the boy who lived

this has nothing to do with colombia, but i saw an article about this famous photograph in the (colombian) paper yesterday and i wanted to say some things about it.  it's on a poster hanging in my school, something about counting your blessings.  the pictures on it are problematic, but i like the sentiment.

ah, this photo.  this controversial, pultizer-prize-winning, world changing photo.  this is the stereotypical, iconic image of a starving african baby.  (in fact, if you google "starving african baby," this is the first hit.)  we studied this picture in several development studies classes.  it is a highly problematic photo, because a lot of people think, well, TIA--this is africa, the land of starving babies.  and that's a highly inaccurate generalization.  but that doesn't diminish the fact that this was, in fact, a very real situation and experience for one african baby.  it's a grittily, disturbingly true image.

and now, the story behind it: the photo was taken during the 1993 famine during the sudanese civil war by kevin carter, a white south african photojournalist.  it was published on the front page of the new york times, and won the pulitzer prize.  however, it also generated a lot of controversy and criticism.  there was a bit of a global uproar about the photo, and carter's winning the pulitzer for it--cries from all around of "why didn't you save her?" "how dare you capitalize on her suffering?" "you're the real vulture here!" and such from the media, the public, etc.  a few weeks after winning the pulitzer, amid the controversy, he killed himself, largely because he couldn't save her.  "I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain ... of starving or wounded children," he wrote in his suicide note.

 

but the new news is that the baby boy (yes, it was actually a boy, named kong nyong) didn't die--he actually survived the famine and lived another 14 years, reported a spanish paper monday. however, three years ago he died of fever--more than a decade after the photographer's suicide.

now some of the backstory behind the photo:  kevin carter, far from being some sort of war profiteer or disaster pornographer, was in fact a dedicated advocate of human rights.  he became a photojournalist with the goal of exposing the evils of apartheid in his native south africa, and even literally took a beating for standing up for his oppressed countrymen.  he took some groundbreaking photographs at a brutal public execution, about which he said, "I was appalled at what they were doing.   I was appalled at what I was doing. But then people started talking about those pictures... then I felt that maybe my actions hadn't been at all bad. Being a witness to something this horrible wasn't necessarily such a bad thing to do."  which kind of applies to his other photographs, too.  he flew on his own dime to sudan because he felt that the civil war and famine were being ignored by the world and he wanted to expose them.

kong nyong's dad

the criticisms that he was profiting from the boy's suffering are a little ungrounded too.  one of the reasons he killed himself, as explained in his suicide note, was because he was broke and heavily in debt, and couldn't afford to take care of his own children--so not exactly rolling in dough at the african child's expense.  the criticisms actually surprisingly reminiscent of some i have heard thrown at myself.  following the passage of the LRA disarmament and northern uganda recovery act, we got a lot of heat.  let me see if i can remember the wording of this one correctly... "the people at resolve are goons feasting on the riches of exploited african children."  i'm not sure what riches or feasts they were referring to, as the hardly-paid interns ate peanut butter off a spoon for supper...  another interesting fact: the photo was taken in south sudan, and the boy's name, kong nyong, sounds very acholi.  thus, it could be that we were both accused of exploiting the same african children.  but anyway...

more on the actual photo--if you zoom in really far, you can see that he's wearing a wristband, which indicates that he had already been seen by the UN and was about to be treated for acute malnutrition.  i don't know if carter knew that at the time, but there it is.  there are a number of reasons why the photographer didn't sweep up the baby and carry him off to safety like a white knight in shining armor.  (not saying they're all legitimate, but there were reasons)  he'd been instructed not to touch the famine victims because of the danger of spreading disease.  he was only in the area for a few minutes before the UN plane he'd been traveling on, which had come to deliver food, would fly off.  this was the first time he'd ever seen a famine, and was in shock.  he did actually chase the vulture away.  etc.

this blog (the borgen project, an interesting organization focused on ending global poverty) has some interesting things to say about the issue.  they take a rather sunnier view on it than i do though.  they basically say it's a story of hope because despite the hopelessness conveyed in the picture, the boy survived... i think this story reminds us that we shouldn't ignore the mundane causes of death and suffering in the world, like the fever that eventually killed the boy who survived the famine.  aids and famines are sexy things to get riled up about; they make for good celebrity photo shoots.  but diarrhea and pneumonia are by far the biggest killers of children under 5 around the world. not sexy at all, but true.

but i think the main question is: why was everyone asking "why didn't he help the baby?"  why weren't they saying "why didn't someone help the baby?"  or "why didn't the government/UN/church/international community help the baby?"  or, perhaps, "why didn't you or i do something to help the baby?"  or, more broadly speaking: "why didn't someone step in to prevent this situation from happening in the first place?"  we read this book, famine crimes, in the DS class where we studied the photo.  it goes into some interesting discussions about the root causes of famine.  there is enough food in the world; famine is always, always due to a failure of political systems.

when someone sees this photograph, when someone hears about a famine, they feel horror and revulsion, and instantly look for someone to blame.  you need a bad guy, otherwise you'll have to admit you live in a world full of passive neglect and unjust systems that allow this sort of atrocity to occur.  but don't shoot the messenger.  and that's pretty much exactly what happened in this case.

in the end, what impact did that photo have?  it's really hard to measure, but it definitely brought a lot more public attention to the war and famine, may have even helped in getting the international community to push for a peace deal.  front page of the new york times and the pulitzer aren't small potatoes, pardon the tasteless metaphor.  i'm sure we've all seen this photo at some point--it's sort of etched into our collective memory.

it was definitely, at least vaguely, in the back of my mind as a child whenever someone scolded me "eat your vegetables!  there are starving children in africa!"  or when i brought my pennies to the children's charity donation box at the korean dry cleaners.  i'm sure it's in the back of a lot of people's minds, again at least vaguely, when they write out their checks to whatever charity they choose, build up their karma by giving at the office.  even if the boy had died, which he didn't, could the picture have saved more people than it hurt?  it's quite likely.  again, he could say: "I was appalled at what I was doing. But then people started talking about those pictures... then I felt that maybe my actions hadn't been at all bad."

so i guess my moral of the story would be: dear the media and the public: lay off people who are doing their best to help.  who are devoting their lives to this, who are doing whatever they do best to try to change the situation, to make a difference, to stop this suffering and make life better for people.  i read this interesting twist on a biblical passage somewhere: "let he who gives all his money to help the needy cast the first stone."  touché.