adventures in disaster

Kenya

Another day, another disaster .
When I think of Kenya I think of National Geographic. I think of miles and miles of grasslands, zebra and antelope. I have the Disney version of Africa in my head. Cheetah and lion prides happily co-existing...no one getting eaten.
The reality is awful .Miles and miles of dead wildebeest, carcasses rotting in the sun. The earth scorched brown, the trees withered.
Kenya is dying, Kenyans are starving and as usual no one gives a damn.
Why can the world lose its collective goddamn mind over the price of oil but not even notice the death of a country?
How can we pretend to not notice? Rwanda , Darfur and now Kenya and no one says a word. But mention New Orleans and hear the roar.
I have only a little sympathy for you New Orleans. You were told to get out and you refused."It won't be that bad"," I don't have a car,"" I can't pay for a bus to save my life", "I couldn't bother to pick up my mother,grandmother, father..it was too much trouble."..blah,blah excuses..
Lets talk about Darfur..anyone tell them to get out? They don't have television, or a functioning government..where were they supposed to go? I's not like they had fifty other states to move to is it?
How about a drought country wide? Where are they supposed to evacuate to? They don't have Homeland Security and a few hundred billion dollars sitting around..they had the worlds largest tourist attraction but when the animals all starved the tourists went home..no tourists, no money.
The US is struggling over a city whose occupants all had fair warning of disaster and had somewhere to escape to and a system in place to care for , house and feed them when disaster occurred.... The Sudan, Darfur,Kenya have nothing..no food,no water..no COUNTRY..nothing and that is the worlds reaction..nothing, nothing at all.
Happy Mardi gras New Orleans..Africa is dying but I am sure the fact that your insurance hasn't paid up yet is a much larger world issue right CNN?


Swag bags, we all have heard of them. It's the 'gift" presenters at award shows receive for standing up and saying "the nominees are". Swag bags are worth a hundred thousand dollars. They give them to people who are worth millions. These people are not to embarrassed to take them. It makes me gag. In one night all the medical needs of a refugee camp could be solved, instead Nicole Kidman gets some more free skin care products and a cruise she will never,ever take.
Bono yells at the world to save Africa..the little known fact is the man has never spent a dime of his own money trying. He has more money than the governments of some African nations but he won't invest in the very thing he demands of the rest of the world. I am sick of Hollywood and the music industry hypocrites all. Talk,Talk,Talk...how about shutting up and buying and supporting a hospital. You could name it after yourself, hell make a chain of Bono clinics..music and vaccinations!


I understand that a lot of us don't have an extra dime to give another person. I know that a huge percentage of us are living check to check hoping to make it through. That doesn't let all of us off the hook. Africa doesn't want us to go broke, they want us to acknowledge they are drowning. They want us, the struggling ,working poor to wake up and realize through sheer damn luck we were born in Canada, the US, Europe and that our governments have a fund created expressly for the purpose of helping other countries in their time of need. Kenya needs our help and it's our job to tell our government that . We need to remind them that we watched Mutual of Omahas Wild Kingdom and we love lions, zebras and the wildebeest and we love the country that decided that wildlife and it's habitat were important. Kenya made an effort to save all the animals Disney has made billions of dollars off of. Maybe Disney could kick back a few bucks from the Lion King and save a few lions. Maybe in the process of saving lions and elephants we could save Kenyans, people just like us, people no different that those in New Orleans..



Than God for television.., the true opiate of the masses..we watch and learn nothing. We are kept passive like well fed cows grazing on the new episodes of Prison Break ,Lost and The Sopranos. No fascist dictatorship could have thought up something as insidious as primetime programming.

Do an experiment just for yourself. Count how many times you are offered insightful information about Darfur or Kenya in the next week.
Then count how many times you hear about the bow on Charlize Therons Oscar dress.

How many times did you choose to stick with the show that offered that insight?
How many times did you switch to Entertainment Tonight?

Talk with your friends and your family and your community about Africa, who knows you may have some of the solutions right in your home town...
I really like zebra and I want a place for them to live. I think Kenya is the best place for them so I must support the survival of Kenya..it's that easy.
Send the Prime Minister a letter.

posted by adventures in disaster @ 11:37 PM