Got Money and No Money -> So What?

There are many paradoxes in life. Reading the current headlines of East Timor got me thinking again - at the same issue.

1 in 55 children die before the age of 5, and 1 in 35 mothers die during childbirth. If you think East Timor is poor, you will only need to enquire about their petroleum fund and Timor doesn't look that poor anymore. There is currently X billion dollars in East Timor's petroleum fund.

So the dire straits of the common folks is not because the country does not have any money, but it is what, how and where does the money go to. While it is true that East Timor is still comparatively poor when a country's wealth is gauged by her GDP(it's not 100% accurate anyway), in terms of funds, East Timor is not short of it. Millions of dollars are poured into the country by other countries and aid organizations.

So why is the common folk still suffering from the same trivial problems such as:
1. Death because of common(in East Timor), curable illnesses such as diarrhaoue, fever, malaria, typhoid, wound infections
2. Lack of education opportunities; especially in the rural and mountainous regions
3. Lack of proper water sanitation and access
4. Lack of medical facilities
and the list goes on.

Can't money solve all these problems? Can't we build schools, build medical facilities, build a world class sewage system, hire experts and doctors? But the reality is that money can't solve all these problems because solving these problems are just not as straightforward as I wished it to be; even if it does looked straightforward. There are so many underlying nitty gritties such as the person driving the project to the approval by government agencies that a discussion on why money alone cannot solve these problems is just beyond the scope of this article.

Yet at the same time, without money, nothing much can be done. To quote a chinese phrase, "You qian ye shi zi yang, mei qian ye shi zi yang". It almost make things sound so hopeless; a kind of resigning-to-my-fate sentiment. What does it take to ensure that less children die before the age of 5? And what does it take to ensure that less mothers die during childbirth? Could the answer be you and me? Perhaps the no.1 reason why many Timorese are still suffering is because you and I are not bringing to them the knowledge and love they need to get themselves out of their malady.

It's time to think again. Where do we go from here?