When I was opinion editor of a short-lived afternoon daily in the Philippines, one of the tasks I enjoyed doing every day was going over wire stories from all over the world. Some of the articles, especially geopolitical analyses, impacted hugely on newspapers the next day.
But the stories I enjoyed most were the small stories--the human-interest ones--usually from places in the world the names of which may be unfamiliar to ordinary readers. Such stories comprise a rich and unending source of comment and material for an editor/columnist like me, who admits to having favorite issues. Mine remain, to this day, sustainable livelihood, environmental protection and ecotourism, poverty reduction, and human development.
To me, the real heroes of our time are those who strive despite the odds, who work hard whether there is government help or none, never giving up their right to a better life for themselves and their children. The economic growth of any country rests on the shoulders of people who build, not on the politicians who only care about power and who dispenses it.
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Editorial, The Evening Paper
Issue of 20 April 1995
On particular days, but not often, we get a memorable haul of human-interest stories--all in one day--from different places in the world. They may be heartwarming, gut-wrenching, or mind-blowing. But whatever their specific quality, such stories manage to spring up from the reams of copy on newspaper desks, virtually shouting for some reaction from the rest of the world.
Yesterday was one such day, when in the span of one afternoon, our eyes landed on three particularly moving human-interest stories.
One of them, you will read in the opposite page. It is a story about blacks and whites in South Africa, finally confronting their physical togetherness in a nation-state that had kept them, under artificial laws and customs, divided for half a century.
Coming face to face with their black alter egos and how they live has been an eye-opener for the whites of South Africa, earlier cocooned from reality by a minority government that had made a particular success of an inhuman policy--until the blacks themselves, collectively, burst the bubble of apartheid.
The story of blacks and whites learning to live side by side in Hout Bay, South Africa, is a continuing story, one we hope will prove the universality and primacy of human thought and aspirations despite differences in race, religion, and roots.
The second story, from Sihanoukville, is a sad and painful one, doubtless familiar to many Filipinos. The report traces the minor economic boom that has come to this port town of Cambodia, and the growth and progress it brings with it: thriving businesses, foreign investments, increased earnings.
And the evils, too: seaside clubs, karaoke bars.
One particularly gut-wrenching development: child prostitution. Impoverished families, attracted by the money their teenage "virgins" can make in the town's new bars and clubs, sell them to bar owners, who then take their 40-percent cut from the girls' nightly earnings.
One Cambodian human-rights group, Vigilance, believes all it needs to lick the problem in Sihanoukville is protective legislation. "We will be able to work out this problem when we've got the law," the vice president of Vigilance said.
As many similar groups everywhere know, this is too naive an assessment of the problem. Indeed, the lack of protective legislation is only one part of the problem. Even when there is protective legislation, the problem will continue as long as the whole system encourages even just one impoverished parent to trade his or her teenage offspring for the goods that money can buy. In the Philippines, we know this only too well.
The third human-interest story that caught our eye yesterday is our favorite. Datelined Algirchar in Bangladesh, it is a heartwarming story of a simple invention that may as well have originated from anywhere in Asia's, including the Philippines's, endangered ricelands.
It tells of how one simple contraption changed the prospects for 500,000 Bangladeshi farmers long deprived of adequate irrigation for their crops. The contraption, a foot-powered treadle pump, makes use of very ordinary materials: metal cylinders, bamboo levers, plastic pipes. It is the invention of one Narendra Nath Deb, a farmer himself, who once could not afford to buy water, usually from the power pumps of wealthy landowners, with which to irrigate his fields during the dry months.
Although Deb holds no patent, he now manufactures his modified pump for the US development agency that specializes in marketing "simple devices that can make a big difference in the Third World." The agency's goal is to equip all of Bangladesh's 6 million farmers with the pump, thus raising the country's annual agricultural output to approximately $2.1 billion. And yes, Deb has become moderately wealthy and has ceased to farm.
A success story from Bangladesh. Can we hear of some local ones now?
-- NBT
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