By this time, I’m sure most of us have heard about the drought currently afflicting the Horn of Africa.  The famine that’s resulted from mismanaged governing leaves over 12 million Africans from Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Kenya starved and displaced.

As with any tragedy, the devastation of human life is heartbreaking.  Personally, I do not show photos of the starved bodies, but each day my heart goes out to the Horn.  And the compassion that humans have shown is tremendous. While pundits pontificate about the merits of sending food to corrupt governments, citizens of Kenya put their money to work for their fellow human beings.

When the worlds outside our small ones seem to be crumbling, we are often left feeling helpless; at least that’s how I feel as an African in diaspora.  Like many, I and my family are nearly overcome with the matter of staying alive and well in this economy and society; it’s all we can do at the end of the month to send something “back home” to care for others.

But, in reflecting over this summers’ recent and ongoing tragedies, feeling guilty is a cop out. It replaces compassion (centering others’ emotions and struggles above our own) and instead we internalize our own feelings.  Merely being a witness to these things by collecting links, watching the videos and looking at the photos (if you can), is enough to spark compassion.

And that compassion makes us better human beings.  Brown bodies may not always be centered in mainstream media, but that doesn’t make us less human.  Most of us cannot go to the Horn of Africa ourselves, heal the sick there and feed the hungry, but we can be a witness.  Through intention, we can read the links that come across our social media streams.  We can retweet them.  We can go into our communities and help feed the hungry people right next door.

We cannot bury our heads. We must bear witness so this doesn’t happen again.