A Tampon shortage in Zimbabwe makes me wonder, not for the first time and almost certainly not for the last time, what is wrong with Africa? It's hard to convey the sense of not just sadness, but also exasperation that an entire continent apparently cannot get its act together. It is difficult to look at the situation from the outside and feel neither pity nor anger. Indeed, since I am all-but-helpless I might as well feel nothing.
The movie "Airplane!" sums up my emotion, when a man is confronting a woman thrown into hysterics by news of their impending crash, shaking her by the lapels, and the camera pans back to show a long line of people waiting to confront her, each carrying a progressively larger weapon. It's true, I just want to "smack some sense" into Zimbabwe. The knowledge that it rarely, if ever, helps is no deterrent to the emotion. I'm sure that this Airplane effect is what partly motivated Bush's Iraq adventure, and look how well that's going. And that's a situation where not only did we remove a dictator but started pumping vast quanities of money into the region. And people are *still* so unhappy that they're blowing stuff up.
What is truly disturbing is the knowledge that if this note of mine recieved wide circulation, it would no doubt reach those whose immediate reaction would be "How dare you criticise Zimbabwe! The US is no different, and in fact Z's problems are caused by the US." This sounds too pat and ignorant to be anything but flamebait, so I would simply ignore it. I'm open to understanding the role of globalization in z's problems, but to completely abrogate responsibility on behalf of Z's people is irresponsible. Change *must* come from within (as Iraq is constantly teaching us).
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