Yunus' Action Speaks Louder Than Lameck's Words

Yunus received Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. 

8 Best Quotes by Nobel Laureate Dr. Muhammad Yunus

http://www.flowingevents.com/2012/03/8-best-quotes-by-nobel-laureate-dr.html

Lucy Lameck

http://www.museumsyndicate.com/item.php?item=67800

Kilimanjaro

Lake Victoria

With the friendly creature, you don't want to go swimming there.

Tanzania's music 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z79_aHcWTRY

Tanzania's child labor

R. K. Narayan

Snake charmer in India

Indian train

2010 earthquake in Haiti

Haiti's mud cake

Thousands of Haitians still living in...

The UN is a joke.

                       Yunus’ Action Speaks Louder Than Lameck’s Words 

         

          I can feel Lucy Lameck’s passion towards her homeland. Imagine… the highest free-standing mountain in the world, Kilimanjaro, is located north boundary; beautiful wild animals amble around Lake Victoria and the countless resources… On the other hand, Lameck was one of the very few privileged people who were born there to be educated and have the opportunity to see the world. Lucy Lameck (1930-1992) was born in Tanzania where ceded to Britain by Germany after World War I. Lameck first attended British schools then studied economics and sociology at Oxford University in England in 1957. She returned to her homeland in 1961 from United States after studying international relations at Western Michigan University. Lameck had her own purpose to welcome the council and that was the reason she made the speech, Africans Are Not Poor. In my opinion, Africa is not poor but Africans are poor. Many third world countries could be wealthy from their natural resources but the people are poor because they don’t have the knowledge to use and manage those resources. The privileged people there want to maintain their status and ignore the plight of the masses.

           According to all the numbers from GDP (Gross Domestic Product per capita), CPI (Consumer Price Index), or HDI (Human Development Index), Tanzanians are living in poverty. Poverty is when a country like Tanzania who has 44.1% of populations under age of 15 (Demo). But, at the same time, instead of those kids going to school to have an education, they work in the field, in the mine to earn their food for living. I disagree with Lameck’s definition of poverty. She claimed that Africans are not poor which was based on her high position in society, not the normal Tanzanians. The best way to relieve the poor Tanzanians from poverty is education, especially “useful knowledge” as John Henry Newman (1801-1890), who was proclaimed a saint by Pope John Paul II in 1991, says in Knowledge Its Own End, “knowledge that has a practical application”(53). If Lameck’s people in Tanzania have the opportunity to get an education, they will have the knowledge and strength to escape poverty and live a better life.

          In addition, Lucy Lameck, a privileged activist, was involved in her country’s politics. Tanzania earned independence in 1964, a year before Lameck’s speech, Africans Are Not Poor. I admire her for putting a lot of effort into women’s rights. However, Lameck would have done her country much greater good if she had pushed “useful knowledge” instead of women’s rights. For example, Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient in 2006, was born in Bengali, the former British colony, in 1940. Yunus won a scholarship to study in the United States and earned a Ph.D. in economics from Vanderbilt University. Yunus resigned his academic teaching career at Middle Tennessee State University and went back to Bangladesh because of his patriotism toward to his home country.  He interviewed the poor to find out their need. Furthermore, Yunus discovered what the poor needed was a banking system that would help them so they didn’t have to deal with exploitive middlemen. Yunus found out the banking system was set up to be used by rich people and was designed to be anti-illiterate. Therefore, Yunus convinced a bank manager to allow him to circumvent the rules so that he could help the village poor people to secure loans that would enable them to break the poverty cycle.  It is more important that people have plenty of food, clean water and shelter than women’s rights in the third world countries. 

       

          Another example of corrupted privileged people we see is in India. It is human’s nature to explore the unknown. The snake charmer’s son wanted to get on the train and see the world after the snake charmer left him alone for a strumpet. But, can the boy’s dream come true? One of the human beings’ weaknesses is selfishness which we see from the story Naga by R. K. Narayan (1906-2001), who was one of the finest leading figures of Indian literature in English (R. K.). The boy and the people who surround him are in one of the lowest levels of the caste system in India. Why has the caste system been part of India’s culture for thousands of years? Why does it exit today in this modern world? It would be impossible for the boy to escape from it. It is all because of the greed and selfishness of the privileged who do not want their society to change, so they can maintain their status.

          Meanwhile, the wealthy countries of the world or the UN should help people who live in poverty by supplying knowledge and equipment but not money because the money being given is usually stolen by the corrupted ruling class. For instance, when a catastrophic magnitude 7.0M earthquake struck Haiti on January 12, 2010, it killed more than 200,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless. For those who survived the earthquake, they have endured tremendous poverty until now. Many countries responded to help; billions of dollars went into Haiti. Yet, look what happened in Haiti today. There are still 279,000 Haitians living in camps and temporary shelters without basic facilities (2010). Much of the donated money disappeared that was supposed to rebuild the infrastructure. 

        

          That was why even though the bank agreed that Yunus be a guarantor for the poor who borrowed money, Yunus insisted that “I will not pay if there is any default” (378).  Couldn’t he afford a couple of dollars? Yes, but Yunus was fighting the banking system as he said in The StoolMakers of Jobra Village, “I wanted to be the stick in the wheels that would finally stop this infernal machine” (378). People can talk about the problems but it requires someone like Yunus to take action. Yunus’ efforts gave birth to the microbank which is the best way so far, I can see, to really help people in poverty. Yunus is the type of citizen with passion to help the poor that Tanzania, Haiti, and the third world countries need.

          To conclude, the flaws of humanity are very apparent in the third world countries. I also agree that the UN should be “the stick in the wheels” like Yunus said: “I was angry; angry at myself, angry at my economics department and thousands of intelligent professors who had not tried to address this problem and solve it” (372). We need more people like Yunus who are willing to take action and challenge the system. The UN should fight the corruption in the world and help  people in need through a better method like microbank to ensure the poor receive help; also, stop giving money to the government which is controlled by a small group of privileged people. Most importantly, stop making the rhetorical speeches and do something because action speaks louder than words. (1176 words)