Vam tenir la sort de poder destinar un estiu a visitar la costa oest del Canadà.

Només arribats a Vancouver vam llogar un petit cotxe que ens va portar a través de mil.lers de quilòmetres pels parcs naturals de la costa oest (Banff, Jasper, Yoho).

Moltes vegades hem comentat a casa la infinitat de sensacions que vam viure durant aquelles setmanes d'agost (i amb la neu caient un dia rera l'altre).

Vam tenir la sort de tenir alguns contactes amb els inuit i amb la seva cultura. Avui he trobat una informació que va aparèixer sobre el suport i l'ajuda del govern canadenc a les comunitats dels inuit.

Recordo perfectament quin era el tracte que a principis dels 90 encara rebien aquests esquimals canadencs. Fins i tot ens vam emportar algun record molt especial que encara guardem. Ara sembla que les coses estan canviant i això seria fabulós.

A Canadà conviuen cultures diferents; el seu model em recorda, moltes vegades, situacions molt properes. Això si, aquí sembla que hi ha gent que en sap més que ningú (deixarem que s'ho creguin? ... ).


Deixo constància de la informació a la que faig referència:


Canada's New Government Supports Northern Aboriginal Communities
EDMONTON - On behalf of the Honourable Beverley J. Oda, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women, Mr. Laurie Hawn, Member of Parliament (Edmonton Centre), today announced a total of more than $1.1 million in funding for Aboriginal communities in Alberta, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and the Yukon.
"Aboriginal communities are a vibrant part of Canada's diverse society," said Minister Oda. "Canada's New Government is committed to supporting projects that help First Nation, Inuit and Métis organizations and provide innovative opportunities for Aboriginal women and youth."
"We are committed to improving the quality of life for First Nation, Inuit and Métis peoples," said Mr. Hawn. "Today's announcement represents another step forward in ensuring that Canada's Aboriginal communities have appropriate resources to develop programs specific to their needs."
The Métis Nation of Alberta Association, Inuvialuit Regional Corporation, and Qikiqtani Inuit Association will receive funding for day-to-day operations, and to strengthen their capacity to develop policies and programs with the input of their respective communities.
"Responding to the extensive range of community, regional, territorial, national and international issues that affect the lives of Inuvialuit draws heavily upon the human and financial resources of Inuvialuit Regional Corporation," said Nellie Cournoyea, Inuvialuit Regional Corporation Chair and Chief Executive Officer. "This contribution from the Department of Canadian Heritage will help our efforts in this regard and will also support an enhanced level of participation by our communities in decision-making processes."
"We appreciate the funding provided by Canadian Heritage," said Audrey Poitras, President, of the Métis Nation of Alberta. "It helps support many of the Métis Nation of Alberta's activities, primarily our Annual Assembly, where Métis people from all over Alberta gather to provide direction to our leaders and celebrate Métis culture."
The Qikiqtani Inuit Association will receive further support for projects that promote and increase cultural awareness, life skills, healthy living, personal development, leadership development and community involvement among Inuit youth.
"We very much appreciate the support of Canadian Heritage. The RO contribution will help strengthen our organization and build our capacity. As a result, we will be able to more fully represent the interests of Baffin Inuit," said Thomasie Alikatuktuk, President of Qikiqtani Inuit Association. "This contribution under the UMAYC program will enable us to engage over 1000 Inuit youth across the Baffin Region in meaningful and enjoyable activities. We are very grateful to Canadian Heritage for this tremendous contribution."
The Whitehorse Aboriginal Women's Circle and the Tender Ties Agency will receive funding for projects to encourage the full participation of Aboriginal women in their own communities and within Canadian society.
"We appreciate the funding received today from Canadian Heritage," said Adeline Webber, President of the Whitehorse Aboriginal Women's Circle. "This will allow us to develop a leadership course curriculum that is empowering and relevant to Aboriginal women."
"The funding we have received from Canadian Heritage will provide Métis women in Alberta with an opportunity to contribute to strengthen their communities based on their culture, build capacity for them to work on priorities that they identify and contribute to the kind of society in which they want to live," said Marge Friedel, Co-Chair of the Tender Ties Agency.
Canada's New Government has provided this funding through the Department of Canadian Heritage's Aboriginal Peoples' Program, which supports the full participation and cultural revitalization of Aboriginal people in Canadian society. It enables Aboriginal peoples to address the social, cultural, economic and political issues affecting their lives.


26 d’ag. 2008

Protecció de la salut a la localitat de Tanta (Yauyos)


Després d'un estiu per oblidar, i aprofitant uns breus minuts de tranquilitat, no m'he pogut estar de destinar-los a una de les meves predileccions: els diaris regionals (tant els d'aquí com els de sudamèrica).

Intueixo que aquest agost per oblidar podria tenir continuïtat (amb uns futurs setembre, octubre i novembre per oblidar) i que no podré obrir aquesta finestra al món tant sovint com voldria. Avui he decidit obrir-la mirant a Perú, amb una notícia sobre la província de Yauyos (a més de 4000 m d'alçada), on aquest proper divendres estrenaran unes noves aules per alumnes de primària.

No té desperdici el comentari sobre la nova construcció: "Para proteger la salud de los niños y los pobladores, se regó el terreno para que no se levante polvo" (suposo que el reg del terreny es mantindrà fins el dia de la inauguració, amb les forces vives de la província; després ....).


Al nostre país, on els principals medis de comunicació coincideixen en el 90% de les informacions, llegir El Peruano suposa uns minuts d'aire fresc.

Entregan dos aulas nuevas
[Yauyos] Este viernes 29, los alumnos de la localidad de Tanta, en la provincia de Yauyos, en Lima, estrenarán dos nuevas aulas cuya construcción fue financiada por el Foncodes.Las nuevas infraestructuras beneficiarán a los alumnos de primaria del colegio 20733, situado en la localidad y distrito de Tanta, ubicado a 4 mil 100 metros sobre el nivel del mar y a 10 horas de Lima.
Foncodes precisó que ambas aulas demandaron una inversión de 105 mil nuevos soles. “Son de material noble, tienen tijerales de madera, techo de calamina e instalaciones eléctricas. Para proteger la salud de los niños y los pobladores, se regó el terreno para que no se levante polvo y el desmonte se arrojó a botaderos, especialmente construidos para cuidar el medio ambiente de Tanta”, explicó el organismo.
El año pasado, Foncodes financió en Tanta la construcción de un sistema de agua potable para el citado poblado, instalando tuberías que traen el agua desde los nevados. También lo hizo con la mejora de la posta de salud y construyó parte del sistema de desagüe.

30 de juny 2008

A simple change to the design and african children. Disseny i infants de l'Africa





Una de les imatges que he comentat més d'una vegada amb els amics és la d'uns infants de l'Àfrica que s'havien confeccionat unes "sandàlies" amb mitja ampolla d'aigua (d'aquelles típiques de litre i mig). Els nens i nenes en qüestió posaven el dit grass del peu pel forat de l'ampolla, i la resta de la planta del peu quedava protegida per aquell plàstic ple d'ondulacions i altres dissenys moderns.




Aquesta imatge m'ha vingut al cap molts estius quan, en període de descans laboral, intentes inculcar a les teves filles nous invents amb material reciclat...... Però la distància és abismal.




I no us dic res si comparem la situació en la que viuen molts infants de l'Àfrica, amb la notícia que apareix avui al International Herald Tribune. L'article no té desperdici. No cal navegar gaire per la web d'aquest diari, ja que és una notícia de la PRIMERA PÀGINA, i apareix com a destacada.


Entenc que tots estem pel reciclatge, per l'estalvi, per la reducció de costos innecesaris, ... Però quan a USA dediquen capçaleres de diaris per discutir temes com el que ara veureu... vol dir que no anem bé!




Un dia m'explicaven quin cost tenia tot el procé del canvi de disseny d'un senzill paquet de galetes... el mateix que el cost dels aliments pels infants d'un país africà, durant tres anys! És insultant!




Ara porten temps discutin per veure si canvien el format d'uns envasos:




Solution, or mess? A milk jug for a green earth
By Stephanie Rosenbloom
Published: June 30, 2008
NORTH CANTON, Ohio: A simple change to the design of the gallon milk jug, adopted by Wal-Mart and Costco, seems made for the times. The jugs are cheaper to ship and better for the environment, the milk is fresher when it arrives in stores, and it costs less.
What's not to like? Plenty, as it turns out.
The jugs have no real spout, and their unorthodox shape makes consumers feel like novices at the simple task of pouring a glass of milk.
"I hate it," said Lisa DeHoff, a café owner shopping in a Sam's Club here.
"It spills everywhere," said Amy Wise, a homemaker.


"It's very hard for kids to pour," said Lee Morris, who was shopping for her grandchildren.
But retailers are undeterred by the prospect of upended bowls of Cheerios. The new jugs have many advantages from their point of view, and Sam's Club intends to roll them out broadly, making them more prevalent.
The redesign of the gallon milk jug, experts say, is an example of the changes likely to play out in the American economy over the next two decades. In an era of soaring global demand and higher costs for energy and materials, virtually every aspect of the economy needs to be re-examined, they say, and many products must be redesigned for greater efficiency.
"This is a key strategy as a path forward," said Anne Johnson, the director of the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, a project of the nonprofit group GreenBlue. "Re-examining, 'What are the materials we are using? How are we using them? And where do they go ultimately?' "
Wal-Mart Stores is already moving down this path. But if the milk jug is any indication, some of the changes will take getting used to on the part of consumers. Many spill milk when first using the new jugs.
"When we brought in the new milk, we were asking for feedback," said Heather Mayo, vice president for merchandising at Sam's Club, a division of Wal-Mart. "And they're saying, 'Why's it in a square jug? Why's it different? I want the same milk. What happened to my old milk?' "
Mary Tilton tried to educate the public a few days ago as she stood at a Sam's Club in North Canton, about 50 miles south of Cleveland, luring shoppers with chocolate chip cookies and milk as she showed them how to pour from the new jugs.
"Just tilt it slowly and pour slowly," Tilton said to passing customers as she talked about the jugs' environmental benefits and cost savings. Instead of picking up the jug, as most people tend to do, she kept it on a table and gently tipped it toward a cup.
Mike Compston, who owns a dairy in Yerington, Nevada, described the pouring technique in a telephone interview as a "rock-and-pour instead of a lift-and-tip."
Demonstrations are but one of several ways Sam's Club is advocating the containers. Signs in the aisle laud their cost savings and "better fridge fit."
And some customers have become converts.
"With the new refrigerators with the shelf in the door, these fit nice," said April Buchanan, who was shopping at the Sam's Club here. Others, even those who rue the day their tried-and-true jugs were replaced, praised the lower cost, from $2.18 to $2.58 a gallon. Sam's Club said that was a savings of 10 to 20 cents a gallon compared with old jugs.
The new jug marks a sharp break with the way dairies and grocers have traditionally produced and stocked milk.
Early one recent morning, the creators and producers of the new tall rectangular jugs donned goggles and white coats to walk the noisy, chilly production lines at Superior Dairy in Canton, Ohio. It was founded in 1922 by a man who was forced to abandon the brandy business during Prohibition. Five generations of the founder's family, the Soehnlens, have worked there.
Today, they bottle and ship two different ways. The old way is inefficient and labor-intensive, according to members of the family. The other day, a worker named Dennis Sickafoose was using a long hook to drag plastic crates loaded with jugs of milk onto a conveyor belt.
The crates are necessary because the shape of old-fashioned milk jugs prohibits stacking them atop one another. The crates take up a lot of room, they are unwieldy to move, and extra space must be left in delivery trucks to take empty ones back from stores to the dairy.
They also can be filthy. "Birds roost on them," said Dan Soehnlen, president of Superior Dairy, which spun off a unit called Creative Edge to design and license new packaging of many kinds. He spoke while standing in pools of the soapy run-off from milk crates that had just been washed. About 100,000 gallons of water a day are used at his dairy clean the crates, Soehnlen said.
But with the new jugs, the milk crates are gone. Instead, a machine stacks the jugs, with cardboard sheets between layers. Then the entire pallet, four layers high, is shrink-wrapped and moved with a forklift.
The company estimates this kind of shipping has cut labor by half and water use by 60 to 70 percent. More gallons fit on a truck and in Sam's Club coolers, and no empty crates need to be picked up, reducing trips to each Sam's Club store to two a week, from five — a big fuel savings. Also, Sam's Club can now store 224 gallons of milk in its coolers, in the same space that used to hold 80.
The whole operation is so much more efficient that milk coming out of a cow in the morning winds up at a Sam's Club store by that afternoon, compared with several hours later or the next morning by the old method. "That's our idea of fresh milk," Greg Soehnlen, a vice president at Creative Edge, said.
Sam's Club started using the boxy jugs in November, and they are now in 189 stores scattered around the country. They will appear soon in more Sam's Club stores and perhaps in Wal-Marts.
The question now is whether customers will go along.
As Tilton gave her in-store demonstration the other day at the Sam's Club here, customers stood around her, munching cookies and sipping milk. "Would you like to take some home today?" she asked.
A shopper named Jodi Kauffman gave the alien jugs a sidelong glance.
"Maybe," she said.




12 de juny 2008

Avui KENYA al The New York Times




Sé que pot semblar irònic parlar d'una bona notícia a Kenya. Sobre tot quan aquests dies m'han tornat a arribar informacions sobre percentatges de persones que moren de fam cada dia, i sobre quines són les zones del nostre planeta on es concentren aquestes morts.


El que no té res d'ironia és veure com a casa nostra tots/es hem trontollat tant per 3 dies de vaga del sector del transport (avui he sentit que hi havia gent que comprava més de 200 litres d'aigua, o 50 paquets d'arròs -per si de cas-). No sé què passaria si haguessim de sobreviure -en una setmana- amb tot el menjar i beguda -d'un any- d'una família keniana.




Però com aquests dies no tinc gaire temps, us passo directament una notícia positiva d'avui del The New York Times sobre Kenya (segurament cap altre medi de comunicació ens informarà d'una bona notícia d'un país africà).




NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) — Kenyans voted peacefully on Wednesday for five legislative seats that will decide who holds a majority in Parliament, in a test of stability after widespread election-related violence last year.
The vote was the first balloting since the disputed re-election of President
Mwai Kibaki in December, which set off ethnic violence that killed least 1,300 people and displaced more than 300,000.
On Wednesday, police officers in riot gear with dogs patrolled polling stations amid fear that trouble might erupt again.
The American ambassador, Michael E. Ranneberger, said the vote was a chance for Kenya to improve its image, which had been severely damaged by the violence.
“I think if the by-elections are peaceful and transparent and are generally regarded that way, that will show that Kenya has learned from the experience of December and is moving ahead democratically,” Mr. Ranneberger said.
By most accounts, the voting went smoothly, with a few polling places staying open a few extra minutes. Counting was expected to be completed Thursday, barring any problems, said Mani Lamayan, spokesman for the Electoral Commission of Kenya.
In the December election, vote-rigging was alleged and international observers criticized the commission.
Prime Minister
Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Party and Mr. Kibaki’s Party of National Unity are seeking to increase their numbers in Parliament.
“We learned a lot with what happened in the last election,” said Issak Mureithi, 45, a voter in Nairobi. “This time I have no fear of violence.”
The elections are to fill seats left open when two Orange Democratic Party legislators were shot dead and two more seats that remained undeclared in the chaotic aftermath of the December election. The fifth open seat is that of the parliamentary speaker, who stepped down from it after getting the speaker’s chair.
Two more Orange Democratic Party legislators, Kipkalya Kones, the minister of roads, and Lorna Laboso, the assistant minister of home affairs, died in a plane crash on Tuesday. No plans have been announced to fill their seats.




20 de maig 2008

Isabel Clara Simó i Birmània

















Aquests dies la feina no em deixa ni respirar.

Però no em puc estar de passar aquestes paraules de la Isabel Clara Simó. Hi ha dictadures que molesten i dictadures que no molesten (malgrat morin infants cada dia).

El fàstic tampoc deixa respirar.


Us passo les paraules de la I.C.Simó:

"I a Birmània moren milers de criatures, unes morts que no causen cap molèstia i una dictadura que no representa cap perill i, per tant, cap reacció, fora d’algunes esforçades organitzacions caritatives. I mentrestant, nosaltres discutim si ens convé o no omplir les piscines. Hi ha dies en què el fàstic no et deixa respirar."

8 de maig 2008

LA CATÀSTROFE DEL NARGIS A BIRMANIA - BURMA CYCLONE






























Avui només imatges. Però aquest horrorós malson a Birmania tindria molts més minuts d'atenció nostra si hagués passat a Paris o Roma. Aquest matí els medis de comunicació han dedicat més espais i més temps al Barça-Madrid que al mil.lers de morts de Birmania.



23 d’abr. 2008

DRETS HUMANS HUMAN RIGHTS


L'altre dia em van passar unes paraules de Ban Ki-moon sobre la Declaració Universal dels Drets Humans.

Diu algo així com que cal que garantitzem i donem a conèixer els Drets Humans, i sobre tot fer-los realitat. Però també diu una veritat que de vegades fa por als màxims dirigents: "els qui més pateixen, els qui més necesiten que se'ls garanteixin aquests drets són els que més els desconeixen". I és per això que Ban Ki-moon demanava que es posés en coneixement de tothom aquests drets.

Demà és Sant Jordi, una festa gran a Catalunya. Estaria bé poder regalar un llibre, una rosa, la declaració universal dels drets humans i .... aliments pels qui es moren de fam.


Aquestes són les paraules de Ban Ki-moon.

(també passo un link d'un video de l'ONU)



Words of Ban Ki-moon:


It is our duty to ensure that these rights are a living reality -- that they are known, understood and enjoyed by everyone, everywhere. It is often those who most need their human rights protected, who also need to be informed that the Declaration exists -- and that it exists for them.



rtsp://webcast.un.org/ondemand/conferences/unhrc/sixth/hrc071210am-eng.rm?start=00:06:24&end=00:08:53






18 d’abr. 2008

FAM HUNGER


Aquest proper cap de setmana tornaré a parlar amb l'esplèndid fotògraf Marc Goodwin http://www.flickr.com/photos/7155721@N03/sets/72157601659143117/show/ . I tornarem a comentar l'impacte tant gran que poden tenir algunes imatges.

Aquesta nit (nit de dijous a divendres) o demà al matí (divendres a primera hora) podeu trobar una fotografia impactant (impactant per mi) de Tyler Hicks al International Herald Tribune.


Passo la foto (amb poca qualitat) i l'article.


PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti: Hunger bashed in the front gate of Haiti's presidential palace. Hunger poured onto the streets, burning tires and taking on soldiers and the police. Hunger sent the country's prime minister packing.
Haiti's hunger, that burn in the belly that so many here feel, has become fiercer than ever in recent days as global food prices spiral out of reach, spiking as much as 45 percent since the end of 2006 and turning Haitian staples like beans, corn and rice into closely guarded treasures.
Saint Louis Meriska's children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal recently and then went without any food the following day. His eyes downcast, his own stomach empty, the unemployed father said forlornly, "They look at me and say, 'Papa, I'm hungry,' and I have to look away. It's humiliating and it makes you angry."
That anger is palpable across the globe. The food crisis is not only being felt among the poor but is also eroding the gains of the working and middle classes, sowing volatile levels of discontent and putting new pressures on fragile governments.
In Cairo, the military is being put to work baking bread as rising food prices threaten to become the spark that ignites wider anger at a repressive government. In Burkina Faso and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food riots are breaking out as never before. In reasonably prosperous Malaysia, the ruling coalition was nearly ousted by voters who cited food and fuel price increases as their main concerns.

"It's the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years," said Jeffrey Sachs, the economist and special adviser to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. "It's a big deal and it's obviously threatening a lot of governments. There are a number of governments on the ropes, and I think there's more political fallout to come."
Indeed, as it roils developing nations, the spike in commodity prices — the biggest since the Nixon administration — has pitted the globe's poorer south against the relatively wealthy north, adding to demands for reform of rich nations' farm and environmental policies. But experts say there are few quick fixes to a crisis tied to so many factors, from strong demand for food from emerging economies like China's to rising oil prices to the diversion of food resources to make biofuels.
There are no scripts on how to handle the crisis, either. In Asia, governments are putting in place measures to limit hoarding of rice after some shoppers panicked at price increases and bought up everything they could.
Even in Thailand, which produces 10 million more tons of rice than it consumes and is the world's largest rice exporter, supermarkets have placed signs limiting the amount of rice shoppers are allowed to purchase.
But there is also plenty of nervousness and confusion about how best to proceed and just how bad the impact may ultimately be, particularly as already strapped governments struggle to keep up their food subsidies.
'Scandalous Storm'
"This is a perfect storm," President Elías Antonio Saca of El Salvador said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Cancún, Mexico. "How long can we withstand the situation? We have to feed our people, and commodities are becoming scarce. This scandalous storm might become a hurricane that could upset not only our economies but also the stability of our countries."
In Asia, if Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi of Malaysia steps down, which is looking increasingly likely amid postelection turmoil within his party, he may be that region's first high- profile political casualty of fuel and food price inflation.
In Indonesia, fearing protests, the government recently revised its 2008 budget, increasing the amount it will spend on food subsidies by about $280 million.
"The biggest concern is food riots," said H.S. Dillon, a former adviser to Indonesia's Ministry of Agriculture. Referring to small but widespread protests touched off by a rise in soybean prices in January, he said, "It has happened in the past and can happen again."
Last month in Senegal, one of Africa's oldest and most stable democracies, police in riot gear beat and used tear gas against people protesting high food prices and later raided a television station that broadcast images of the event. Many Senegalese have expressed anger at President Abdoulaye Wade for spending lavishly on roads and five-star hotels for an Islamic summit meeting last month while many people are unable to afford rice or fish.


Why are these riots happening?" asked Arif Husain, senior food security analyst at the World Food Program, which has issued urgent appeals for donations. "The human instinct is to survive, and people are going to do no matter what to survive. And if you're hungry you get angry quicker."
Leaders who ignore the rage do so at their own risk. President René Préval of Haiti appeared to taunt the populace as the chorus of complaints about la vie chère — the expensive life — grew. He said if Haitians could afford cellphones, which many do carry, they should be able to feed their families. "If there is a protest against the rising prices," he said, "come get me at the palace and I will demonstrate with you."
When they came, filled with rage and by the thousands, he huddled inside and his presidential guards, with United Nations peacekeeping troops, rebuffed them. Within days, opposition lawmakers had voted out Préval's prime minister, Jacques-Édouard Alexis, forcing him to reconstitute his government. Fragile in even the best of times, Haiti's population and politics are now both simmering.
"Why were we surprised?" asked Patrick Élie, a Haitian political activist who followed the food riots in Africa earlier in the year and feared they might come to Haiti. "When something is coming your way all the way from Burkina Faso you should see it coming. What we had was like a can of gasoline that the government left for someone to light a match to it."

The rising prices are altering menus, and not for the better. In India, people are scrimping on milk for their children. Daily bowls of dal are getting thinner, as a bag of lentils is stretched across a few more meals.
Maninder Chand, an auto-rickshaw driver in New Delhi, said his family had given up eating meat altogether for the last several weeks.
Another rickshaw driver, Ravinder Kumar Gupta, said his wife had stopped seasoning their daily lentils, their chief source of protein, with the usual onion and spices because the price of cooking oil was now out of reach. These days, they eat bowls of watery, tasteless dal, seasoned only with salt.
Down Cairo's Hafziyah Street, peddlers selling food from behind wood carts bark out their prices. But few customers can afford their fish or chicken, which bake in the hot sun. Food prices have doubled in two months.
Ahmed Abul Gheit, 25, sat on a cheap, stained wooden chair by his own pile of rotting tomatoes. "We can't even find food," he said, looking over at his friend Sobhy Abdullah, 50. Then raising his hands toward the sky, as if in prayer, he said, "May God take the guy I have in mind."
Abdullah nodded, knowing full well that the "guy" was President Hosni Mubarak.
The government's ability to address the crisis is limited, however. It already spends more on subsidies, including gasoline and bread, than on education and health combined.
"If all the people rise, then the government will resolve this," said Raisa Fikry, 50, whose husband receives a pension equal to about $83 a month, as she shopped for vegetables. "But everyone has to rise together. People get scared. But we will all have to rise together."
It is the kind of talk that has prompted the government to treat its economic woes as a security threat, dispatching riot forces with a strict warning that anyone who takes to the streets will be dealt with harshly.
Niger does not need to be reminded that hungry citizens overthrow governments. The country's first postcolonial president, Hamani Diori, was toppled amid allegations of rampant corruption in 1974 as millions starved during a drought.
More recently, in 2005, it was mass protests in Niamey, the Nigerien capital, that made the government sit up and take notice of that year's food crisis, which was caused by a complex mix of poor rains, locust infestation and market manipulation by traders.
"As a result of that experience the government created a cabinet-level ministry to deal with the high cost of living," said Moustapha Kadi, an activist who helped organize marches in 2005. "So when prices went up this year the government acted quickly to remove tariffs on rice, which everyone eats. That quick action has kept people from taking to the streets."


The Poor Eat Mud
In Haiti, where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day and one in five children is chronically malnourished, the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically consumed only by the most destitute.
"It's salty and it has butter and you don't know you're eating dirt," said Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has taken to eating them more often in recent months. "It makes your stomach quiet down."
But the grumbling in Haiti these days is no longer confined to the stomach. It is now spray-painted on walls of the capital and shouted by demonstrators.
In recent days, Préval has patched together a response, using international aid money and price reductions by importers to cut the price of a sack of sugar by about 15 percent. He has also trimmed the salaries of some top officials. But those are considered temporary measures.
Real solutions will take years. Haiti, its agriculture industry in shambles, needs to better feed itself. Outside investment is the key, although that requires stability, not the sort of widespread looting and violence that the Haitian foot riots have fostered.
Meanwhile, most of the poorest of the poor suffer silently, too weak for activism or too busy raising the next generation of hungry. In the sprawling slum of Haiti's Cité Soleil, Placide Simone, 29, offered one of her five offspring to a stranger. "Take one," she said, cradling a listless baby and motioning toward four rail-thin toddlers, none of whom had eaten that day. "You pick. Just feed them."
Reporting was contributed by Lydia Polgreen from Niamey, Niger, Michael Slackman from Cairo, Somini Sengupta from New Delhi, Thomas Fuller from Bangkok and Peter Gelling from Jakarta, Indonesia.

25 de març 2008

Un altre cop Àfrica


Aquest inici de setmana ha estat ple de notícies sobre l'incompliment reiterat de l'assoliment dels drets més elementals per a moltes persones (tornen les morts a Iraq, l'acusació de les ONG'S sobre l'incompliment de compromisos solidaris dels paissos rics, la informació sobre el constant creixement de morts d'infants per la manca d'aigua potable a l'Àfrica i Àsia, ...)


Tot i així, he preferit penjar una notícia que apareix avui al The New York Times.

Aquests dies s'està parlant molt sobre el boicot a la Xina. Però ningú s'enrecorda de la situació a Sudàfrica: durant molts i molts anys s'ha marginat i maltractat a moltes persones, simplement pel color de la seva pell. I quan això passava, els privilegiats occidentals que dominaven aquest país (molts d'ells amb origen europeu) podien competir en els millors torneigs de tennis, golf o campionats internacionals rellevants, sense cap boicot per part de cap país, federació o organisme olímpic.

Avui sembla que tot això ha canviat. Però ara mireu la notícia sobre un Hospital a Sudàfrica i les condicions indignes i de repressió en les que han de viure els pacients.


La foto fa referència a la mateixa notícia.


PORT ELIZABETH, South Africa — The Jose Pearson TB Hospital here is like a prison for the sick. It is encircled by three fences topped with coils of razor wire to keep patients infected with lethal strains of tuberculosis from escaping.


"The balance is achieved by the simple application of J.S. Mill's 'harm principle' -- i.e. a person should be free to do what he wants provided his acts harm no one else. "James Montgomery, New York

But at Christmastime and again around Easter, dozens of them cut holes in the fences, slipped through electrified wires or pushed through the gates in a desperate bid to spend the holidays with their families. Patients have been tracked down and forced to return; the hospital has quadrupled the number of guards. Many patients fear they will get out of here only in a coffin.
“We’re being held here like prisoners, but we didn’t commit a crime,” Siyasanga Lukas, 20, who has been here since 2006, said before escaping last week. “I’ve seen people die and die and die. The only discharge you get from this place is to the mortuary.”
Struggling to contain a dangerous epidemic of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, known as XDR-TB, the South African government’s policy is to hospitalize those unlucky enough to have the disease until they are no longer infectious.
Hospitals in two of the three provinces with the most cases — here in the Eastern Cape, as well as in the Western Cape — have sought court orders to compel the return of runaways.
The public health threat is grave. The disease spreads through the air when patients
cough and sneeze. It is resistant to the most effective drugs. And in South Africa, where these resistant strains of tuberculosis have reached every province and prey on those whose immune systems are weakened by AIDS, it will kill many, if not most, of those who contract it.
As extensively drug-resistant TB rapidly emerges as a global threat to public health — one found in 45 countries — South Africa is grappling with a sticky ethical problem: how to balance the liberty of individual patients against the need to protect society.
It is a quandary that has recurred over the past century, not least in New York City, where uncooperative TB patients were confined to North Brother Island in the East River in the early 1900s and to
Rikers Island in the 1950s.
In the early 1990s, when New York faced its own outbreak of drug-resistant TB, the city treated people as outpatients and locked them up in hospitals only as a last resort.
Most other countries are now treating drug-resistant TB on a voluntary basis, public health experts say. But health officials here contend that the best way to protect society is to isolate patients in TB hospitals. Infected people cannot be relied on to avoid public places, they say. And treating people in their homes has serious risks: Patients from rural areas often live in windowless shacks where families sleep jammed in a single room — ideal conditions for spreading the disease.
“XDR is like biological warfare,” said Dr. Bongani Lujabe, the chief medical officer at Jose Pearson hospital. “If you let it loose, you decimate a population, especially in poor communities with a high prevalence of H.I.V./AIDS.”
But other public health experts say overcrowded, poorly ventilated hospitals have themselves been a driving force in spreading the disease in South Africa. The public would be safer if patients were treated at home, they say, with regular monitoring by health workers and contagion-control measures for the family. Locking up the sick until death will also discourage those with undiagnosed cases from coming forward, most likely driving the epidemic underground.
“It’s much better to know where the patients are and treat them where they’re happy,” said Dr. Tony Moll, chief medical officer at the Church of Scotland Hospital in Tugela Ferry. It is running a pilot project to care for patients at home.
Some 563 people were confirmed with extensively drug-resistant TB last year in South Africa and started on treatment, compared with only 20 cases in the United States from 2000 through 2006. A third of those patients in South Africa died in 2007; more than 300 remained in hospitals.
Further complicating matters, South Africa’s provinces have taken different approaches to deciding how long to hospitalize people with XDR-TB. In KwaZulu-Natal, the other province with the most cases, the main hospital is discharging patients after six months of treatment, even if they remain infectious, to make room for new patients who have a better chance of being cured. The province is rapidly adding beds, part of a national expansion of hospital capacity for XDR-TB.
“We know we’re putting out patients who are a risk to the public, but we don’t have an alternative,” said Dr. Iqbal Master, chief medical officer of the King George V Hospital in Durban.



14 de març 2008

Xina


Com he dit alguna altra vegada, la relació que tenim (la nostra família) amb la Xina és molt especial. Dilluns farà 3 anys que vàrem sortir amb destí Chongqing, una ciutat de l'interior de la Xina.

Durant tres setmanes vàrem rebre una quantitat tant gran d'estímuls, sensacions i emocions, que fins que no deixes passar un bon temps per reflexionar no pots arribar a valorar com t'han afectat aquest munt de sensacions.

Avui apareixen a molts diaris electrònics la violència que s'està produint a Lasa (la capital del Tibet). Xina té una ferida oberta amb els tibetans. Després de tantes obertures que s'estan produint al país asiàtic, sembla mentida que encara no hagi resol aquest problema.

Quan erem a Xina, vàrem preguntar sobre aquest tema a una ciutadana de Pekin a la que teniem prou confiança. La seva reacció va ser prou significativa per entendre que encara hi ha un tabú al voltant del Tibet. Ningú vol parlar del tema, i si algú s'atraveix, ho fa des de la posició diplomàtica del govern: "el Tibet és una part de Xina i no volem tenir cap mena de conflicte amb aquella part del nostre país".


La cultura xinesa és riquísima. Les tradicions xineses són úniques. La història xinesa és mil.lenaria. Però sobre tot: les persones a Xina són extraordinàries.


Veure les imatges de l'exèrcit xinés agredint amb tanta violència a persones indefenses no ajudarà al govern xinès a modernitzar i democratitzar el seu país. Mai la violència ha pogut vèncer a la veritat o a les idees. Mai la violència podrà fer callar els monjos tibetans. Només el diàleg -a través de la paraula- donarà bon fruit.


A casa cada vegada que apareixen als medis de comunicació les catàstrofes xineses, la violència al Tibet, la pobresa a les zones rurals o les precàries condicions dels miners a Xina ens provoca un sentiment d'impotència i tristesa. Tot i així estem convençuts que el poble xinès s'està despertant i desfent d'un somni de feudalisme i decadència per poder viure un nou somni de llibertat.

D'aquí a uns anys volem tornar a Chongqing i visitar Dianjiang. Confiem que llavors podrem compartir aquest nou somni.

(La foto d'avuí és el pati central d'unes vivendes a Dianjiang, on es troba l'orfanat de la ciutat)

5 de març 2008

ÀFRICA, TANZANIA i la família d'Asma

La foto és d'Asma, amb un dels seus fills


La BBC News té una secció dedicada exclusivament a l'Àfrica. Segurament serà una de les seccions menys visitada de totes; és una llàstima perquè algun dels reportatges o articles són realment bons.

Avui passo un reportatge sobre Tanzania. És dels pocs articles on hi ha un fil d'optimisme sobre les accions que s'estan fent a l'Àfrica. Podreu llegir com una vídua com Asma, que té 5 fills i que està en una situació de pobresa extrema, ha pogut rebre ajuts per tal que els seus fills vagin a escola. Viuen a Temeke, una ciutat de 750.000 habitants, on les autoritats locals han començat a entendre que l'educació dels infants és una aposta de futur pel país.

Després de constants notícies negatives sobre Darfur, Kènia o Etiopia, incloure una notícia positiva sobre l'Àfrica dóna un xic d'optimisme (encara que molt xic).



Tanzanian care revolution begins
By Dan Dickenson BBC News, Tanzania


Asma lacks support from an extended family
Getting her 14-year-old son, Haji, ready for school is a symbolic step towards normalcy for Tanzanian Asma Yusuf.
It may be an everyday occurrence for families across the world, but 30-year-old Asma is a widow with five children and no job and is one of the poorest people in an already poor neighbourhood: Temeke, in Dar es Salaam.
Her mud house with its disintegrating grass roof is conspicuous among her neighbours' brick-built houses with corrugated iron roofs.
"Before I was facing a miserable life. I had little money, we had little food and I couldn't afford to send my children to school," she said.
"I didn't know how my family could survive."
Turned around
Asma says her life has turned round following the intervention and help of her local authority
"I have been given books and a school uniform for my son. He has been able to go to secondary school for the first time."
The financial and material support from Temeke Council has addressed very immediate needs but social support has also been invaluable, she says.
"Perhaps what has been most useful is the advice I have been given about how to look after my children without the help of an extended family."
That advice has included a range of life skills: caring for her family, managing the small amount of money she makes from selling small fried bread rolls known as mandazi, as well as advice on family planning and HIV/Aids prevention.
Changing societies
Asma is one of the lucky few who have benefited from a system that is working well in one small area of Dar es Salaam, but which is unique in Tanzania and could be copied by countries throughout Africa.
The demand for social welfare support of this type is increasing across the continent, partly because of the number of children who are being orphaned by Aids, but also because the migration of rural people to the city has led to a breakdown in family support structures.
Temeke, with its population of 750,000, is home to around 9,500 "most vulnerable children" (MVCs), as they are known in development jargon: a 10% increase on the previous year.
According to the Institute of Social Work (ISW), Tanzania needs at least 8,000 more social workers to meet the increasing demand.
Its response has been to train existing community development officers and representatives of community-based and non-governmental organisations as so-called para-social workers.
"There are many professionals who are working at community level who frequently come into contact with MVCs," says the institute's Judith Bagachwa.
"We can give these people social work skills with which they can support people who would otherwise not receive any services."