Tag Archives: Africa

Economics, Giving, Politics

I’m with Bono on this one.

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Via Bono: Only Capitalism Can End Poverty.

This is a great day. For years, Bono has been something of a pain, banging on about the need for billions of dollars in Western foreign aid to Africa. I have criticized him for ignoring the real source of African poverty – lack of capitalism – on numerous occasions.

But, unlike many who hate capitalism without reservation, Bono is open to changing his mind. Here is Bono giving capitalism its due recognition during a recent speech at Georgetown University. As the musician put it, when it comes to poverty “free enterprise is a cure.”

Indeed, the evidence is overwhelming.

According to the World Bank, global poverty is declining rapidly. In 1981, 70 percent of people in poor countries lived on less than $2 a day, while 42 percent survived on less than $1 a day. Today, 43 percent live on less than $2 a day, while 14 percent survive on less than $1. “Poverty reduction of this magnitude is unparalleled in history,” wrote Brookings Institution researchers Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz in a recent paper. “Never before have so many people been lifted out of poverty over such a brief period of time.”

Yes, we should still share with the less fortunate — preferably out of our own wallets.  But we must use good discernment with giving to ensure that it isn’t counter-productive.  Know the charities you support and ensure that they are really making a difference and are run efficiently and effectively.  Use good discernment and pray for wisdom!  But don’t forget that making people more self-sufficient may be the greatest gift.

For example, one of the reasons we love and support the AIDS Orphan mission in Kenya is that it doesn’t just cost effectively (literally $10/child/month) feed, clothe and educate these orphans (and the widows who take care of them), it also gives them life skills.  We met many kids who baked bread, sewed, did hair care, planted trees, etc. and made such good livings that they supported themselves and their siblings.  Their joy was contagious.  We feel blessed to be a small part of that and feel confident in giving to the program because we’ve seen it first hand many times and have gotten to know the leaders well over a number of years.

Economics, Politics

“We define poverty in an opulent way”

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The title is from a must-read at Pyromaniacs: Open Letter to the #Occupy Movement.  It highlights our covetousness and greed in how we compare our state to the wrong standard.  Why does the (alleged) 99% in the U.S. compare itself to the 1% and affix the blame for all their frustrations there?  Why not compare themselves to the real 99% — the rest of the world, most of whom would love to trade places with the bottom fifth of the U.S. citizenry?

 

But check it out: the line where you and I would say is the line which designates the poorest of the poor is well above the per capita income of more than 85% of the world’s population.  It’s a level of income 80% greater than the per cap GDP of South Africa, 30% greater than Russia, and six times greater than that of India.

That is: we define poverty in an opulent way.  Compared to the UK in 1800, we have defined the crown of Western Civilization to that time down to a dirty little country which we would be offended to live in.  The great part about this is the punchline: it’s because we’re greedy.

That’s right: the problem is not that “they” are greedy – whoever “they” are (the bankers, the capitalists, the stock traders, but apparently not the movie moguls, the actors, the politicians and pop stars) — but that we are greedy.  We want things we didn’t earn, and we can’t imagine that we might have to live on less than we think we are entitled to.  We certainly couldn’t live on what the average Englishman lived on in1800, and may God forbid we have to live on what the average Russian or South African lives on today.  There was a time when we would say it isn’t “fair”, but today we say it’s actually an injustice — as if “justice” has anything to do with us getting something we didn’t actually earn.

I encourage you to watch this amazing video.  Incomes and life spans have gone up dramatically around the world in the last 50 years. We should be celebrating, not coveting.

Christian worldview

Swahili

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I find it very useful to learn and use basic phrases as much as possible when on mission trips. The locals seem to appreciate the effort and it is fun to learn new things. As my daughter noted, so many of them speak multiple languages compared to us.

We had some fun with the Swahili iPhone app when preparing for our Kenya mission trip. I created some .mp3 files in 2004 to help me memorize a few words and phrases and have shared those with others (“Learn Swahili with Neilie!”), but this app was much more thorough and entertaining – and, uh, higher quality (it is possible that I mispronounced a few words on the .mp3 files).

I am not making up the following examples:

Travel safety

  • Don’t shoot! (Practical, I suppose, but hopefully you don’t need that one.  And if you said it in English I doubt they’d think you were saying, “Yes, please shoot me!”  And my guess is that they won’t let you whip out your iPhone to double check the pronunciation.)
  • I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong (that doesn’t work for me in English, but maybe it will in Swahili)
  • Those drugs aren’t mine! (Oh, well, since they aren’t yours, carry on and have a nice day.)
  • There was an explosion

Food & Eating

  • I am a well known food critic in my country

At the bar

  • I’m not just saying this because I’m drunk

Flirting

  • I am a marine biologist (That was the only career listed. I assume that was just an example, but perhaps being a marine biologist is the premier gateway to getting dates.)
  • I am very rich
  • I am famous
  • Will you marry me? (seems like you might want to both be fluent in the same language before asking that)
  • I’m not a stalker (really!)
  • I’m not just saying this because I’m drunk (Apparently that works in multiple categories.  It is probably a good one for the workplace, too.)
Missions

Kenya 2011

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This was my 5th trip to Kenya, my wife’s 2nd and my youngest daughter’s first. It was amazing to be able to share it with them, though it would have been 100% perfect if my oldest could have come (she had a dance commitment that worked out splendidly for her, and she is now a paid apprentice with a professional ballet company!). The whole trip was my daughters’ idea. We had talked about doing a Mediterranean cruise to celebrate our 25th anniversary and my youngest’s high school graduation, but the mission trip won out.

We helped construct an AIDS Orphan home, which is one of our usual projects.  The recipient is a 15 yr. old boy who cares for his nearly-blind grandmother and lived in a mud/stick hut.  Now they have a 12’x20′ two room home that will keep them dry and safe.  His parents and three siblings had died.  The local church has helped counsel him and he’s doing much better than he was.  He seemed to have some good friends.  He even helped with the construction.  The grandma was so quiet all week, then at the dedication she started jumping and singing in thanksgiving (something about being lifted higher by Jesus).

Part of the group saw the Hope Companion project, a terrific endeavor where orphans are given practical business skills to support themselves, sort of a Junior Achievement Meets Jesus program.  It gives the kids hope and us as well, because it makes such a radical difference.  This isn’t about handouts for multiple generations, it is about making them self-sufficient.  The U.S. could learn a lot from this model.  Whether it was sewing, baking bread or planting seedlings for sale each of these youths were now able to support themselves and often others.  One boy had 7 younger siblings he could now care for instead of having to beg from others who already didn’t have enough — plus he took on care for another orphan.  That’s convicting!

We visited a bush clinic where vitamins, de-worming, antibiotics, etc. were dispensed to a few hundred people.  Getting out in the community is one of the best parts of the trip.

I shared my leadership training (“great results / high employee satisfaction”) to the hospital management team.  Given cultural and language barriers I set low expectations for how it would be received, but it really seemed to resonate with them.  It highlights the techniques I’ve used to run successful groups with best-in-class employee satisfaction scores and remarkably low turnover (I really need to blog on it someday).  I’ve presented it at a few conferences in the U.S. and shared it in a session with managers where I work, but wouldn’t have thought that it would work in Kenya.  But in talking to the hospital CEO last year and hearing about their staff turnover problems, I realized that this was just what they needed to hear.   Good, basic management skills are universal.  I enjoyed adding Bible verses to the presentation and focused on the theme that if God had such high expectations for how Christian masters should treat slaves in the Roman empire, how much more so should Christian supervisors treat their employees well?

Our associate pastor had to cancel at the last minute, so I ended up giving a couple messages in his place. One was at the morning devotional for the hospital employees. Their scripture for the day was from Ephesians 5, starting with “Wives, submit to your husbands.” Oh, good, an easy and non-controversial topic!  I embraced it as a chance to talk about how many U.S. churches hate that passage and rationalize that Paul didn’t write it under the inspiration of God, and because of that they miss out on a beautiful passage.  Also, in that culture the men love that verse but tend to stop reading after that.  I noted that they need to focus more on the part about “husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.”

The other talk was a 20 min. sermon at the church in the Kawangware slum in Nairobi. That was a huge blessing. I figured the pastor would want something lighter, but he wanted me to include topics that they face like AIDS, domestic violence and poverty.  I preached on John 1:1-5, emphasizing Jesus’ deity, God’s sovereignty and how Jesus is the light to the world and uses us in his plan.  It seemed to go well.

Visiting Dennis, our World Vision sponsor child, is always a highlight for me. We’ve written him for over 13 years so he is like family to us. He is in college now and works very hard. He is an amazing young man with a passion for God.

We took 12 Proclaimer audio Bibles to distribute, and I was beyond thrilled at how well they were received.  I’ll blog separately on that.

In addition to the daily 15 min. services at the hospital, we got to worship there twice — in Maua and in the church in the Nairobi slum.  The services are a little longer (2 hours) but much more energetic than in the U.S.

The hospital in Kenya does amazing things to help the community, and they are extremely cost-effective.  They share the Gospel with all the patients.  They know how to reach the poorest of the poor.  They are hurting now with the food shortages.  If you want to help the hospital and community, click here.    Money goes a long way in Kenya!  For example, for only $10 / month you can feed, clothe and educate a child.

Miscellaneous things

Flight stuff: We flew on Emirates for the first time, with a 15+ hour flight to Dubai then a 5 hour flight to Nairobi. As we’d been told, the leg room was a little better than what we’re used to. Yea! But those long flights are still killers (“Let’s see, I’ve read, gone through all the pictures on my computer, napped, eaten a meal and a snack, and read some more, so we must be almost there . . . ack! 11 hours to go!”).

I took my laptop on this trip. It was a bit of a burden to carry all the stuff (it is a heavy one, plus the extra batteries and such) but I loved being able to write and edit pictures on the plane and when we had free time. That is always the hard part of returning. There are lots of things to catch up on after being gone 17 days, but my OCD nature (“It’s not just a disorder, it’s a lifestyle!” ™) makes me want to complete all the picture editing / uploading right away.  With Google’s Picasa software the various albums were all set to upload as soon as I logged in at home.

Ending the trip with a couple of days on a photo safari in the Masai Mara (where they film some of the Discovery Channel wildebeest crossing / crocodile videos) is a joy. Seeing God’s creation in such an un-touched way is just amazing.  No animals were harmed in the filming process.  OK, maybe one zebra.  Circle of life, baby!  Circle. Of. Life.

Politics

The “birthers” and the race card

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I never cared about the birther issue.  I find it unproductive and annoying.  But Stan had a good post about motives. It reminded me of how quick the race industry*used the “birther” issue to paint Obama’s critics as racists.  But that means Hillary Clinton’s supporters, Michelle Obama, and the ambassador from Kenya were racists first.

A group of disgruntled Hillary Clinton enthusiasts started the “Was Obama born in the United States?” question thing. It was fed by comments from people like the president’s grandmother who said he was born in Kenya and Michelle Obama who referred to Kenya as his “home country“. It wasn’t helpful when the ambassador from Kenya said that the president was born there. All of this fed the “birther” idea. Now, let me say up front that I am not a “birther”. To me it’s a moot point. I just don’t care. But what has fascinated me in this whole discussion has been the claims of motivationfrom the president’s supporters. You see, even though it was people from his Secretary of State that started the question and even though it was people like his wife, grandmother, and the Kenyan ambassador that fueled it, it appears that the only possible motivation for “birthers” is racism. That’s right. No one could suggest this stuff if they weren’t racists at heart. And without even batting an eye, the secret motivations of the heart have been easily and cleanly extracted and shown for all to view.

Anyone using the birther issue as a claim of racism against Republicans is ignorant of the origins and/or the real racist, who uses race to divide people.

*which includes false teachers like Jim “the Gospel is all about wealth redistribution” Wallis and race-baiting Chuck “Jesus is not the only way” Currie

Giving

Africa follow up

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Right after the post on Africa and business went up I received an email with this update from a contact at the hospital in Kenya.  They are experiencing a severe drought and many adults and children are starving to death.  Please pray for rain and for the people.  If you want to you can click here to donate to Maua Methodist Hospital in Kenya.  More information at their web site.  I have seen them in action several times and can vouch that they do a fantastic job of helping the poorest of the poor in a very efficient way.  Stanley Gitari (who wrote the email below) is one of the most amazing servants I have ever met.  He has such a huge passion for helping people. 

Dear friends of Maua Methodist hospital

Receive very warm greetings from Maua Methodist hospital team!

I do hope that this email finds everyone , well as we are here today in the hospital. We are well in the lord our God, we are truly thankful to our lord for his grace, mercy which has kept us going in the hospital up to now. Our hospital family, MCK churches and partner sponsored programs including the aids orphans feeding, giving hope and the Ndoleli/ Mutuati humanitarian emergency food aid response for the needy children in school and the elderly/adults people in these program targeted areas. The drought situation has been getting worse since you left, streams and rivers have almost dried completely! the green pastures land have turned in dust especially in the north of Meru north district(isiolo samburu etc) and the marginalized areas of the hospital catchment area-Ndoleli, Ugoti and lower Mutuati areas.nyambene synod is struck once again by the severe drought, animals are dying in large numbers and the people are at the verge of death. Boranas and Somalis from the neighboring northern districts brought their animals and have been grazing in the people’s farms. Provincial administration are forcing them out of our district so that the people can have the opportunity to prepare their land for planting in the near future, although the seeds for planting will also be a challenge for the majority poor

During the visit to Ndoleli and Mutuati by the MDUMC, the team witnessed a heartbreaking situation of lack of food and water in both communities, the team gave what they had to the starving children and some of the adults. At Ndoleli primary school the team was informed that the school had dropped the enrollment because children were looking for food. or were so weak to come to school

Right now as I write this letter, we are faced with a very serious life threatening drought and starvation due to lack of enough rains for the last few years(3 years) water catchment areas have all dried this has caused the country to ration electricity. The hospital is not spared by this either so this means we have to continue running the generators to keep the hospital and patient a life, this means very high cost for the hospital electricity bill. Poverty and lack of food is affecting the hospital operations indeed as all the patients are being admitted without money- no income is coming from any farm product as many people are not employed.

It is very sad thing to see every day on TV thousands of cows, goats and camels dying due to lack of water for drinking as the rivers have dried and grass or leaves to eat.

Maua Methodist hospital and development partners are reaching out to offer life saving relief food that is given to the guardians for the orphans and the school porridge at Ndoleli primary school.

This is a national crisis that requires concerted effort to avert further serious situation, urgent action by friends to alleviate the suffering of children and the adults is needed. It is now estimated that over 10million Kenyans are facing starvation and are at great risk of starving to death. . Kenya meat commission is buying the cow’s near death and many of them are just dying because they are very week. Food supplies are getting expensive and scarce and out of reach for many people.

We at Maua Methodist hospital and Kenya urge our friends to join us in prayer for the rains from the lord above and food for the families affected and especially the children

Grace and peace

Bush clinics: 2009 was a very special year, the hospital and the mission partners reached to the communities to treat disease and counsel those who wanted to know their HIV/Aids status- the camps were carried out in all corners of the hospital catchment areas in the wider old Meru north district. Over 700 patients were seen in these camps. Among the bush clinics were conducted by the ZOE- giving hope mission volunteers, Oregon team/Idaho, German town, Memorial drive UMC, Chappelwood UMC, Shalom outreach ,KeMu and Maua Methodist hospital. As cooperate and social responsibility the community benefitted as a result of this partnership. Many of the people served in these out reaches are the poor of the poor who would normally go for health care or are very far away

STANLEY GITARI IMUNYA COORDINATOR,CHD Mission Team Liaison

MAUA METHODIST HOSPITAL PO BOX 63 MAUA Tell. 0736-41 3000

http://www.mckmauahospital.org  

www.mauahospital/xanga.com

Giving, Politics

Business — the best way to help Africa?

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I’ve had a heart for Africa for some time.  One of our World Vision sponsor children is from Kenya.  We’ve been writing Dennis for 10 years and I’ve been able to visit with him three times on mission trips there.  My wife and I are planning to go to Kenya on another mission trip in 2010 (this will be her first trip, so we’re excited about that).  We’ve found very effective ministries there and seen firsthand how far money goes in helping the poorest of the poor and how the hospital we support provides excellent care to people who would otherwise have none.

But even though I have no intention of backing off our personal commitments there, I agreed with the findings of The Business of Africa (Forbes.com).  If you aren’t careful with charitable endeavors you can do more harm than good.  Of course you want to help people today, but without good foresight and wisdom you may be hurting countless people tomorrow.  The Law of Unintended Consequences can be brutal.  In many areas these good intentions have just institutionalized poverty. 

I encourage you to read the whole thing, but here are some snippets:

$2 trillion (in today’s dollars) has been transferred from rich countries to poor ones over 50 years, with most of that going to Africa. The U.S. has spent $300 billion on Africa since 1970. The result: GDP per capita in Moyo’s home country of Zambia is under $500, less than it was in 1960. The most heavily aid-dependent countries, she writes, have negative or flat annual growth over the last 30 years. Moyo proposes that Africa be weaned off all aid in five years so that its economies can fend for themselves.

They propose that the U.S. government make direct loans to businesses and then direct the repayments of principal to host governments for use in building roads, electric grids, schools and the like. This was how the Marshall Plan rebuilt Europe after the war.

There are 1.4 billion people living on less than $500 a year–what the World Bank classifies as extreme poverty. It would cost $700 billion to double their incomes, assuming that all of that money would even get to the recipients. At $1,000 a year, the recipients would still be poor, and we’d have spent seven times the world’s current aid budget (and given the state of the global economy, richer nations are more likely to cut back at the moment).

In the original Marshall Plan, which cost just $115 billion in today’s dollars, the U.S. gathered all of the willing European nations and set up country-specific Economic Cooperation Administrations. These councils were granted money by the U.S. and operated as development banks. They loaned money to businesses that met with the board’s approval. Each ECA was made up of appointed business leaders from the U.S. and Europe. As the loans were paid back, the money was turned over to the government, which then used the money to build highways, phone lines and a regulatory apparatus for the business community.

Of course, a lot of African leaders will oppose the plan or refuse to go along. The original Marshall Plan offered assistance to the Soviet Union and Eastern bloc countries, but they declined. In the case of Africa, regimes have been propped up by the abundance of aid flows.

“To some leaders the system isn’t broken,” Duggan says. “They get their cut of the aid dollars, the big house, the Mercedes and the trips to Europe, so what’s the problem?”

Moyo writes about an African manufacturer of mosquito nets being put out of business by a charitable antimalaria campaign that gave away nets for free. Hubbard says that there will always be a need for charity and a human drive to give food and money to those who lack them. He’d like to see charity look more in Africa the way it does in America, where charities give to the poor but aren’t the first or only solution.

I encourage people to give generously and with discernment while at the same time promoting government policies that will have real and lasting differences to countless people.

Politics

Guest post: The Day of the Covenant

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Welcome to another guest post, this one by Michael (aka Racing Boo).  I enjoy Michael’s thoughtful and often humorous comments so I asked him to do a guest post on a topic of his choice.  I hope you read and enjoy a fascinating look in to the history and politics of South Africa. 

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December 16 is a public holiday in South Africa, celebrated officially as such for more than a century. Today it is called the ‘Day of Reconciliation’, but for most of those years it was known as the ‘Day of the Covenant.’ It was on this day in 1838, on the banks of the Ncome River in what is now the Kwa-Zulu Natal province, that the Boer leader Andries Pretorius led the people under his protection and leadership in making a vow, binding on future generations. If God would deliver them from the attacking Zulu impis (fighting units), they would henceforth celebrate the day as a Sabbath, and build a church to honour his name.

The Boers were farmers (that is the literal meaning of the word) who had left the frontier farms of the Cape Colony to escape the British rule that was entrenched by the early 1800s, and the endless border wars with the native Xhosa. They were strict Calvinists, descended from French and Dutch settlers who had fled religious persecution in those countries during the preceding two centuries. The British had little time for them, and offered them no protection, so they took their cattle and all their possessions loaded into their ox wagons, which were houses on wheels, and began the trek northwards. That word, perhaps the only word from the Afrikaans language to make it into mainstream global English, means ‘to pull’ or ‘to move’ in the sense of moving from one area to another, in this case boldly going where no (white) man had gone before.

They soon encountered other indigenous tribes of the region, in particular the mighty Zulu nation, the ‘people of the sky.’ The Zulu king at the time was Dingane, who had come to power in 1828 after assassinating his famous and even more notorious half-brother Shaka. One of the Boer leaders, Piet Retief (my wife Nadia is a direct descendant of one of his daughters), left the area of the Tugela River in February 1838 in the hope that he could broker permanent boundaries for the Natal settlement with Dingane. At the royal kraal near present-day Eshowe, an agreement was signed, ceding land in return for the recovery of some 7000 head of cattle stolen by a rival local chief, Sekonyela. Dingane then invited Retief and his men (there were about 100 in total, including his son) to a feast, which lasted several days. They were obliged to leave their weapons outside the enclosure.

Dingane put on a military display for his guests, but the climax of this was not a friendly goodbye. From a nearby hilltop, during a sudden silence, Dingane raised his stick and shouted “Bulalan’ abathakathi!” – Kill the Wizards! There are eye-witness accounts from the Zulu side, as well as one Boer who managed to escape with his life as he had been left outside the kraal to guard the weapons. One can only imagine the fear and terror of that moment, enhanced by the ululating kikiza cry of the women. Retief was apparently the last to die, and he fought back to the last breath.

The reasons for this massacre (apart from Dingane’s treachery, that is) are the subject of much speculation. It is believed that Retief may have unwittingly broken an obscure tribal law by retaining some of the cattle recovered from Sekonyela. Another explanation is that on the night before the massacre, the Boers had rounded up some of their horses outside the kraal in preparation for departure the follwing day. Dingane would have heard the sounds of the hooves at night, and there was a belief that wizards of the white race rode on horses at night. Whatever the reasons, the white settlements of Natal were now in trouble. Dingane sent his impis to attack several encampments, including one at Weenen where 500 men, women and children were killed. The settlers then called for help from another Boer leader, Andries Pretorius, asking him to leave the Cape Colony and come to their aid against the Zulu.

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Christian worldview, Politics

Dangerous environmentalism

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Welcome to new visitors!  If you can follow some basic rules like avoiding baseless, irrational and repetitive personal attacks you are welcome to look around and comment where you like. 

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 mosquito.jpgThe proper use of DDT could prevent countless deaths.

Nearly every month almost as many people die from malaria as were killed by the tsunami waves in the Indian Ocean. Most of malaria’s victims, some 2 million a year, are children under the age of 5. More than 300 million annually suffer from this debilitating disease that drains survivors of their mental and physical energies. Incredibly, there’s an easy, proven and cheap way to eradicate most of the globe’s malaria–DDT. Yet in one of history’s more murderously myopic ongoing actions, most advanced countries and international agencies discourage its use. Why? Blame Rachel Carson’s seismically influential–and now largely discredited–book, Silent Spring, first published in 1962. In it she blames DDT for imperiling birds and people, portraying it as a blight of almost biblical proportions. It ain’t so. As Dr. Elizabeth Whelan of the American Council on Science & Health once put it, there “has never been a documented case of human illness or death in the U.S. as a result of the standard and accepted use of pesticides.” The British medical journal The Lancet similarly notes that after 40 years of research no significant health threat from DDT has been found.

Indiscriminate use of DDT will indeed have a deleterious impact on certain birds. But we’re not advocating that. The use of tiny amounts inside a house or hut is all that’s needed. As Nicholas Kristof observed in one of his New York Times columns, “Four hundred fifty thousand people can be protected [from malaria] with the same amount [of DDT] that was applied in the 1960s to a single 1,000-acre American cotton farm.… Humans are far better off exposed to DDT than exposed to malaria.”
Yet Carson’s book has made DDT taboo–with ghastly results. Some 30 million to 60 million people have perished unnecessarily. In 1996, for example, South Africa stopped using DDT, and its malaria cases increased tenfold. Four years later South Africa reversed itself and employed DDT again. The result: The incidence of malaria promptly dropped almost 80%. Nevertheless, too many health officials cling to alternatives that are only fractionally as effective. That various agencies, governments, health officials and environmentalists have deliberately dissuaded the world from using DDT is one of the most immoral moves of modern times.

Steve Forbes

And more . . .

Though Africa’s sad experience with colonialism ended in the 1960s, a lethal vestige remains: malaria. It is the biggest killer of Ugandan and all African children. Today, every single Ugandan remains at risk. Over 10 million Ugandans are infected each year, and up to 100,000 of our mothers and children die from the disease. Yet it remains preventable and curable.

The U.S. banned DDT in 1972, spurred on by environmentalist Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring. Many countries in Europe and around the world followed suit. But after decades of exhaustive scientific review, DDT has been shown to not only be safe for humans and the environment, but also [to be] the single most effective antimalarial agent ever invented. Nothing else at any price does everything it can do. That is why the WHO has once again recommended using DDT wherever possible against malaria.

We must be able to use DDT. Environmental leaders must join the 21st century, acknowledge the mistakes Carson made and balance the hypothetical risks of DDT with the real and devastating consequences of malaria. Africa is determined to rise above the contemporary colonialism that keeps us impoverished. We expect strong leadership in G-8 countries to stop paying lip service to African self-determination and start supporting solutions that are already working.

–Sam Zaramba, director general of health services for the Republic of Uganda, Wall Street Journal

Mosquito nets are another inexpensive solution.  See Nothing But Nets if you want to help.

Hat tip: Forbes

Also see DDT by Dan over at The Christian Alert.