In all the presentations and conferences there is certain amount of numbers that probably any staff in the organisation can rattle on his five fingers. One of them is 852 Million. That is how many hungry poor there are in the world, or is it? Well first of all the numbers is so huge that we normally only see it in relation to how many millions a company is making in profit for their shareholders, or how much a new movie cashed in at the box office… There simply is no one who can relate to how many people that actually is. But the number is not 852 Million. I know, because it is 852,231,021. The difference is enormous.

I know it is 852,231,021 because I met number 852,231,020. It was a mother in Northern Democratic Republic of Congo in a small village outside Mbandaka. She was so frail that she could barely keep her body to sit upright. She tried her best as she was holding number 852,231,021 in her arms. Her little son who was probably anything between 3 to 12 months. I was not able to tell because the baby boy was so small and exhausted that he could not even let out a sound while crying.

I remember the situation as if it was happening right in front of me even today, 8 years later. On that mission I was the only white man on the whole place. The woman sitting there on the floor, barely able to hold herself up, trying to make herself dignified in front of me while her hollow eyes told a story that I can never forget. She did not utter a word, she didn’t have to. Her eyes looked right into my soul with such a presence, I will never forget. I had brought my camera, but I couldn’t bring myself to take a picture.

I knew the story already. – Are you the one who can save my baby????? Please help my baby, please give him a chance to live and grow up. She never uttered a word. But from that single moment I knew. There is nothing else that I want to spend my life working with, what could be more important…..

This is why I know the number is 852,231,021 and not 852 million, I have seen it with my own eyes. I have also seen about 329,094 other ones. Yes about!! Because I can simply not get the numbers straight, but I know that the number does not end with one two or even up to 6 zeroes!

Yet every day when I turn on the news I see 2 more dead American soldiers in Iraq, 3 more , 6 more and totals of what 3215 soldiers since the war ended, I dont even recall the number anymore. How come it is not rounded of to “just” about 3000. How come these numbers can be reported day in and day out for several years, as if it was big news. To tell you the truth I have stopped watching the news, I got fed up with the incredibly twisted reporting. I am sure it is important but in the scope of things it really is insignificant. I feel for the families of the dead soldiers. But it can never compare to what I feel for number 852,231,020 and her son 852,231,021.

Every 5 second a child dies. Tomorrow when I hold my 15 minute presentation another 181 children, yes 181 as even the “every 5 second” is rounded of, will have died. Yet it will not be on the news because the slot is taken by a story of someone killed in THE war, as school shooting killing 3 people somewhere or a bridge collapsing with 40 dead..a car crash killing 10 the list goes on. How extremely horrible that it happened, we hear. Hours on end the live broadcasts are going on even if it was “just” one person dead. I say “just” because somehow that this life was worth atleast as much as 5,000 or 10,000 in another Country or Continent. Oh, it was an American or Eurpoean!!! Then it must be news. To show the live coverage of the 25,059 people that die from hunger every day of our life, would be able to cover any news channel 24 hours a day, even if they showed each and every one of them for 3 seconds and just listed a name. Yet that is lumped together as another remote statistic. Just imagine it, a TV channel that every 3 seconds showed a new picture of another dead person. day in, day out, month in month out, year in year out….. the TV channel would have to continue for 93 years doing nothing else to reach the 852,231,021st picture.

I can only hope that 852,231,020 and 852,231,021 is still alive. That they were in the hospital atleast gave them both a head start compared to all the others who are still not able to make it even to such a place. I can only hope as I don’t know, never will. What I do know is that this moment changed my life.. forever..