Life is Beautiful

Escape me?
Never—
Beloved!
While I am I, and you are you,
So long as the world contains us both,
Me the loving and you the loth,
While the one eludes, must the other pursue.
My life is a fault at last, I fear:
It seems too much like a fate, indeed!
Though I do my best I shall scarce succeed.
But what if I fail of my purpose here?
It is but to keep the nerves at strain,
To dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall,
And baffled, get up to begin again,—
So the chase takes up one's life, that's all.
While, look but once from your farthest bound,
At me so deep in the dust and dark,
No sooner the old hope drops to ground
Than a new one, straight to the selfsame mark,
I shape me—
Ever
Removed!

if you can skip one meal a day and still survive, do you think you can still survive after 30 days or longer?...these people are beyond starvation.

Drop by at this website to see if you can do anything about it:
http://www.standwithafrica.org/homepage.html

Source: The Monitor-Uganda
Date: 31 Oct 2007

JANE NAFULA

In Katakwi, Soroti and Bukedea districts, several affected people say they have never received any food relief despite the fact that the heavy rains destroyed their crops

Before the floods hit his village, Amuge in Amuria District, Mzee Fasinu Okumur, 77 was a happy man. His family could afford two meals a day. But after his groundnuts, cassava and sorghum crops were destroyed by the floods, his family hardly gets what to eat.

"The groundnuts were washed away, the sorghum germinated and the cassava which was submerged for weeks is now rotten and we really don't know what to do," he says.

Okumur says life after the floods is so harsh that one cannot predict what they are going to have for lunch or supper. He says since the floods started, he has never received any food relief.

"One time we saw a plane coming to our village and we were excited that they had brought us food only to see the food being distributed in schools," he says.

They now depend on the few groundnuts that he had stored in a granary that survived the floods. His worry is that the supply will not last for a week. He exchanges the groundnuts with people willing to give him flour.

More food needed

He says four of his children who are at school survive on porridge provided by the school. In Katakwi, Soroti and Bukedea districts, several affected people also say they have never received any food relief despite the fact that the heavy rains destroyed their crops.

Those who have been able to get some food from relief agencies say they need more assistance because what they got is finished. Mr James Abarimo of Okocho village in Katakwi says he has got two wives and 10 children but he was given two kilogrammes of beans and five kilogrammes of maize flour but it could not last three days.

While meeting officials from ActionAid International Uganda in Soroti on October 17, some of the LCV Chairpersons in Teso also admitted that some of the affected have not yet received food.

They urged the government to expedite the distribution of food relief to flood victims. Soroti District Chairman, Mr Stephen Ochola said although President Museveni declared a state of emergency, the government has not done much to respond to the food needs of the affected people.

"About 80 percent of the food relief has been provided by Non Governmental Organisations and the United Nations World Food Programme. If it were not for the contribution of these good Samaritans, the situation would be worse," Ochola said.

About 300,000 people who have been displaced by the floods are in need of food. But the UN World Food Programme, the major supplier of food relief has said it is running out of food to feed these people.

Ochola says scarcity started in May when the floods first hit five sub-counties in Soroti destroying crops. The worst affected crops include cassava, groundnuts and millet. He says millet bread is the staple food for people in Teso and if cassava and millet are not there, it means there's food insecurity.


"Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile."


See how you can help the africans by going to this website(WFP:World Food Programme):
http://www.wfp.org/how_to_help/introduction/index.asp?section=4&sub_section=1

The picture above was taken by a famous photographer, Kevin Carter and it won him an award for photography in 1993. However due to depression he suffered after spending his times taking pictures in Africa, he died in 1994.
Looking back at the picture, it does 'depressed' you. The fact that the kid is at death's gate and the bird is waiting to feed on her body shows that how poverty and starvation in Africa really has taken a drastic toll. But the most depressing thing of all is that i am only able to look at the picture and just cry over it helplessly. O God, please shorten my life by a year and give the needy and the poor, health and food for a year.


"When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile."



Help the africans through WFP(World Food Programme):
http://www.wfp.org/how_to_help/introduction/index.asp?section=4&sub_section=1