Eguria

THE PREMATURE CHILD A child that is born before 36 weeks after conception is regarded to be premature, 40 weeks being considered full item (slightly more than 9 months). Another criterion for determining prematurity is that of weight. Any child born weighing less than 5 Ibs. 8 oz. is classified as premature. The closer to full term the fetus is, the bigger and more highly developed will be its organs and body systems. Its chances for survival, therefore, are proportionately increased. Those born within the 32 to 36-week period will usually weigh from 3½ to 4 pounds. The infant will be weak, but can manage to cry for its food when hungry. Careful supervision and nursing care are needed if the baby is to live. When birth occurs 28 to 32 weeks after conception the fetal infant will weigh about two pounds. An infant of this size at maturity would require constant medical supervision for survival, because it cannot nurse and has particular difficulty maintaining a constant body t...

THE GLOBAL POVERTY TRAP Uruguayan historian Eduardo Galeano once wrote, ‘The division of labour among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing.’ The global division of labour has relegated the poor to the rule of perpetual loser. They are caught by forces at local, national, and global levels that combine to form a three-tiered trap. At the local level, elements of the poverty trap include skewed pattern of access to land and other assets, physical weakness and heightened susceptibility to disease, population growth, and powerlessness against corrupt institutions. These are reinforced at the national level by innumerable policies – from tax laws to the structure of development investment – that neglect or discriminate against the poor. And at the global level, the poor are held down by the devastating combination of oppressive debt burdens, falling export prices, and rising capital flight. All these factors and forces, like diabolical counterparts to Ada...

THE DUBE TRAIN   The morning was too cold for a summer morning, at least, to me, a child of the sun. But then on all Monday mornings I feel rotten and shivering, with a clogged feeling in the chest and a nauseous churning in the stomach. It debilitates any interest in the whole world around me. The Dube Station with the prospect of congested trains, filled with sour-smelling humanity, did not improve my impression of a hostile life directing its malevolence plumb at me. All sorts of disgruntled ties darted through my brain, the lateness of the trains, the showing savagery of the crowds, the grey aspect around me.   Even the announcer over the loudspeaker gave confused directions. I suppose it had something to do with the peculiar chemistry of the body on Monday morning. But for me all was wrong with the world. Yet, by one of those flukes that occurs in all routines, the train I caught was not full when it came. Usually try to avoid seats next to the door, but someti...

THE IMPORTANCE OF HOBBIES A gifted American psychologist has said, ’Worry is a spasm of the emotion; the mind catches hold of something and will not let it go.’ It is useless to argue with the mind in this condition. The stronger the will, the more futile the task. One can only gently insinuate something else into its convulsive grasp. If this something else is rightly chosen. If it is really attended by the illumination of another field of interest, gradually, and often quite swiftly, the old undue grip relaxes and the process of recuperation and repair begins. The cultivation of a hobby and new forms of interest is therefore a policy of first importance to a public man. But this is not a business that can be undertaken in a day or swiftly improvised by a mere command of the will. The growth of alternative mental interest in is a long process. The seeds must be carefully chosen; they must fall on a good ground; they must be, sedulously tended,. If the vivifying fruits are to ...

: center;">  SOUTH AFRICA: Not yet Uhuru   (Uhuru is a Swahili word that means “freedom”.) It was   a Conservative British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, who in response to the stirrings of nationalism in different parts of   the British Empire during World War 1 truculently declared that he had not become the First Minister of the Crown in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.’ It is therefore interesting that it was another conservative Prime Minister, the velvet-smooth Harold Macmillan, who stood up almost 20 eventful years later in the Parliament Building in Cape Town to acknowledge that a wind of change was blowing through Africa and that the aspiration for freedom from foreign domination had become irresistible. In other words, he was admitting that the days of the British Empire were numbered. It is therefore not surprising that the sixties was the decade of Africa independence. One after the other, Africa countries whi...