+
upworthy
More

Listen to a Grammy Award winner's song about world hunger. It's simply stunning.

A haunting plea.

In 1993, four-time Grammy Award winner and British-Nigerian singer Sade released a song called "Pearls," and it's become one of her most enduring hits.

But did you know this song is about a woman and child living in the 1992 Somali famine?


Sade rocks out. Photo by Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images.


That fact flies by some because one doesn't really need to listen to the words Sade sings to get the effect of her music.

The main character in Sade's story is picking "pearls" off the side of the road. These aren't actual pearls but grains of rice that have fallen off relief trucks passing by her. To her, they are as precious as pearls because in her life, they are just as rare. Mothers in Somalia's food situation are forced to live a life where they can't just pop over to the supermarket to get some food.

Here's what the lyrics in "Pearls" mean:

Somalia has had three separate famines in the last 25 years: In 1992, from 2010-2012, and in 2014.

The famine (a period of extreme hunger) Sade is singing about claimed 220,000 lives in 1992. The 2010-2012 famine claimed another 260,000, and in 2014, the death toll of the ongoing war caused partially by Somalia's hunger problems is still climbing.

As of September 2013, there were more than 1.1 million Somalis displaced internally and nearly 1 million refugees living in neighboring countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, and Yemen.

The population of Somalia is 10.5 million; a tenth of the country is displaced from their homes without their choosing. That's a lot of people.

You know how many? 125 football stadiums of people.

One-third of Somali children are underweight.

According to the World Health Organization, 32.8% of Somali children younger than 5 are underweight and malnourished. America and other countries have been sending aid to Somalia since 1993, but still the problem has persisted. For every 1,000 Somali children, about 146 won't make it to age 5.

It's hard for people in drought and famine situations to even think about the situation they're in day in and day out.

This one is a little less fact-based, so I'm going to ask you to use your imagination: You know when you get a new pair of dress shoes and the leather is crisp, stiff, and unwrinkled ... you almost don't want to wear them yet because they're so doggone perfect? And then you put them on and walk out the door, and you already have blisters on the edges of your feet and want to take them off? This is what I think Sade means.

What can we all can do to help?


Somali refugees in Kenya after fleeing the 2011 famine. Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images.

All this time, I never thought about what I should do. She's speaking about a problem — hunger in Somalia — that has been a problem since I was 10. I'm 32 now.

  • Keep up with what's going on in Somalia by visiting Oxfam. (If you scroll to the bottom of this page, there is news about what they're doing to help.)

  • You can donate to Oxfam or UNICEF, if you'd like.

  • Most important: Be vocal, share news and articles about it, and keep it fresh on peoples' minds. If we aren't talking about a problem, how are we going to help fix it?

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

Keep ReadingShow less
Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

Keep ReadingShow less

An English doctor named Edward Jenner took incredible risks to try to rid his world of smallpox. Because of his efforts and the efforts of scientists like him, the only thing between deadly diseases like the ones below and extinction are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Don't be that parent.

Unfortunately, because of the misinformation from the anti-vaccination movement, some of these diseases have trended up in a really bad way over the past several years.

Keep ReadingShow less

A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

Keep ReadingShow less
Joy

Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

Keep ReadingShow less