Darfur and other Tragedies
Something has often had me wondering about these catastrophies. They usually occur in Africa and involve chronic malnutrition - Ethiopia is another exsample from years ago. They don’t involve a natural calamity such as earthquakes and do usually involve inept and corrupt government.
The media exposure is usually of crowds of emaciated people, huddled together in rubbish-bag tents or under trees. The women are gaunt, with thousand yard stares whilst the kids - and the media love this - are pot bellied with limpid eyes. But where are the men? Rarely seen. And yet, where do all these kids come from? Not from immaculate conceptions surely. And there are thousands of them.
I have occasionally wondered whether the gaunt faces on the women was as a result of too little sleep caused by the sound of bones crashing together all night. Looking at their condition, you would think that it would take all their energy to get one foot in front of the other, yet they manage to reproduce. The males, one would think, must be in far better fettle than the women.
It is a sad commentary on the human species that seemingly no amount of deprivation amongst calamitous circumstances can diminish its fecundity. With other animals, adverse conditions bring about a cessation in reproductive ability. But not in humans. I swear that we are going to reproduce ourselves into oblivion the way we are going.