A little clarification

Last night J and I spent 2 hours in front of the tv watching American Idol - the Idol Gives Back special. It was not a bad show, and oozed all the typical American pop culture and melodramatic cheese you would expect from a charitable event created by American Idol. Of course, being the total sucker that I am and infused with raging pregnancy hormones, I cried nearly the whole way through. The event seems to have been successful, and raised over $60 million (so far) for charities in the US and Africa. I especially enjoyed the footage of Randy and Paula in the US, because my focus has always been so international that I often forget there is extreme poverty and illiteracy in our own back yard. Hmm, forget is not the right word, I don't forget. But America has become so good at hiding (and ignoring) these realities that it is easy to overlook, whereas the conditions in Africa are so readily apparent and abundant that it is impossible to miss. I was also interested to learn about all the domestic work Save the Children does. I didn't know that, as I only know them due to their international work. In Mali they have set up several village elementary schools (J helped get one set up in his own village) and do basic health education.

With only minutes before the end, they finally showed Bono talking to the contestants. Can I just go on a little hero worship rant...I Love Bono. It is true, very very true. And I know that J doesn't even mind because he worships him even more than I do. I know deep down in my heart that he would leave me for Bono, if they both swung that way. And I accept that. And I don't blame him. I mean, the guy is a musical genius AND has done amazing work to fight poverty and HIV/AIDS. He is my Idol. Anyway, so he was featured in the end, talking about his amazing One campaign. Evidently, after the show over 70,000 people joined the One campaign, which is impressive. I was really hoping he would perform though, so I was a bit disappointed.

The whole reason for this post though is that I feel the need to provide a bit of clarification. Some of the footage they showed of Africa was very bothersome to me. I think that many Americans may have come away from the telecasts thinking that Africans live in filth and do not care about keeping their space clean. And this is not true. Granted, you do see a lot of trash along the streets, especially blue plastic bags which seem to have overtaken the whole continent. Think about it, if African governments don't have enough money to educate all their children and stop the HIV epidemic, they certainly don't have enough money to pay for garbage trucks and collectors. What I want to point out is that you will not see garbage laying around a family's compound. They do not live in "filth", and try to keep their space as clean and organized as resources would allow. If a woman let her home become dirty, the whole neighborhood or village would talk about it and she would be disgraced. So, after getting up at 5 a.m. to start breakfast cooking, washing dishes, with a child on her back or at her breast, in between preparing all the meals and doing laundry and taking care of the children and the elderly family members and going to the fields, she will sweep her compound. You don't know the meaning of work until you've seen a woman in rural Africa in action. For whatever reason, I needed that to be clear, because the scenes of heaping trash that Idol showed gave the wrong impression. Why did they feel the need to show the local dump in Kenya but not the one in Kentucky?