1. Our economic downward spiral
2. America’s first black president, Barack Obama, is elected
3. Mumbai under siege
4. Pakistan blast at the Marriott Hotel
5. Pirates ruling the seas off of Africa
6. Georgia vs. Russia conflict
7. The “Made in China” scare
8. Fidel Castro’s reign came to an end
9. The rescue of Ingrid Betancourt in Colombia
10. Natural disasters: the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in Sichuan, China

I’m always drawn to the Top 10 News Stories because they capture the raw reality of things that were felt around the globe. It’s incredible to look back on that list now and think, “Wow. That all happened just this year.” Things that shattered our ideals, revolutionized our politics, and painted a different landscape for what is to come.

If you have some time, take a few minutes to reflect. Ask yourself, what will I remember most about 2008? What stands out in your mind as the event that most affected you?

Image credit: IowaPolitics.com

Dinner With The President: A Nation’s Journey, directed by Sabiha Sumar, proceeds with questions in hand about democracy in the Islamic culture of Pakistan straight to the dinner table of President Pervez Musharraf.

Recycled Life chronicles the past 60 years in the lives of generations of families who have lived and worked, not in family-owned restaurants or Wal-Mart or at the local diner, but in the Guatemala City Garbage Dump, a humongous Central American landfill.

And did you know that at 18 years old girls in Israel are forced into military service? To See If I’m Smiling gives voice to these girl soldiers and immerses the audience into the emotions and experiences of their tours of duty.

The whole attraction and need for sidewalk-type festivals like these is that they get into the underbelly of a country or expose aches within cultures that so often get misinterpreted or ignored. For an audience, it fills a need to witness something true and organic and to learn something real.

Do you ever check out these kinds of film festivals? If you have, have they changed your ideas about humanity or the world?

Image credit: tabrandt

Some answers are common, some are more personal. Responses like: travel lends a hand to encouraging peace, getting to absorb common life, and the ability to see things from a different perspective. But one answer felt universal.

“It’s really the main kick of traveling for me — that you can meet people in such different circumstances, and really, it’s the same things that make people happy and it’s the same things that you can bond over,” said 20-year-old Anne Engedal, visiting the Taj Mahal in India.

From my own experiences in traveling I have learned the same – that no matter where you are, life carries the same themes and happiness looks strikingly similar, even in the smallest corners of our world.

Why do you travel? Do you think people visiting other places benefits our world?

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photo credit: locket479

Yet in Africa, under the same sun, millions remain largely forgotten, longing for it to set.

Aid agencies spoke yesterday of a growing hunger crisis in East Africa, with 14 million Africans threatened by malnutrition. Desperate days like this haven’t been seen since 2000. Official figures claim Ethiopia is suffering the most with 4.6 million getting closer to starvation, but aid agencies say the number is much, much higher. Drought and heightened global food prices are pushing millions into the depths of poverty.

In a village consumed by the lack of food, Doctors Without Borders is seeing afflicted faces, not in stats, but up close and in reality. “The rains failed, everybody lost their crops,” Gamtou Defso, 70, a farmer, said. “We are just eating anything we find on the ground. I am hungry and I feel really sick . . . We don’t have any food to eat.” [Source: Times Online]

Having been to Africa, it is absolutely heart wrenching to picture their pain and read their words. Yet I wonder if this news even registers on the world’s radar anymore. Aid agencies speak, they ask, they seek out foreign hands to help. But it’s the same story: Famine in Africa.

Do you think the world pays just attention to news out of Africa or is everyone too used to hearing it? What is your response to reading news of famine and poverty in Africa?

Image credit: aheavens