How You Can Help Somalia

I wasn't going to write a blog today. I just wasn't feeling it. I turned on my dvr'd Anderson Cooper to pictures of people starving. Of children who looked like bundles of bones wrapped in their mother's arms. Their eyes large and feverish in their tiny faces. I felt something in me crack.

My youngest is sitting next to me munching on crackers. And if she is still hungry there are more crackers or hot dogs and clean water to drink. We joke about how fat she is but today I am grateful for her snugly rolls and potbelly busting out of her shirt. I cannot imagine being a mother who has to watch her child starve to death.

When I am hungry I am extraordinarily whiny and I complain about how I am starving. I have never been starving. These people are truly starving and dying. And I feel helpless. I feel overwhelmed and I cry for them.

But what else can I do? What can we do?

We can educate ourselves.. I am frustrated with our media once again. Yes our credit got downgraded, but an hour of 8 pundits yelling at each other and blaming one side or the other is not going to fix it. There are people dying in East Africa (It's not just in Somalia), Syria and still in Libya. There are also Americans dying in a pointless war overseas.  If your news channels are not talking about it, get online and learn what's really going on. This is not just a drought. This has more to do with corruption and terrorists groups blocking aid, then just mother nature.

You can donate of course. Here's a list of aid groups.

You can urge our politicians to do more.

You can pray, meditate, chant, whatever.

You can remind yourself that your life is infinitely better then you thought. You can hug your loved ones and cherish them knowing you will never have to helplessly watch them die. 

I hope you can find some way to help, everything counts.