Rain! The law of unforeseen consequences or the interconnectedness of everything.

 When I set off to run round the village this morning I discovered that the air was damp. A fine drizzle was falling, not enough to really count as rain but, all the same, damper than we have grown used to over the last few weeks. It didn’t amount to much. The sun has tried, intermittently, to emerge since then. I may, however, need to take an umbrella out with me later when I go to collect the small grandchildren from school. Rain is forecast for Saturday, Sunday, Monday and on into the half term holiday for schools! No doubt farmers will be pleased. 

I used to work with someone who talked a great deal about “the interconnectedness of everything”. He was talking about developing an integrated curriculum in sixth form education, giving students a better-rounded idea of the world, rather than studying subjects in isolation. I’ve thought about “interconnectedness” from time to time since then. For example, when everyone was going slightly fanatical about eating quinoa and in some cases becoming quite evangelical about how good it is for us, I read that communities that relied on quinoa as their staple diet were suffering. As a consequence of the demand for exporting quinoa rising, the price for the people in those communities also rose and they could no longer afford to have a balanced diet. An unexpected consequence! 

And today I read about problems caused by our supermarkets selling sea bass and sea bream. Mostly these fish come from fish farms, neatly packaged and just the right size, and usually labelled “responsibly sourced”. Except that fish farmers are bulk-buying small fish caught off the coast of places in Senegal, small fish that become fishmeal to feed the farmed sea bass and sea bream. This trade has messed up small community lofe in Senegal:

“At the entrance to the fish market in Joal-Fadiouth, a coastal town in central Senegal, a group of women have set up shop under the shade of a small pavilion. A few years ago, they say, the market would have been bustling with ice-cream sellers, salt vendors and horse-drawn carts delivering freshly caught fish to the women, who would set about sun-drying, salting and sorting the catch into affordable portions for local families to buy.

Today, trade is dead, says Aissatou Wade, one of the remaining small-scale fish processors left in the town. “Without fish [to sell], we have no money to send our children to school, buy food or get help if we fall ill,” she says.

So what has happened? Wade and her fellow workers have become victims of the supply chain that feeds aquaculture – the world’s fastest-growing food sector.”

 

The interconnectedness of everything! 

Then there is education. Jenny Chapman, the international development minister, needs to make spending cuts to foreign aid. This will mean schools not being built and projects encouraging the education of girls being reduced, if not disappearing altogether. This will affect health measures. Here are some facts and figures: 

• Women with an education are far more likely to go to a clinic and have their children vaccinated. They are also more likely to get antenatal care and seek early treatment for diarrhoea and pneumonia, both potential killers.
• If all women completed primary education and gained basic literacy, maternal deaths would be reduced by two-thirds. 
• in Makawi, each additional year of maternal education cut infant mortality by 10%. 
• In Uganda, each extra year of schooling cut the risk of infant mortality by more than 16%. 
• Cutting education spending will reduce the effectiveness of spending on health.

There it is again - the interconnectedness of everything. 

Life goes on, stay safe and well, everyone!