A Tale of Saving the Starving People of Africa

The jobs report came in, but not the one I was looking for. "No," I said. "I need the report for eastern Africa."  

My secretary scrambled to find one, but couldn't. When she had finished searching, I looked up from my desk and replied, "Well, then, for all we know the unemployment there is as high as any place on earth." I paused, then added. "Tell me, are there not 13 million people starving there?"

My secretary scurried off to look that up, but I quickly called her back. "No, no," I said. "That won't be necessary. I already know it has been 13 million. If the number has changed, the pertinent thing is that it is a terrible, devastating amount. Tell me, Jurrultenna" (for Jurrultenna was her name), "Would it be helpful if we gave these people jobs?"

She gave me a blank look.

I rose from my chair, looked out the window and took a puff on my cigar. (Actually, I didn't puff on my cigar, for I don't smoke. But, to make the story read better, we'll leave that in.) "Jurrultenna, a good part of the problem in eastern Africa is that they are having droughts. Their farmers plant the crops and nothing comes up. Now, after a few years, you'd think they'd learn not to rely on those crops. Instead of starving while they wait for the weather to change, they ought to go down the street to the auto plant and take a job there and make a living that way."

She gave me another blank look, for it was obvious there were no auto plants in Ethiopia.

"Yes," I said, as I walked slowly toward the door. "Somebody just the other day was telling me that if you give a man a fish, he will eat it and return hungry the next day, but, if you teach him how to fish, he will be catching his own food that very next morning." I paused, and then continued, "Jurrultenna, the next morning has come. We will begin immediately on construction of a new auto plant in Somalia. We will be opening a grocery store there, as well, so when they get their first paychecks, they will have a place to buy their food. Oh, and we'll sell bottled water, since their wells are all so dried up."

As I got to the door, I stopped and smiled, and turned back to her. "Actually, Jurrultenna, I might be kidding about it being an auto plant. I'm not anxious to take jobs out of the United States. So, whatever product we do manufacture, we will not be selling it back to an American market. I have not studied the economy there, to know what products Africans are importing. But I shall this afternoon, and we will pick something that is being imported into the richer Africa nations from Europe and then we will make that same thing there, in Somalia, and export it to these other African nations."

I then strolled out my office door, wondering if I had truly just come up with a way to save the people in Africa from starving. As I walked down the stairs, I muttered, half-believing myself, "The problems of the world, they really aren't so difficult."