Posted on 12/30/2013 5:10:29 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
Christina Aguilera, ambassador for World Food Program (WFP), recently went to “war-torn Rwanda” People Magazine tells us. Well thankfully she made it back home safe. War is not an easy thing.
Although, I’m not sure exactly which war People Magazine is referring to – last I checked, the civil war and genocide in Rwanda ended twenty years ago. Well, Rwanda has other problems and its government is implicated in violence in neighboring DRC, but it is not war-torn.
Also, Rwanda is an entire country. Where in Rwanda was Aguilera?
[video]
The song the children are singing in the video is of course inaudible but Aguilera’s is crystal clear. Her Light Up The Sky forms the background to the video. We hear her sing “When skies are grey, I’ll light your way, I’ll be your shoulder, You can lean on me” while seeing her feed “starved African children.”
Interestingly, one word from the kids’ song in Kinyarwanda is clear: Tuzarwubaka: We will build it (i.e. the country); clearly indicating that meaningless charity is not what they have in mind but rather that they are actively engaged. This is of course lost to all the non-Kinyarwanda speakers.
“The people of Rwanda touched me in a way I cannot express or put into words. They are in a place that needs our help and I am so proud of the work that we are doing there,” Aguilera insists. “This trip came at a time when I needed to step away and connect with bigger issues in the world,” she continues.
Africa: helping white people who’re a wee bit down-in-the-dumps feel better about themselves since 1884.
Even if we were to accept this blatant lie that Rwanda is a “war-torn” place where “refugee camps” abound, what kinds of superpower do Aguilera and the WFP have to make them think they alone could change such situation? War and poverty are the result of larger structural inequalities, part of larger historical, political circumstances that no individual can resolve. And certainly not Hollywood style celebrities: Aguilera, Invisible Children’s Jason Russell or even Bono. Enough of these white celebrities scrolling out of nowhere wanting to save African lives. Keep to your various professions thank you very much.
Also, the participating ‘restaurants’ to help world hunger, partners with the WFP are: KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. Really? Junk food providers helping end ‘world hunger.’ Given all the information available to indicate the disastrous effects (heart diseases, diabetes) of eating junk food this partnership couldn’t be more ironic.
The video ends with Aguilera singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to a group of children. One among them is singing along and she seems a bit surprised by this. Too unfathomable that children of ‘war-torn poor Rwanda’ might know an English/American nursery rhyme? Welcome to the 21st century Ms. Aguilera!
I thought some perspective is in order.
Your perspective is provided by a leftie from Columbia university. Her verbiage and sarcasm indicate her anti colonial leanings. May as well have quoted O.
For the record the Hutus and Tutsis have hated each other for years and continue to do terrible things to each other. I don’t knock people for trying to being used by organizations that use ‘name’ stars to draw attention to their projects.
I do knock lefties who rare so self entitled that they hate ROTC ( but oh not the military) because the military is not LGBT friendly.
I don’t know why you don’t like Christina Aguillera but using a commie to dis her is unconvincing and gives no perspective what so ever
Yeah, I wondered about the source myself....didn’t check it out. My post, as I said, my motivation was to combat the celebrity worship so rampant in places like “People” magazine.
Whether someone who criticizes this worship is a leftist or not matters little to me—it is absurd.
If the writer stacked Franklin Graham’s Samaritan’s Purse organization, I would take them to task. But pointless liberal Hollywood types pretending they are changing the world deserve ridicule.
Stacked = slammed in that last post.
You have a very different view of celebrity worship. Neither you local news nor People magazine are going to do a story on Graham. Why get worked up over a news story? Why watch the news to begin with.
I don’t trust lefties because their goals are vastly different than mine and a sniveling brat complaining about a food program is not anyone I would cite for perspective
I understand.
My view is different.
It is truly amazing what passes for aide in this country, and how much it differs from what the people in the various countries in Africa need.
Rwanda is doing well at this time. A Beautiful and somewhat temperate country.
Aide according to celebrity types like this are well intentioned, but so far off base that it would be better if they did not do any aide at all.
My daughter lived there for some time, and she pointed out an example: People in this country think shoes are important. SO why not collect and donate shoes to Rwanda, because we see on television the “poverty porn” commercials. What great Christians and humanitarians we would be if they only had shoes!
So we send shoes, to people who very often don’t really want them, and they wear them for a while, and then they wear out, and they go on th trash heap outside the village.
In the meantime, they still have no shoes, and the one or two that made shoes for a living, are now gone, because they wanted fancy Adidas or Nikes, not the locally made stuff used for hundreds of years.
What benefit the shoes, if but to keep them shoeless in the long run. Better to go and show them how to make shoes for themselves. They do have pride.
They also do not think of themselves as poor by our standards. The terrible environment that is portrayed here is so much cultural hogwash.
I say, if you want to help, do what our church did, and go set up a chicken hatching building with the right incubation equipment, set up feed buying systems that do not rely on imported feed, show them how to raise chickens, and then as chickens are raised, allow each family to do that. Protein that is healthy, it adds to the local economy, as our farmers do ours, and they don’t rely on some feel gooder to “save” them.
Another church in the area raised money to buy a well digging derick on a truck, and sent it and well casing and pumps to Africa (Kenya) and trains Kenyans to operate the well and the drill and shows them how to drill and maintain water wells.
As a result, many villages now have clean water and disease rates drop.
It is a sign that some aide does not work when so many good intentioned NGOs are asked to leave because they are so ineffective and somewhat counterproductive.
What we perceive that they need is not what they perceive that they need. They need not be saved, but you can help them when they ask for it.
This is the essence of conservatism, for it does not create dependents, but rather independents.
Sorry for the rant, but there is so much to this story for those who have been there.
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