A preview of the unpublished book A CIVILIZATION WITHOUT A VISION WILL PERISH: AN INDEPENDENT SEARCH FOR THE TRUTH by David Willis. CHAPTER 1: INDIFFERENCE TO POVERTY (Part 62). This blog is a continuation of the review of The End of Poverty: How We Can Make it Happen in Our Life Time, by Jeffrey Sachs, published in 2005.
Soils that are utterly exhausted of nutrients
The rest of the community is farming on tiny plots, often no more than 0.1 hectares, with soils that are utterly exhausted of nutrients, and therefore biologically unable to produce an adequate crop. The soils are so depleted of nutrients and organic matter that even if the rains are good, with yields of around one ton of maize per hectare, the households still go hungry. If the rains fail, the households face the risk of death from immunosuppression because of severe undernutrition. Stunting, meaning low height for one’s age, is widespread, a sign of the pervasive and chronic undernutrition of the children.
The price of fertilizer was now out of reach
Farmer after farmer described how the price of fertilizer was now out of reach, and how their current impoverishment left them unable to purchase what they had used in the past. Credits to buy fertilizer are neither available nor prudent for these farmers: a single failed crop season, an untimely episode of malaria, or some other calamity can push a household that has taken on debt into a spiral of unending indebtedness and destitution.
The only things coming back from the cities were coffins
I asked how many households were home to one or more orphaned children left behind by the pandemic. Virtually every hand in the room shot up. I asked how many households were receiving remittances from family members living in Nairobi and other cities. The response was that the only things coming back from the cities were coffins and orphans, not remittances.
They cannot afford the bed nets
I asked how many households had somebody currently suffering from malaria. Around three fourths of the hands shot up. The problem, many of the women explained, is that they cannot afford the bed nets, which sell for a few dollars per net, and are too expensive even when partially subsidized (socially marketed) by international donor agencies.
The villagers could not afford to pay the doctor
A year or so ago, Sauri had a small clinic. The doctor has left and the clinic is now padlocked. The villagers could not afford to pay the doctor and buy the medicines, so the doctor departed.
An increasingly erratic climate
A few years back, Sauri’s residents cooked with locally collected fuel wood, but the decline in the number of trees has left the sublocation bereft of sufficient fuel wood. The community has no money for fertilizers, medicines, school fees, or other basic needs that must be purchased from outside of the villages. This year the rains are failing again, another disaster in an increasingly erratic climate, quite possibly a climate showing the increasing effects of long-term man-made climate change emanating from the rich world.
Survival depends on addressing a series of specific challenges
This village could be rescued, and could achieve the Millennium Development Goals, but not by itself. Survival depends on addressing a series of specific challenges: nutrient-depleted soils, erratic rainfall, holoendemic malaria, pandemic HIV/AIDS, lack of adequate education opportunities, lack of access to safe drinking water and latrines, and the unmet need for basic transport, electricity, cooking fuels, and communications. All of these challenges can be met, with known, proven, reliable, and appropriate technologies and interventions.
A cost that is tiny for the world but too high for the villages
The crux of the matter for Sauri sublocation can be stated simply and directly: Sauri’s villages, and impoverished villages like them all over the world, can be saved and set on a path of development at a cost that is tiny for the world but too high for the villages themselves and for the Kenyan government on its own.