Africa - Extra Credit

I was asked by Mocha Club to write about the concept of why ‘I need Africa more than Africa needs me.’ Mocha Club [www.mochaclub.org] is a community-based website where members can start a team and invite friends to join them in giving $7 a month – the cost of 2 mochas – to support a project in Africa. Mocha Club's vision is to provide a way for people who don't have hundreds or thousands of dollars to make a difference in Africa.

I need Africa more than Africa needs me. And by me, I mean as an American, as someone who needs to send out help, as someone who needs to see someone else who needs that help. I see commercials on television about sending aid to Africa, commercials showing innocent, helpless children in need of clean water and clothes. I watch these global displays of non-development areas and realize how good I have it as an American. I need Africa so I can realize how lucky I am to have not been so unfortunate, to have grown up with a private school education. As a child, I never had concerns where my next meal would come from, if my water was clean enough to drink, or if I would be healthy enough to live past age twelve. It's sad that I cannot appreciate my life without seeing how someone is worse off. I need places like Africa to feel like I'm making a difference in the world, so I can send my two dollars a month to a child who sleeps on a dirt floor while I curl up under my down comforter and complain if the a/c isn't cool enough.

This past year I competed on the debate team at CBU, and the topic of debate for the year was "sending aid to africa". Students, like myself, would argue whether or not we should send aid to africa. We would argue against Africa's corrupt government as an excuse not to send aid, or battle out where we should send aid and what forms. I look back now and see that all that debating, all those great arguments that were presented by other students did no good but to win a round or a single trophe. We would debate so enthusiaticly about a topic that Africa needed help in only to leave it at that, a simple argument. For whatever reason the topic that was picked for the debate year had to be so pointless. Students, even myself, would even argue why we should not send aid, how Africa should help themselves, how we should just stick to our problems with our own countries. It is almost disguisting to look bad and think of some of the arguments college students, even myself, would make reguarding Africa's future and need of aid.

I need Africa more than it needs me, so I will not become such an egotistical American, so I can see the things I take forgranted and overlook as real problems somewhere else, so I can stay humble.