Forgotten

It's been awhile since I've even thought about blogging. Changes at work, family vacation and now two of my three kids are in school. It's so easy to get caught up in the hectic American pace of life. But I never want to forget what I already know about the poor in Africa. Too many do forget. The following is a powerful excerpt from an AP article today.

Amid international donors' preoccupation with the Asian tsunami disaster, pleas for help for West Africa were mostly ignored. Only in recent weeks when media beamed images of starving children in Niger around the globe did aid start to arrive in that country.

"As you can see from Niger, you have a long period with nothing, then the camera crews arrive and it becomes a political issue. Then aid arrives," says Smerdon.

Still, across Africa, "the vast majority of people are forgotten," he says. One in three of Africa's 900 million people lack enough food each day, the United Nations' says. African hunger is "a chronic problem, particularly in chronically impoverished places. It takes only something small to push people into the position where they need food aid," says Smerdon. "The long-term solution is more development."