Beyond Knowing

The Hidden Hunger-None of this is glamorous

Rita — Sun, 24 May 2009 15:57:31 +0000

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/opinion/24kristof.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

We in the West misunderstand starvation — especially the increasing hunger caused by the global economic crisis —

The World Bank has estimated that United Nations goals for overcoming global poverty have been set back seven years by the global crisis. It calculates that increased malnutrition last year may have caused an additional 44 million children to suffer permanent physical or mental impairment.

Yet one of the great Western misconceptions is that severe malnutrition is simply about not getting enough to eat. Often it’s about not getting the right micronutrients — iron, zinc, vitamin A, iodine — and one of the most cost-effective ways outsiders can combat poverty is to fight this “hidden hunger.”

Malnutrition is not a glamorous field, and so it’s routinely neglected by everybody — donor governments, poor countries and, yes, journalists. But malnutrition is implicated in one-third to one-half of all child deaths each year; the immediate cause may be diarrhea, but lurking behind it is a deficiency of zinc.

“That image of a starving child in a famine doesn’t represent the magnitude of the problem,” notes Shawn Baker of Helen Keller International, a New York-based aid group working in this area. “For every child who is like that, you have 10 who are somewhat malnourished and many more who are deficient in micronutrients.

In my column last Sunday, I wrote about women dying in childbirth. One reason so many die of hemorrhages is that 42 percent of pregnant women worldwide have anemia, according to the World Health Organization. And here in Guinea-Bissau, 83 percent of youngsters under age 5 suffer from iron deficiency.

The general rise in food prices (in part because of American use of corn for ethanol) is leading to more micronutrient deficiencies. One study found that a 50 percent rise in food prices in poor countries leads to a 30 percent drop in iron intake.

Americans typically get micronutrients from fortified foods, and the same strategy is possible in Africa. Helen Keller International is helping Guinea’s leading flour mill fortify its products with iron, folic acid and vitamin B (zinc is coming soon). We visited the mill, and managers said that the fortification costs virtually nothing — a tiny fraction of a penny per loaf of bread — yet it will reduce anemia, maternal mortality and cognitive impairments around the country.

None of this is glamorous, but it’s hugely needed — and truly a bargain.

Bob — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 16:57:51 +0000

The following reveals the attitude of the Taliban who are growing stronger in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Behind this statement, we believe, is a world of individuals longing for something that satisfies.
“We hate democracy,” Sufi told a crowd of thousands of followers in Mingora after the ratification of the Malakand Accord was announced in mid-February. “We want the occupation of Islam in the entire world. Islam does not permit democracy or election.” [Sufi Muhammad, spokesman for an organization believed to be a front for the Taliban, quoted by The Long War Journal] http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/04/analysis_pakistani_t.php

Instead of reacting with fear to the strong statement-see the desire in it.Pray that God will work among the people of the tribal territories of western Pakistan.

Include in your prayers government and zealous religous leaders who have strong beliefs about the best system for their people, hoping for a more perfect state system.

Creating Jobs for Refugees

Johanna — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:02:10 +0000

As we’ve pondered what it looks like to help refugees find jobs I have followed the blog of a company that is successfully creating answering to that question

The Providence Granola Project Mission: Giving International Refugees a Boost in the Job Market

The Providence Granola Project was conceived as a way to give refugees a boost toward employability (and in the spirit of full disclosure, to make a little money).

The idea isn’t long-term employment so much as a way to help people who have a lot of obstacles in their way get a foot in the job market–an initial experience, something on the resume. Our first employee was a woman originally from Burundi (via Tanzania) named Berita Ndizeeye. She has 9 children, plus a couple grandchildren, and arrived in Providence this past summer speaking no English and not literate in her own language (Kirundi). She’s been attending ESL and Life Skills classes with us since she arrived. I wouldn’t say she’s learned much English, but she has a great attitude and she does manage to make herself understood when it’s necessary. She helped us make our first large batch of granola. It was pretty comical. We weren’t even sure if she understood why she was working or if we were paying her, but that didn’t seem to matter. The granola came out better than ever. When Keith dropped her off afterwards, he went upstairs to check in with one of her kids who speaks more English to see if she had any questions. The only thing she wanted to know is if we’d hire her again.

Berita has a job

So check this out everybody. Our first employee, Berita, mother of nine and refugee from Burundi, has found a job. We, of course, are thrilled. Not that we’ve had any doubts that anyone who can pull heavy pans in and out of a hot oven or wrestle our 60 lb vat of honey with Berita’s enthusiasm would make a great employee. But considering her limited English and almost total lack of experience in the American workplace, she was facing a challenge.

This comes as a shot of encouragement for us. I work alongside everyone else in our Friday night granola factory and I know first-hand what my muscles feel like the next day. I have to admit, especially during these initial few months of heavy start-up expenses, there are moments when I wonder WTOF (what the organic flax) I’ve gotten myself into. It’s awfully nice to see our idea working.

As I see it, the main thing we are teaching our employees in this project is confidence—confidence that they can learn new skills, that they can communicate across almost any language barrier, and that they can be a crucial part of a team. Our hope is that what Berita learned with us played some part in helping her interview for and get a job, and that it will make her upcoming transition more smooth and less frightening. We will miss her.

Someone needs to care.

Rita — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:14:18 +0000

I spent yesterday morning trying to get Dalmar back in school. The school had given him 9 days suspension The whole incident started because he refused to take some kind of test that non-English speakers must take. (He said he had taken it before and passed it. Apparently the law says he has to take it again. )

At the moment he is back in school and the school counselor was very helpful.

BUT my question is: I have seen these kids go “down the tubes” in our country. Many adolescent children of refugees have been in trouble: gangs, drugs, etc. They often come from one dire situation only to enter another by moving into lower income areas and attending troubled schools. What I wonder is if anyone can think of how to help these kids? Someone needs to care.

Crimes against Humanity: Epidemic Rape in Congo

Rita — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 16:17:02 +0000

Below is a New York Times Article with some ways to begin interceding..

Perhaps we’ve heard so little about them because the crimes are so unspeakable, the evil so profound.

if (acm.rc) acm.rc.write();For years now, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, marauding bands of soldiers and militias have been waging a war of rape and destruction against women. This sustained campaign of mind-bending atrocities, mostly in the eastern part of the country, has been one of the strategic tools in a wider war that has continued, with varying degrees of intensity, since the 1990s. Millions have been killed.

Women and girls of all ages, from old women to very young children, have been gang-raped, and in many cases their sexual organs have been mutilated. The victims number in the hundreds of thousands. But the world, for the most part, has remained indifferent to their suffering.

“These women are raped in front of their husbands, in front of their children, in front of their parents, in front of their neighbors,” said Dr. Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist who runs a hospital in Bukavu that treats only the women who have sustained the most severe injuries.

In some cases, the rapists have violated their victims with loaded guns and pulled the triggers. Other women have had their organs deliberately destroyed by knives or other weapons. Sons have been forced at gunpoint to rape their mothers. Many women and girls have been abducted and sexually enslaved.

It is as if, in these particular instances, some window to what we think of as our common humanity had been closed. As The Times’s Jeffrey Gettleman, on assignment in Congo, wrote last fall:

“Many of these rapes have been marked by a level of brutality that is shocking even by the twisted standards of a place riven by civil war and haunted by warlords and drug-crazed child soldiers.”

Dr. Mukwege visited me at The Times last week. He was accompanied by the playwright, Eve Ensler, who has been passionate in her efforts to bring attention and assistance to the women of Congo.

I asked Dr. Mukwege to explain how it was in the strategic interest of the various armed groups to rape and otherwise brutalize women. He described some of the ramifications of such atrocities and the ways in which they undermine the entire society in which the women live.

“Once they have raped these women in such a public way,” he said, “sometimes maiming them, destroying their sexual organs — and with everybody watching — the women themselves are destroyed, or virtually destroyed. They are traumatized and humiliated on every level, physical and psychological. That’s the first consequence.

“The second consequence is that the whole family and the entire neighborhood is traumatized by what they have seen. The ordinary sense of family and community is lost after a man has been forced to watch his wife being raped, or parents are forced to watch the rape of their daughters, or children see their mothers raped.

“Neighbors are witnesses to this. Many flee. Families are dislocated. Social relationships are lost. There is no more social network, village network. Not only the victims have been destroyed; the whole village is destroyed.”

The devastating injuries treated by Dr. Mukwege at his hospital can all but stun the imagination. There is no need to detail them further here. AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are commonplace. Often the ability to bear children is destroyed. In many other cases, women end up giving birth to the children of their rapists.

“The hospital can take care of 3,600 women every year,” said Dr. Mukwege. “That is our maximum capacity. We can’t take any more.”

He spoke of ambulance teams that would drive into villages and be besieged by rape victims desperately seeking treatment. “It is awful to see 300 women in need of help,” he said, “and you have to take 10 because the ambulance can only take 10.”

Ms. Ensler spoke of her encounter with an 8-year-old girl during one of her trips to Congo. The girl’s father had been killed in an attack, her mother was raped, and the girl herself was abducted. The child was raped by groups of soldiers over a two-week period and then abandoned.

The girl felt too ashamed to allow herself to be held, Ms. Ensler said, because her injuries had left her incontinent. After explaining how she persuaded the child to accept an embrace, to be hugged, Ms. Ensler said, “If we’re living in a century when an 8-year-old girl is incontinent because that many soldiers have raped her, then something has gone terribly wrong.”

Despite the presence in the region of the largest U.N. peacekeeping mission in the world, no one has been able to stop the systematic rape of the Congolese women.

If these are not war crimes, crimes against humanity, then nothing is.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/opinion/21herbert.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Some ways to begin praying:

- for God to intervene in the lives of those who are being brutalized and also those who are wantonly brutalizing others.

-for God to raise up leaders that can bring justice to the region

-that Jesus can be lifted up, that hearts can be regenerated and lives changed. Pray for God’s spirit to be at work in those who have been brutalized and shamed.

Strange Aromas

Johanna — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:56:51 +0000

I went shopping yesterday with some immigrant friends that I have known for the last year and a half. I was really challenged by their not needing to accomplish a goal in our outing. I thought the goal was to buy some school uniforms, but in the end we didn’t buy any. There was of course purpose in our outing: look at school uniforms, shoes and coats, eat together. However, they were not driven to accomplish. Part of me wants to “correct” them about this, to teach them to plan ahead, to create a schedule and to stick to it because they make my life crazy by just living day by day. However, for the first time today, I really appreciated this about them. I still find it annoying, but for awhile today I saw the joy and freedom in just being, even if it was being at the mall.

In this same vein, they teach me alot about communication and how to celebrate small victories. Sometime in conversations (especially phone conversations) we will spend 5 or 10 minutes trying to make the other one understand what we are saying, this is FRUSTRATING for both of us. In the beginning of the friendship, I would say, “no never mind it’s not important” and we would leave the conversation in defeat, a failure. Now we stick with it because it is important. Maybe what we’re saying isn’t important, but it’s important to try. The elation that comes when one of us finally understands, is ridiculously disproportionate for a conversation about traffic lights. Yet we get to celebrate at the end of so many conversations, it’s actually kind of addicting.

After eating one of the ladies announced that our hands smelled like onions, made the international face for “icky,” and pulled out a perfume sample from Dillards. She proceeded to dump half the vile onto my hands. Even as I type my hands reek like rich old lady. It made me think about the story where the woman breaks a precious possession, a bottle of pure nard, and pours it all over Jesus’ feet and how the drenched smell lingers for a long time. It also made me think about the part of the second letter that Paul wrote to the Corinthian church that says:

Through us, God brings knowledge of Christ. Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God, which is recognized by those on the way of salvation—an aroma redolent with life. But those on the way to destruction treat us more like the stench from a rotting corpse.

This is a terrific responsibility. Is anyone competent to take it on? No— but at least we don’t take God’s Word, water it down, and then take it to the streets and sell it cheap. We stand in Christ’s presence when we speak; God looks us in the face. We get what we say from God and as honestly as we can.

The perfume smells great to her, but to me, it smells very “other”. And this analogy of being the aroma of Christ, it makes more sense to me after today, because I better understand how how things can ”smell different” to different people. I want Christ to be a pervasive and lingering part of my presence, but I hope that it is becoming more sweet and less corpse like or “other” to my friends. Today I am glad I am merely the conduit of the fragrance, a fragrance with which they are hopefully growing more accustomed as we learn how to live day to day and struggle through communication and shopping trips.

Homework Nights

Johanna — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 05:34:23 +0000

Once a week or so I go help Aliyah and Tariq with their homework because their mother doesn’t speak English well enough to do it herself. I show up at the apartment and take off my shoes, take a deep breath and knock on the door. From this point on I’m never sure exactly what the night will hold. Someone flings the door open and exposes me to the sweet smell of incense and the spicy scent of cumin. I am welcomed in and take my place on the floor while we go through the ritual of discussing the health of our extended families.

Tonight I work on reading with the little girl, Aliyah, a first grader who has improved amazingly in the last year. After we are done with her homework and while everyone else is in another room she is delighted to have me all to herself, so we work on setting up her new doll swing. She tells me- “Jo-hay-na, I have 100 songs in my heart” I ask her to sing to me but she says “ I only sing when I am sad. I have a lot of sadnesses in my heart too. I sing so that I am not sad anymore, because my beautiful voice makes me happy.” Then she adds, “My mom gets sad a lot and she cries, but I do not like to hear her cry” I tell Aliyah that I am SO glad that she has a beautiful voice and that singing makes her happy. I tell her I am glad God gave her such a special voice. I do not know what else to say.

I already know that her mom is sad. She is a single mother trying to raise kids in a foreign environment where most things don’t make sense: the school system, doctor’s remedies, government programs. Add to this confusion the fact that her children are more fluent in English than she is, that she can not even help them with basic homework. She worries that they are losing their proficiency in their native tongue which they can not read or write. She often tells me that this will be a problem when they return “home.” But home is still a very dangerous place.

Then the extended family bursts in and we watch the news while we sit on the living room floor eating dinner with no silverware-using our bread to dip into various bowls. We watch the news from their homeland. It’s hard to eat while you’re watching pictures of people killed by bombs-pools of blood and embedded shrapnel. We talk about how horrendous it all is, clicking our tongues shaking our heads when there are no words left.

Then I work with Tariq, a second grader. He too is getting better, but even after several weeks he still doesn’t know what a quarter, nickel, and dime are. His aunt and mom whisper the answer to him while we work. I’m still trying to figure out how to let them teach him first. We go over his homework from last week, because his mom did his it for him, all of it! (and he still missed a lot because she isn’t good at counting money either!) So we do it all again. After homework we play Pokémon battle. He is like Aliyah in so many ways, he delights in my undivided attention. I see him crumple or expand when his mom talks about how poorly he’s doing in school or when someone comments that he is doing his homework perfectly

I say my goodbyes and am given the standard gift of a Pepsi which I tuck under my arm as I pull my shoes on and head home.

Prayer for Swat, Pakistan

Bob — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:41:46 +0000

Today’s New York Times has a report on the situation in Swat. There the
Taliban have taken over control and are intimidating, beating, gunning
down, even beheading all those who in any way differ from their policy of
instituting strict rules that they call “Islam.” The article says “they
are enforcing a strict interpretation of Islam with cruelty, bringing
public beheadings, assassinations, social and cultural repression and
persecution of women to what was once an independent, relatively secular
region.” In the mean time the Pakistani government seems paralyzed,
unable even to decide what ought to be done about the spread of the
repressive version of Islam promoted by the Taliban.

Pray that God will give relief to the Pakistani people; that the promise
of the love and forgiveness of God will become known; that those who
suffer and are terrified will find hope in the promises of Jesus and be
delivered from fear by the confidence that God will establish a new world
in which righteousness dwells.

Robert L. Canfield
See my concerns for the world:
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~canfrobt/Concerns.html
My website: http://artsci.wustl.edu/~canfrobt/home.html
Blog: http://rcanfield.blogspot.com/

Rebels Kill at Least 620 in Congo, Groups Say

Bob — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 03:45:19 +0000

There are many Congolese living in St. Louis. The sufferings endured in this nation are great. Please read this article from today’s New York Times, and pray as God leads.

Pray for the Courageous working in Afghanistan

Bob — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:56:47 +0000

Last August a Christian woman serving the Afghanistan people in Kabul was gunned down as she was walking to work. Her organization and others like it had already experienced kidnapping and attempted murder. After prayer and mutual consultation the organization she worked for, which had been ministering to the Afghanistan peoples for over forty years and was widely appreciated there for their service, decided it would be unsafe to keep their staff in Afghanistan. Within a few days virtually all of them left the country; it was a sad day for all of them and for the Afghanistan people. A couple of years ago, as an agreement to obtain release of someone who was kidnapped, the Korean Christian servants in Afghanistan were obliged to leave the country.

Few expatriates are able to serve in Afghanistan because of the threats to the wellbeing to them and their families. We need to pray for God to honor their faithfulness, their courage, and dedication.

Despite the setbacks the gospel has been flourishing in that country, even though surreptitiously, as it is still illegal to worship Christ there. With limited possibilities for service by expatriate Christians and severe punishments for those who follow Christ, the need is all the more urgent that we pray for God to work among the Afghanistan peoples — only now it may be largely through the ministry of the local peoples themselves.

Some of us remember when the rise of a Communist government seemed to be a huge loss to the witness of the gospel in China, as virtually all the missionaries were forced out of the country. But God’s project to reach the world was not thwarted: under the Communist regime, somehow undetected, the church grew. Today there are many more Christians in China that ever.

Recently we had lunch with two Chinese Christian leaders. Each was involved with a small group of believers who meet regularly for encouragement and prayer. They believe they can continue to operate, even though the government is aware of their existence, so long as they continue to meet in small groups. The Bible is now legal in China, owing to an appeal by President Jimmy Carter to Deng Xiaoping. But it is dangerous to gather in any other than very small groups.

Pray that God will continue to prosper the house churches in China. Pray also that God will raise up leaders in Afghanistan to encourage further development of house churches there. Pray also for all those in countries that limit the declaration of the good news. Pray for the bible to be widely available in these countries.

See my concerns for the world:

http://artsci.wustl.edu/~canfrobt/Concerns.html

My website: http://artsci.wustl.edu/~canfrobt/home.html

Blog: http://rcanfield.blogspot.com/