Disgust, grief and rage is what I felt when I heard that our Polio Plus inoculators had been butchered by Islamist fanatics. That human beings can do this to good people who were only there to help fills me with despair. Polio eradication is just one of many world problems where the cure is hindered by fanatics and cold-blooded murderers. Nearly every place where people are still starving today is not because of lack of food but because hate-filled people have destroyed the infrastructure for growing and distributing food, or have driven off or killed the farmers. Conflict wrecks everything. There is no reason we couldn’t have fresh water, food, shelter and hygienic sewage systems for every human being on Earth, if we could just stop killing each other, blowing up essential infrastructure and the stealing of foreign aid by corrupt rulers and bureaucrats.
Syria, Zimbabwe, Yemen, South Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Niger, Somalia; what do they have in common? Tribal or Religious Conflict…and famine.
Our problems as a species are nearly all self-inflicted. Rotary would have little to do if it were not for governance failures, corruption and violence in the countries we are trying to help. I dream of a future where we are only needed after natural disasters.
