A Theft, A Threat, and Raising Awareness

Linvilla Orchards, the ‘Prequel’

One of my readers, my friend and Mount Holyoke classmate Sudy, said that Linvilla Orchards is a beloved spot for members of her family. I forgot to ask if she knew it as a child or only later as a mother. I know she grew up near Bryn Mawr where my daughter lives but I don’t know how long Linvilla Orchards has been around.

I told her my story from last year’s visit to Linvilla Orchards.

That time too I went with my daughter and her then 3-month-old baby boy Ikem. We’d walked around for a while and were sitting on the wall just below and outside the huge fenced-in area where pumpkins are for sale. We were relaxing and thinking about leaving.

Suddenly a large pumpkin landed on the grass a few feet from us. Two minutes later we stared in fascination as a man walked up and hoisted the pumpkin onto his shoulder. As he turned away, Beth said, “Did you just steal that pumpkin?”

“I’m not paying $60 for this,” he said as he walked off into the parking lot.

Not more than five minutes later we watched him return, still carrying the pumpkin. But now he was escorted by two security men! We couldn’t leave then – we had to wait to see him come out again. On his final exit twenty minutes later, carrying no pumpkin, he asked if we had reported him. We assured him we had not.

I was actually a little disappointed for him, guessing that he would have taken the pumpkin home to eager children.

But who knows? Maybe he was planning to sell it for drug money.

Monster

Monster, by Walter Dean Myers

Children of Color in Books

TEAM Westport’s newest member Zoe is hard at work raising awareness of the need for depictions of children of color in children’s books. She wrote recently to an author to ask how the illustrations were chosen in that author’s most recent book, which Zoe says she loved.

Zoe relates the author’s response to her message and says, “A response like this fuels my belief that talking about an issue can indeed raise awareness and bring about change.” Zoe reported that the author wrote, “While the (major) oversight was unintentional, it is nonetheless inexcusable.”  The editor added her own note, saying, “I know my awareness has been raised.”

“One author, one editor, one librarian, one school administrator, one parent at a time…they’ll all tell someone else, and together…we can change this,” says Zoe.

A New York Times piece written by Walter Dean Myers, children’s book author, in March this year has helped get discussion of the issue going.

Ebola – Will it Spread?

My friend Charles Larson has written a compelling essay about Ebola. He fears the disease may spread through much of Africa.

“Ebola’s going to be almost impossible to fix by waving a wand, because most Africans have no access to basic health care nor knowledge of basic preventive measures,” he says.

“The reason? The majority of them do not have access to safe water; they live in remote areas, where news still travels slowly; they believe in indigenous solutions for confronting sickness and disease. They want to attend to their dead in a respectful way, which means touching the bodies. But safe water is still the basic health problem. Even in big cities like Lagos, Nigeria (with its millions of people), you can’t drink the tap water.”

Yet Nigeria was able to contain the disease quickly. The government responded in amazing fashion. I was surprised and very grateful!

Larson warns that those who can afford to escape the countries where Ebola becomes more widespread will do so, thus endangering more people in other locations. And WHO is responding to that threat by sending people to monitor the borders between the affected countries and their neighbors. He asks why we – the West – could not mobilize to react early and decisively.

Professor Ferraro asked the same question a couple of weeks earlier. He said he first posted about Ebola in West Africa on March 29!  “Why US policy does not kick in until American citizens are directly threatened is beyond my understanding. And why American citizens get so freaked out by highly improbable scenarios defies logic.”

What is your reaction to the news of Ebola in the U.S.? Do you think we should have/could have responded more quickly to the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa?

 

Author: Catherine Onyemelukwe

Author, blogger, speaker. Born in New York, grew up in mid west United States, lived in Nigeria for 24 years, back in U.S. since 1986. Advocate for racial justice.