However, this only deals with the surface problem and has the potential for an even larger tragedy written all over it. The next step is greatly expanded educational opportunities so that these additional survivors of childhood won’t become adult starvation victims or, in the struggle for limited resources, war.

Oprah … are you reading this?

The reality is that the girls marry young, make a lot of babies and bury the weak ones. And the reason for this is that it is a survival tactic that works when the land already has too many people on it for the amount of food available. In the Darwinian view, it ‘selects’ for starvation resistance. The kid who can live on the least nutrition is ‘selected’ to live. The rest die.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

Here’s why: the land already cannot support the people living on it. Yet the girls are having an AVERAGE of eight babies, of whom roughly two will die young (25% mortality) and six will survive to reproductive age themselves. That’s three times as many people standing on the same ground as couldn’t feed their parents.

This is exactly what lead to the Irish potato famines. (yes, plural … the last famine had, you guessed it, a 25% mortality rate caused by needless starvation) (Ecclesiastes 8:9 — during the famine exports of food from Ireland actually increased substantially)

There are three ways to fix this – wholesale slaughter (genocide – whether by gun or by starvation or by disease), reduced birth rates (allowing normal attrition to gradually improve matters) and increased productivity (getting more food from the same or less land).

Education is neutral in the first mode, causing about as many problems as it cures, but helps in the last two. So the next step is education. Education about better farming methods to start and education about being competitive in a global economy to continue. It wouldn’t hurt if they had a few more tractors and some good wells, too.

If you are moved to donate, I’d like to suggest that, for every dime you contribute to feed these children today, you toss in another 90 cents to educate them for their future … and prevent the coming genocide.