The other day, my 5 year old boy came to me and asked ‘Mommy, can we sit down together and solve another complicated problem?’
I was delighted of course. Because it means that he likes the creative and challenging exercise I put him through on a regular basis… 
(see his recent solutions on back pain, running out of gas, dead birds mystery, Iceland ash cloud, Greek debt crisis)
‘I have to go to the bathroom first. Meanwhile you sit down and come up with a problem. Preferably one that has to do with cars or wheels or something.’ he added…
I could not satisfy that particular request, but explained to him the current drought and hunger
problems of Somalia. I showed him some footage (adapted to his age), a map of Somalia and then we sat down and he came up with the following:
-
The people can come to us. We have enough food.
- Yes son, but there are many many Somali people and we can’t feed them all from our fridge.
- Well, we can ask other people in our village to help.
- And how do you want to do that?
- Well we all go and ring their doorbells and ask them for food and some money.
There are about 400 people in our village. If each of them gave 5$ we would be able to feed 2000 children for a day whereas there are 11 million people in the Horn of Africa that require food assistance.
So I was taking my son’s idea further. What if an international law was voted that in case of such a crisis automatically withdrew 1$ from each person above 18 years of age and above a certain level of income? I am sure it could cover the 1.6 billion $ requested by U.N. agencies to fund relief efforts.
Here are some suggestions on how you can help. -
Go into the woods to get fruit.
- Yes son, but there are no woods. There is no fruit.
- Oh…well then…they can -
Eat the leaves or cactus.
- Sure that would be a possibility son, but there is no rain, so nothing grows. No trees, no leaves, no plants. Nothing to eat.
That is not entirely true. There are quite a lot of forests in Somalia according to Index Mundi. And Somalia has quite a diverse geography. But there is no recent evaluation of the effects of the drought. So, no rain, no growth, no food. -
We bring them food. With a plane. We have money. We ask other people to help.
- Yes, and many are already doing this.
But it’s not enough. once they are fed for the day, what about the next day? What about a week or a month or a year from now? If it’s still not raining, the problem will not be solved. -
We take a big, big bucket of water to them.
- Or 10 buckets. Or 100.000 buckets. That is a lot Mommy, isn’t it? With a helicopter. One by one. Dad and all the other people will pay for it. Like the people who live in the blue house which we pass when we go cycling.
- ahuh!
Some people are already trying to bring water to Somalia. And some others have made plans to improve water management by building dams and reservoirs. But I guess they can’t make it rain. -
They can go to the sea to get water. They just need to take the salt out.
I am surprised my 5 year old knows about desalination already.
Well, let me tell you, seawater farming is already existing in for example Eritrea, another African country subject to drought.
Watch this interesting short film. And here is part 2.
After all this research and confrontation with the subject, I just had to go and donate some money to the World Food Programme. Can you too spare a few dollars to make the world a better place?