Turns out Africans aren't really all that eager for wealthy American women to reduce their numbers and rob them of children

Melinda Gates wants to spend $4.6B to ensure that the world has fewer African babies.
Nigerian, Obianju Ekeocha says, "No thanks!"

There are so many hot button cultural issues at play here. So many intelligentsia assumptions about uneducated, back water haphazard over breeders. I'm sure Melinda Gates means well. Really, I am. But her message here is this: The world will be a better place if there were less of you.

Think about that for a second. 


I'm not going to hop on the racism at play here other than to make a quick note of it. 
My guess is that this sort of xenophobia really is more of a case of naivety and ignorance rather than outright intentional hatred of any particular race. It is fear, but not outright hatred. In any case, it is certainly not hope.

To those that offer this as some sort of sexual liberation, I ask: Is sex in the West really so great that we have to import our technical enhancements into every town and community in the world? Do we have some superior way of getting busy that we have have to import to the world? I mean, look at our grocery store isles. We can't even buy food without being confronted with a hyper fixation on "having our minds blown" and our "pleasure enhanced" with every technique imaginable. This doesn't really strike me as a reflection on the fact that we are a civilization who is perfectly at peace and content with both our sexuality and our sexual lives. It strikes me that we are a people who, in an effort to squeeze out every ounce of fulfillment from sex that we feel we are entitled to, have enabled mass marketers to commodify the very means by which life is brought into the world leaving us feeling empty and soulless. We look like frenzied, bewildered fiends, baffled that all of this pleasure lacks joy and turns out to make us feel all the more empty and unfulfilled.  That is what we want to import to the rest of the world?


Ekeocha is so gracious in her defense of African fertility. She doesn't rail against Gates like some political cultural warrior. Rather she invites Gates to take a closer local at community life in her native home. She offers us a glimpse at something that we in the West, who suffer in an age of increasing isolation and epidemic loneliness, are really longing for ourselves. She offers us a glimpse at communio. 


"Growing up in a remote town in Africa, I have always known that a new life is welcomed with much mirth and joy. In fact we have a special “clarion” call (or song) in our village reserved for births and another special one for marriages. 
The first day of every baby’s life is celebrated by the entire village with dancing (real dancing!) and clapping and singing - a sort of “Gloria in excelsis Deo.”

"Amidst all our African afflictions and difficulties, amidst all the socioeconomic and political instabilities, our babies are always a firm symbol of hope, a promise of life, a reason to strive for the legacy of a bright future. "

Ekeocha also asks a very good question. Namely, "Who is going to clean up the mess, (the uh, bio-hazards to be specific), that you're going to make in our country?" 

I really can't understand the lack of introspection that so-called Western "helpers" sometimes show when it comes to providing aid to the third world. For all the derisive talk about Christian missionary paternalism, it is going to become increasingly clear that the secularized version of missions will be far more immoral and destructive. What we're ending up with is sexual imperialism. Just terrific.