learnchange:

1 Dec 2011

A bad thing:

The Shabab militant group, which has already blocked many aid agencies from reaching starving people in Somalia’s famine zones, ordered 16 more aid agencies to shut down, including UNICEF.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/world/africa/somali-militants-shut-down-more-aid-operations.html?_r=1

(Picture is from related article, see clickthrough.)

(Source: threethingsfortoday)

life:

Beautiful Seven Billionth Baby — A doctor attends to a newborn boy at a hospital in Zouping, China on October 31, 2011. Celebrations for the symbolic “seven billionth” baby have been tempered by concerns about overpopulation.

(see related — Modern China: A Primer)

motherjones:

Chart of the Day: The amount that students owe quintupled between 2000 and 2011. For more, check out our MoJo College Guide.

(via npr)

10knotes:

toliveanddieinlondon:

This is Hideaki Akaiwa. When the Tsunami hit his home town of Ishinomaki, Hideaki was at work. Realising his wife was trapped in their home, he ignored the advice of professionals, who told him to wait for the army to arrive to provide search and rescue.

Instead he found some scuba gear, jumped in the raging torrent - dodging cars, houses and other debris being dragged around by the powerful current, any of which could have killed him instantly - and navigated the now submerged streets in pitch dark, freezing water until he found his house. Swimming inside, he discovered his wife alive on the upper level with only a small amount of breathing room, and sharing his respirator, pulled her out to safety.

If he had waited for the army, his wife of 20 years would be dead.

Oh, and if that’s not enough badassery for one lifetime, Hideaki realised his mother was also unaccounted for, so jumped back in the water and managed to save her life also. Since then Hideaki enters the water everyday on a one man search and rescue mission, saving countless lives and proving that two natural disasters in a single day - and insurmountable odds - can’t stand in the way of love. This man is my hero.

Submitted by dayanatuna

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donyaquixote:

A tortured choice in famine: Which child lives?

By MALKHADIR M. MUHUMED - Associated Press | AP – Thu, Aug 11, 2011

DADAAB, Kenya (AP) — Wardo Mohamud Yusuf walked for two weeks with her 1-year-old daughter on her back and her 4-year-old son at her side to flee Somalia’s drought and famine. When the boy collapsed near the end of the journey, she poured some of the little water she had on his head to cool him, but he was unconscious and could not drink.

She asked other families traveling with them for help, but none stopped, fearful for their own survival.

Then the 29-year-old mother had to make a choice that no parent should have to make.

“Finally, I decided to leave him behind to his God on the road,” Yusuf said days later in an interview at a teeming refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya. “I am sure that he was alive, and that is my heartbreak.”

Parents fleeing the devastating famine on foot — sometimes with as many as seven children in tow — are having to make unimaginably cruel choices: Which children have the best chance to survive when food and water run low? Who should be left behind?

“I have never faced such a dilemma in my life,” Yusuf told The Associated Press. “Now I’m reliving the pain of abandoning my child. I wake up at night to think about him. I feel terrified whenever I see a son of his age.”

Dr. John Kivelenge, a mental health officer for the International Rescue Committee at Dadaab emphasizes the extreme duress Somali mothers and fathers are facing.

“It is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. They can’t sit down and wait to die together,” he said. “But after a month, they will suffer post-traumatic stress disorder, which means they will have flashbacks and nightmares.

“The picture of the children they abandoned behind will come back to them and haunt them,” he said. “They will also have poor sleep and social problems.”

The United States estimates that more than 29,000 Somali children under age 5 have died in the famine in the last three months. An unknown number too weak to walk farther have been abandoned on the sandy trek to help after food and water supplies ran out.

Faduma Sakow Abdullahi, a 29-year-old widow, attempted the journey to Dadaab with her baby and other children ages 5, 4, 3 and 2. A day before she reached the refugee camp, her 4-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son wouldn’t wake up after a brief rest.

Abdullahi said she did not want to “waste” the little water she had in a 5-liter container on dying children when the little ones needed it.

Nor did she want to wait for too long until her other children started dying, so she stood up and walked away a few paces — then returned in the hopes the youngsters were in fact alive.

After several back-and-forth walks, she finally left her two children under a tree, unsure whether they could be resuscitated.

More than 12 million people in East Africa are in need of food aid because of the severe drought. The U.N. says 2.8 million of those are in need of immediate lifesaving assistance, including more than 450,000 in Somalia’s famine zones.

Ahmed Jafar Nur, a 50-year-old father of seven, was traveling with his 14-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter to Kenya. But after only two days of walking, they ran out of water. By the third day, they could only sit beneath a big tree — thirsty, hungry and exhausted.

“The two children could not walk on anymore. Then instead of us all dying there, I was forced to leave them to their fate, especially after I thought of the other five children and their mother I left behind at home. I said to myself, ‘Save your life for the interest of the five others. These two have their God,’” he said.

“That was the worst thing I experienced in my life. It was a heartbreaking experience to abandon my children who are part of myself,” he said. “For almost three months, my mind was not stable. Their images were in front of me.”

Miraculously, the two teenagers were saved by nomads, and they have since made their way back to their mother in Somalia. But Nur said he can’t afford to bring the rest of his family to Kenya because it cost too much.

“I was a farmer and had no education that can help me now get jobs. We depend on handouts,” he said. “My mind is preoccupied with them: Will they all die, including their mother, or will some survive? That is what I always ask myself.”

When Faqid Nur Elmi’s 3-year-old son died of hunger and thirst on the road from Somalia, his mother could only surround his body with small dried branches to serve as a grave. She couldn’t stop to mourn — there were five other children to think about.

“Where will I get the energy to dig up a grave for him?” she asked. “I was just thinking of how I can save the rest of the children. The God who gave me him in the first place took him away. So I didn’t worry much about the late son. Others’ lives were at risk.”

___

How to help: http://www.interaction.org/crisis-list/interaction-members-respond-drought-crisis-horn-africa

pourtrouver:

The United Nations declared a famine in Somalia two weeks ago, but the story has largely been overshadowed here by the debt-ceiling debacle, the Norway massacre and allegations of phone hacking at a Rupert Murdoch tabloid. According to another Times story, which ran Monday, humanitarian groups have struggled to raise money for aid, in part because of the famine’s limited media profile.

“I’m asking myself where is everybody and how loud do I have to yell and from what mountaintop,” said Caryl Stern, chief executive of the United States Fund for Unicef, a fund raising arm for the organization. “The overwhelming problem is that the American public is not seeing and feeling the urgency of this crisis.”

Please donate any amount you can.

hrtbps:

blue-ringed-octopus:

hrtbps:

hrtbps:

International followers, take note.  Whenever you see images of the riots currently taking place in the UK, think of these images.  This is who we are.  We are the group of Sikhs organising patrols to protect their gurdwara and the surrounding area.  We are the local communities coming out in force to help clean up and clear up the streets.  We are the Turkish business owners driving away rioters and protecting their local shops and restaurants.  We are the young couple handing out cups of tea to police officers.  We are the group of Muslim men protecting local shops and businesses after prayers in their local mosque.  We are the volunteers currently manning shelters and donating items for people made homeless from house fires during the rioting.  We are the photographer offering to replace family photos that have been lost in the fires.  We are the people behind the internet campaigns to help businesses and individuals effected by the violence.  This is who we are.

(images via sky news / pixel-eight / Andy B)

Read this if you are not from the UK but have been following the riots.  Please and thanks.

Main reason I’m reblogging this: some small part of me that feels proud to be a muslim.

That small part should grow to be a huge part.  Be proud of who you are!