Soliloquies from SonoSono's Studio

Another year has gone by, and it has now been 2 years since Yuto, my cousin's son, passed away suddenly at the age of 8. While I think about him all the time, the anniversary brings back all the thoughts I've had about life and death during the past year.

On a personal level, I had a miscarriage last November, so my thought turns to her (I believe the baby was a girl) immediately. No matter what happens with my current pregnancy, I will always think of myself as a mother of 3. And I hope she will be waiting for me in heaven along with Yuto.

On a larger scale though, I've lately been feeling frustrated with how unfair it all seems to be. I'm not trying to minimize anyone's suffering here, but while the news of Japan's earthquake and tsunami spread around the world within hours, it took days for the world to hear about the massacre in Ivory Coast. And these 2 events happened in the same month. For those victims who were injured and hanging on to their lives, the difference between hours and days must have meant the difference between life and death.

Another example is the famine happening in the Horn of Africa. Despite the fact that this has been going on for months now, you barely hear about it on the news. In Somalia alone, US estimates that 29,000 children under the age of 5 have died from hunger. That's more than the number of dead and missing combined from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Again, I'm not trying to minimize anyone's suffering, but why aren't we talking more about the famine?

People say death is the great equalizer, but your chance of survival in life or death situations certainly seems to be influenced heavily by where you just happen to be living. Technology has given many of us an ability to reach a much larger audience than we ever could before, but some of our most vulnerable people in the world remain voiceless.

We can't bring Yuto back, and there's nothing we could've done to prevent his death. But with these children in Somalia, we can do more. They don't have to starve to death. We can prevent that. If we don't at least try, if we don't value every little heart that is beating on this earth, it almost seems insulting to Yuto and the lessons he has taught us.

Most of us are not brave enough nor physically capable of going to Somalia ourselves to help out. But there are a select few who ARE there, helping. Please consider assisting them in any way you can.