The Congo Needs A Dec. 23 Miracle

Instead of a miracle, a suspicious fire destroyed voting materials and moved the December 23 election of a new president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to December 30. Provisional results of the delayed election showed the  surprise victory by Felix Tshisekedi, son of a deceased opposition leader popular in Kinshasa. Nonetheless, controversy surrounds his victory over Martin Fayulu, who was seen as a greater threat to former president Joseph Kabila's history of corruption and disregard for the rule of law. An NGO that fielded 40,000 election observers said their results showed former oil executive, Fayulu, had won, just as a pre-election survey also predicted. 

     Russia quickly recognized Tshisekedi as the Congo's new president while Martin Fayulu rejected the final election results as a deal engineered between Tshisekedi and Kabila. Many feared protests and violent repression would  frustrate the hoped for calm transition.

     The former Belgian Congo, nearly three times the size of Nigeria, has almost one million fewer people. On the surface, the 105,000 electronic voting tablets ordered from South Korea for 84,000 polling places created the appearance of a modern election process for the country's 40 million eligible voters. Concern that the tablets could be hacked prevented them from being hooked up for fast transmission of election results. Also, there was concern that the population, especially spread out beyond the Kinshasa capital, had little experience with technology, and unpaved roads and remote areas, only accessible by boats, motorbikes, or helicopters, prevented easy access to voting places.

     Voters also have to contend with 100 rebel groups that terrorize the country. From Beni south to Butembo on the eastern border with Uganda, for example, the machete wielding Allied Democratic Forces and Mai Mai militia, who prevent health workers from vaccinating people threatened by the spreading Ebola virus, are not likely to facilitate passage for voters. At the polls, voting also may be prevented by the lack of electricity and charged batteries needed to power voting tablets.

     Nothing about the Congo's history suggests a new president offers King Leopold II's former private colony relief from nearly 150 years of suffering that began with harvesting rubber under slavery conditions. Only a year into independence, its first president, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered in 1961. Next, General Joseph Mobutu changed the country's name to Zaire and used the Congo's uranium to become a Cold War player who amassed a private fortune with funds from East and West.

     With the flight of Tutsis escaping genocide by Hutus in neighboring Rwanda, fighting began spilling over into Zaire in 1994. Mobutu's opponent, General Laurent Kabila, seized the opportunity to recruit Tutsis and to lead rebels west toward Kinshasa. Mobutu fled into exile in 1997. Kabila seized control of the country, again named the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and ruled as a dictator until a bodyguard assassinated him in 2001.

     Kabila's son, Joseph, took over the troubled country. In 2006, a new constitution limited a president's time in office to two, 5-year terms, and the UN oversaw a presidential election. In a runoff, Joseph Kabila, head of the People's Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), defeated a former Congolese vice president and rebel leader, Jean-Pierre Bemba. Benba was arrested for war crimes committed by his troops during fighting after the election. Kabila failed to step down as president when his term ended in 2016.

     When the December 23, 2018 date finally was set for a new presidential election, Kabila's PPRD selected as its candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, a former interior minister and the party's permanent secretary. Shadary, who has no powerful military or other political base of his own, was viewed as Kabila's puppet. In June, 2018, Bemba's war crimes conviction was overturned. He returned to a hero's welcome in August only to be barred from running for president due to a second charge. Another potential presidential challenger, Moise Katumbi, the wealthy former governor of Katanga's southern cobalt and copper mining province, was sentenced for property fraud and also barred from running for election and from returning to the Congo from Belgium.

     Joseph Kabila is adept at eliminating his opposition. When the Catholic Church, which counts at least 40% of the Congo's population as members, began holding parades in support of December's election, police killed 18 marchers. Gaining popularity for any reason is a danger. After the Congo's Dr. Denis Mukwege won a Nobel peace prize in 2018, he narrowly escaped assassination.

     Observers, both inside and outside the Congo, suspected Kabila was counting on votes split among the weak slate of presidential candidates, the potential for polling machine irregularities, and protests by Bemba, Katumbi, and others to cause violence that would invalidate the election and leave him as president. The people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo deserve a better Christmas present: a president devoted to bringing them lasting peace and prosperity.

   

   

     

   

Diseases and Cures Travel the Globe

Relatives and teachers need to keep up with findings about diseases in order to protect children. On the other hand, older students can begin to see career opportunities for themselves in medical and medical-related fields, including in the area of bioethics.

Tropical Diseases

Africa is breaking the grip of tropical diseases thanks to a coalition of aid agencies, pharmaceutical companies, and charities that formed Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDS). Health programs in individual countries and radio programs where experts and patients answer questions about treatments and dispel misconceptions also do their part.
     In Sierra Leone, for example, a country once ravished by Ebola, health workers visit villages once a year to provide everyone at risk with drugs for four diseases:

• Elephantiases (lymphatic filariasis). Microscopic worms infest the body and cause extreme irreversible swelling and damage.
• River blindness (onchocerciasis). Blindness caused by black fly bites and worms infecting the body.
• Snail fever (schistosomiasis). Parasitic worm infection that destroys kidneys and the liver.
• (Helminths) Roundworms in soil cause infections that stunt growth and physical development.

By treating all family members with all four drugs at once, Sierra Leone saves money on multiple visits and prevents families from passing diseases to one another.

     Mosquitoes continue to be the ones that transmit malaria, dengue fever, and Zika in tropical areas. In warm, wet weather, they mature faster and become infectious sooner. But even in warm, dry conditions, they find ways to survive underground in storm drains and sewers. In Singapore on a small scale, Trendwatching.com reports innovative pots, decorated with paint infused with the non-toxic mosquito repellent, permethrin, are used to kill mosquitoes trying to survive in water collected in plant pots. (Use keywords, mosquitoes, malaria, dengue, and Zika, to find earlier posts on these subjects.)

Polio

News that polio is staging a comeback in some parts of the world recalls disturbing memories from my childhood. Paralysis from polio required President Franklin Roosevelt to wear leg braces, a neighbor to live in an iron lung, and a playmate to compensate for her withered left arm. When Jonas Salk's polio vaccine became available in the 1960s, we all rushed to take it on sugar cubes.
     Normally, the polio vaccine that carries a live, weakened virus breeds in the recipient's intestines and enters the bloodstream to cause a lifelong protective immune response. But occasionally, once in every 17 million vaccinations, the weakened virus mutates and causes a new strain that can live in poop for six to eight weeks following an innoculation. In countries that lack clean water, adequate toilets, and treatment for sewage, polio is transmitted by drinking water carrying the mutated virus. That seems to be what has happened to cause cases of polio in Papua New Guinea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria.

HIV/AIDS and STDs

Ever since the International AIDS Society (IAS) established a 90-90-90 goal in 2014, countries have aimed to make sure 90% of their population knows they have the disease, 90% of those are taking antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), and virus levels in 90% taking ARVs are negligible. Worldwide, only a 75-79-81 goal is reached.
      In less developed countries, HIV is combated by circumcising male foreskins to remove HIV-breeding cells and by paying school tuition for girls who are less susceptible to exchanging sex for food and other benefits, if they have employable skills. In all countries, HIV prevention responds to a combination of two ARVs, tenofovir and emtricitabine found in Truvada. Prevention still depends on those at risk coming forward and governments willing to help pay for treatment.
     After being raised and educated in Europe, Dr. Agnes Binagwano began returning to Rwanda with suitcases filled with medical supplies. Working with the government, she began an HIV program and trained health workers to visit villagers in their homes. To build trust for Rwanda's health care program, villagers chose the health workers who care for them.Once the country with the worst child mortality rate, 97% of Rwanda's infants now are vaccinated. The country where genocide killed nearly one million in 1994 also has the University of Global Health Equity in Kigali, rural health centers, and a nationwide health insurance program.
     Still a problem, ARVs give gay and bisexual men a false impression that these drugs prevent all sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). And birth control pills and other forms of female contraception give heterosexual couples the false impression male partners need not use condoms. Consequently, syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhoea infections all are on the rise from unprotected sex. At the same time, testing has been hit by cuts in funding for preventive education, local health departments, and confidential clinics that cater to adolescents.

Gene Editing

Which human cells the CRISPR-Cas9 technique edits and the changes made promise to treat diseases when engineered cells return to a patient's body. While unintended consequences of CRISPR-Cas9 editing to improve agricultural crops are less of a concern, the studies that find some forms of CRISPR-Cas9 editing delete or rearrange strings of DNA, affect non-targeted genes, and might cause cancer in humans motivate the search for technological techniques that produce only intended results.
     Genetic engineering capable of removing hereditary predispositions to cancer would, of course,be valuable. Editing into humans destructive hereditary traits passed along to future generations would not.
     Based on the way viruses can penetrate bacteria cells and destroy their defenses, CRISPR editing also is involved in the search for a way to k(ll superbugs resistant to antibiotics. (Use the keywords, antibiotics and CRISPR, to see earlier posts on these subjects.)

Cellphone Radiation

Research continues to study the danger of cellphone radiation from phones and antennas. Emissions from decaying lithium batteries, which remind me of those from black holes, also seem to indicate possible health risks. Keep an eye on findings about brain damage and memory loss from long term studies of new 5G technology. 

Help Wanted

Just as interests in finance, fashion, sports, and other subjects can lead to international career options, an interest in helping others also can cause students to find work beyond their borders. In fact, a handout from the American Academy of Pediatrics encourages early adolescents to "try activities that help others." The earlier post, "Hope for the Future," suggests ways, even at a younger age, children can begin to alleviate some of the world's suffering.

It is interesting to see how often young people are in the news for helping others. A child has her head shaved to show a classmate with cancer that she is not the only one who looks different. An Olympic athlete bonds with a brother with special needs. College students spend their spring breaks, not drinking and tanning in Florida, but building a senior citizen home in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. To test out how well a student is suited to help people in a foreign country, the earlier post, "See the World," has information about educational experiences that young people can try overseas while they are in school.

An early commitment to helping others can continue into a life's work, even to the point of extreme personal sacrifice. Missionaries Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol contracted the deadly Ebola virus at medical facilities in Liberia. Father Alexis Prem Kumar, the director of Jesuit refugee services in Afghanistan, has been kidnapped by terrorists, and U.S. AID workers are imprisoned in Pakistan and Cuba.

While helping others in a foreign country entails a certain amount of risk, the abundance of positions available is worth exploring. Start by going to directories for development organizations (devdir.org) and the individual websites of Care (care.org) that fights poverty around the world, the Red Cross (redcross.org) that goes where foreign disasters strike, Unicef (unicef.org) that concentrates on the needs of the world's poorest children, Doctors Without Borders (doctorswithoutborders.org) who are now fighting Ebola in West Africa, and Operation Smile (operationsmile.org) that performs surgery to correct cleft lips and palates on children in foreign countries. Almost every year a nurse friend of mine spends her vacations assisting the doctors at Operation Smile.

Short-term, overseas assignments also are available at organizations such as: Cross-Cultural Solutions, Global Volunteers, Habitat for Humanity's Global Village Program, Projects Abroad, and United Planet. Volunteers in these programs find themselves caring for children in foreign orphanages, rescuing endangered animals, teaching English, digging wells, painting classrooms, and unearthing archaeological treasures.

As a marketer, I have been especially pleased to find organizations like SERRV (serrv.org) that send experienced marketers to help foreign artisans design products that consumers in developed countries want to buy. Father James Martin, in his book The Jesuit Guide to Almost Everything, writes about how he used the corporate experience he had before becoming a priest to help a seamstress in Nairobi, Kenya, gain an income by turning fabric remnants into religious goods for tourists. Artist Iris Shiloh's visit to India and Swaziland inspired her to found Kids for Kids (kidsforkidsfashion.com). She prints designs created by orphans and poor children in lesser developed countries on T-shirts and then donates a portion of the sales revenue back to the organizations that sponsored the little artists.

Hawaiians say missionaries came to do good and did very well (buying land and establishing plantations and businesses). Even if it's not motivated by altruism, going overseas to help others can have benefits. Colleges and corporations look for students and employees who have international experience.
(Additional information about international careers also is available in the earlier post, "What Do You Want to Be?")

Who Needs International Expertise?

Public health and the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared March 8, 2014, (and the later search for Air Asia Flight 8501, which crashed into the Java Sea on December 28, 2014) demonstrate how global problems require cooperation of experts in a wide variety of disciplines.

     Not only does disease involve those versed in the biological complexity of the causes, cures, and prevention of a multi-country Ebola, flu, or Zika virus epidemics, but it also requires precautions by those involved in all aspects of transportation. Urban design and environmental science also can have an impact on how diseases are transmitted throughout the world.


      In the case of Flight 370's disappearance, lack of coordination between countries confused the search effort for at least three days when 12 countries were flying nearly 40 planes and navigating as many ships in an area east and west of Malaysia. When military and civilian personnel began sharing speculations and data about radar soundings, satellite photos, and debris sightings, the search area shifted to 1500 miles off the west coast of Australia and then an area to the northeast that was closer to Australia and in a less turbulent spot in the Indian Ocean.

Even with 26 countries involved in the search, as of September, 2014, there was still no trace of the downed plane. It was not until July, 2015 that the first wreckage from Malaysia Flight 370 turned up on the French territory of Reunion Island, off the east coast of Africa east of Madagascar. Another possible piece of the lost plane was found between Madagascar and Mozambique in March, 2016. (Debris from the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 continued to reach Alaska four years later in 2015.) Since Madagascar is far west of the area near Australia, where the plane was thought to go down, weather and ocean current experts will help pin point where the plane might have run out of fuel. Even before the plane has been located, underwater experts have joined the mission to map the mountainous ocean floor. Despite this massive international search, after nearly three years the airplane had not been found and the search was discontinued on January 17, 2017.

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 also has led to trials of new ways to track aircraft flying over ocean expanses. In a report submitted to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a test of the global satellite communication system developed by UK firm, Inmarsat, showed it was possible for aircraft flying over oceanic airspace to report position, speed, altitude, and direction every 14 minutes at a minimal or neutral cost.

The number of people and variety of disciplines required to solve a crisis brought on by disease or a plane crash illustrates how tasks involving international cooperation are not limited to diplomats. To see how many kinds of research can involve an international effort, check out the later post, "Calling All Space Sleuths."

Discover Africa

The African continent is three times the size of the United States and nearly three million square miles bigger than Europe, including the Asian portion of Russia. By 2100, the U.N. estimates Africa will have 3 billion more people than it has now. Future opportunities in this vast and growing continent need not be overlooked because of the world's somewhat warped historical viewpoint. A new guide, Emerging Africa, by Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu dispels some of the assumptions about lack of development on the continent. And in 2015, one of the discussions in the Foreign Policy Association's Great Decisions program will feature "U.S. Policy Toward Africa."

    Headlines do not tell the whole story of what is happening in Africa. News reports rightly warned that the Ebola virus was out of control in West Africa. In April and May of 2014, the world heard that over 200 teenage girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram, an Islamist terrorist group in northern Nigeria. Since then, the group has taken additional girls and women as wives, cooks, and suicide bombers; young men and boys have been abducted to serve as soldiers. On January 15, 2019, al-Shabab terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda would kill at least 21 in an attack on a hotel/office complex in Nairobi, Kenya. In April, 2015, jihadis from al-Shabab killed 147 in a raid on a Kenyan university. Earlier,  terrorists attacked at a Kenyan mall.

     Europe's scramble to colonize the continent between 1876 and 1912 left independent African countries in the 1960s with an uneducated population, some leaders who exploited their people in imitation of former colonial administrators, disease, and transportation ties to Europe rather than each other. To this day, Fastjet is still having trouble launching its plan to provide affordable African flights.

     But just like Pablo Picasso in 1907, when he first saw the African artifacts that caused him to create a new form of art, young people are in a position to look at Africa in a new way. Beginning with the book Ashanti to Zulu, kids can learn the alphabet and 26 African traditions at the same time. With the help of ePals.com, classrooms can connect with African students in several languages by email, Skype, and project collaborations.

     Students need not see Africans only as impoverished children who can live on 50 cents per day donations. According to trendwatching.com, 65% of Africa's 8- to 18-year-olds have access to a mobile phone. In Gambia and Ghana, trendwatching.com reports entrepreneurs run solar-charging kiosks where the public can charge their mobile devices for a fee. In addition to social contacts, mobile devices are facilitating education and job-hunting in Africa. By 2060, trendwatching.com expects there will be 1.1 billion middle class Africans. Already, the SABMiller bottler and Coca-Cola have joined forces to profit from Africa's growing middle class.

    Africa's growth is attracting $24 billion in foreign investment this year. In fact, the Financial Times (April 4, 2014) reported that return from private equity investments in Africa is comparable to the return on investments in China and Latin America. No wonder the Rothschild Fund is looking to invest $530 million in African projects that have a long term social development aspect to them. And the Swedish risk capital firm, Swedfund, is investing in a partnership between the H&M retailer and Ethiopian textile firms that manufacture according to high social and environmental standards. (Also see the later blog post, "Never Too Young to Invest in the Future.")

    Forbes magazine listed 27 billionaires in Africa. Today's richest African is Aliko Dangote of Nigeria, who makes his money from the cement used for construction throughout Africa. Recognizing the potential for African construction, Dubai has invested $300 million in Dangote Cement. Other riches have been made in areas, such as oil, sugar, flour, banking, media, telecommunications, luxury goods, diamonds, supermarkets, and pharmaceuticals. Looking past the current drop in oil prices, Dangote increased his oil refinery investment from $9 billion to $11 billion in December, 2014. (Nonetheless, his estimated $21 billion fortune has taken a $5.4 billion hit due to sagging oil prices.) Stephen Saad of South Africa, founder of Aspen Pharmacare, is making his fortune by manufacturing generic drugs. Isabel dos Santos, Africa's first female billionaire, a former head of Angola's state oil group, and the daughter of Angola's president, is a major player in the banking industry. She seeks to block Spain's CaixaBank's attempt to assume full control of the Portuguese bank, BPI, where she is the second largest investor. As an alternative, she has proposed a merger of BPI and Portugal's Millennium BCP bank to reinforce their presence in Africa's Portuguese-speaking Angola and Mozambique. (As of President Joao Lourenco's election as President of Angola, Ms. dos Santos no longer heads Angola's national oil company and the former president's son has been charged with fraud for transferring $500 million out of the country.)  Bob Diamond's Atlas Mara, founded to invest in Sub-Saharan African financial institutions, continues to expand with its latest interest in a 45% stake in Banque Populaire du Rwanda.

     African startups also are winning outside support. IBM's "Project Lucy" coordinates the work of local universities, development agencies, startups, and others who want to create ventures that solve key African issues. BiztechAfrica reports that, as part of its 4Afika Initiative, Microsoft has made five innovation grants to the following startups: Uganda's access.mobile, which facilitates information sharing in the fields of agriculture and healthcare, Kenya's Africa 118, a mobile directory service, and Kytabu, which rents textbooks on tablets (A US entrepreneur just found funding for a similar project on the TV show, "Shark Tank"), and Nigeria's Gamsole, which creates games for Windows, and Save & Buy, which facilitates e-commerce purchases.

     In a long entry in March, 2014, " trendwatching.com's African" described how African governments and developers are facilitating areas, like Ghana's Hope City, Nigeria's Eko Atlantic, and Kenya's Konga Techno, that invite entrepreneurs to set up shop. Better than being  unemployed, business-minded young adults are responding by using crowdfunding platforms, such as Globevestor; developing tech applications, such as Nigeria's bus travel website (bus.com.ng); entering competitions (South Africa's First National Bank holds an "Ideas Can Help" competition for inventors, Yola sponsors a build-your-own website contest, there's a Anzisha Prize and a TechCabal Battlefield prize); and formalizing Africa's informal economy of outdoor markets, street hawkers, and resellers. Kenya's e-commerce Soko platform, for example, now connects global shoppers with local jewelry artisans who use natural and upcycled materials. FirstBank Nigeria is one of the firms that facilitates secure online payments.

      Projects involving the rich history of Egypt are already a staple of school curricula. Tracing Mansa Musa's religious pilgrimage from Timbuktu, the West African city in Mali, to Mecca in 1324 introduces an African mogul who distributed gold on his journey and returned with an architect to build a great mosque and scholars who created the Sankore University. A video about Shaka Zulu can introduce students to a military genius.

     Looking back through previous blog posts, Africa is mentioned in a variety of contexts.

• There are T-shirt designs from Swaziland and a U.S. artist who studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa ("Global Drawing Power")
• Somali children were featured in Asad, the live action short nominated for a 2012 Academy Award ("See the World at the Movies")
• Paul Simon's "Graceland" recording incorporated the township rhythms of South Africa ("Music of the Sphere")
• Ghana's kente cloth was mentioned in "The World of Fashion" and Ghana's chocolates tempted taste buds in "Pizza, Plantains, and Moo Goo Guy Pan."
• In 2004 Wangari Maathai of Kenya won a Noble Prize for mobilizing a campaign to fight global warming by planting trees and launched the U.N. project to plant a billion trees around the world ("Hope for the Future" and "A Healthy Environment")The website, About.com African History, has a list and description of Africa's 25 Nobel Prize winners. 
• Students located the African countries that produced the products they found in their scavenger hunt bags ("Games Children Play")

Just like the missionary, David Livingston, who happened to come upon the African falls he named for Queen Victoria, Africa still is open for discovery. China has discovered Africa's many minerals, such as iron ore and copper, and is building railroads to transport them to ports for export. French-speaking Chinese students have followed Chinese companies to work for them in former French colonies. Oprah Winfrey has founded a school for girls in Africa. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has set out to help eliminate malaria and HIV in Africa. George Clooney sent up a satellite to watch for atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan. And, like Alexander McCall Smith, the author of The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana, there's still the possibility of finding riches by writing one of Africa's fascinating stories.

Introduction

Globalization came as a shock to the U.S. generation that won World War II and even to the Baby Boomers who followed. The current generation is different. International elements surround today's children from birth. Their first toys have tags showing that they were made in China, Thailand, or Malaysia. As youngsters, they may have attended Montessori schools that use methods developed by an Italian doctor or, under the influence of Japanese musician, Shinichi Suzuki, been gently nurtured to play an instrument. Long before leaving for junior years abroad, students expect to share classrooms and playgrounds with children whose heritages are Mexican, Nigerian, and Korean. Young people are growing up without a competitive edge in a world where democracy is not a shared goal. Their families work for multinational firms, complain about jobs outsourced to foreign companies, vacation where exchange rates provide the best value, or travel only as far as the price of Middle Eastern oil permits.

     National boundaries fail to shield today's children from the rest of the world's languages, religions, and drug traffickiing. Back in 1939, when isolationists were determined to keep the United States out of World War II, Senator Arthur Vandenberg thanked God for the protection of "two insulating oceans." Nowadays, neither the Atlantic nor the Pacific prevents global communication and terrorism from bringing the wide world home. When one billion people are international travelers every year, oceans no longer insulate anyone from tuberculosis or mosquito-borne diseases like the Zika virus. Neither can lines on a map limit where today's young people will work, the cultures they will share, nor the problems they will solve.

     Globalization requires an international, interconnected perspective. Children who have lived outside the country where they were born already may possess the cosmopolitan savvy to feel comfortable wherever they are plopped down in the world. But stay-at-home kids need not cede to their well traveled cohorts the feeling of being comfortable with foreign cultures, knowledge of world geography, the will to deal with environmental challenges, or decisions about war and peace. Teachers and parents now have access to resources at home and on the Internet that enable them to help young people acquire both a taste for what the world has to offer and confidence that they can contribute something to the world.

     My granddaughter's interest in Italy began with mythology. She knows everything about chimeras. These three-part lion, goat, and serpent creatures terrorized Asia Minor until a hero riding on Pegasus killed one. When my granddaughter learned there was a bronze chimera statue in Florence, that city became her dream destination. Although she has yet to travel outside the United States, she took me directly to a book store's language section and showed me the Italian workbook and interactive CD-ROM she wanted for her birthday. Mythology, art, and language combined to widen my granddaughter's view of the world. In a similar way, young athletes might develop their international perspective after watching the Olympics in London this summer. For other children, a foreign coin, a "Made in Bangladesh" clothing label, or a musical rainstick could stimulate interest in their world. This global awareness is what my blog is designed to foster.