The film of Darwin’s nightmare

Darwin’s Nightmare is a documentary film about how people battle to survive in extreme poverty. The film reflects author Sach’s four ways in which economic success is crumbling. Many civilizations thrive along the river, but this is not true for the people who live beside Lake Victoria and fish for Nile Perch. The book, on the other hand, may aid in understanding why individuals are imprisoned in poverty and how they struggle and face hardship in achieving their basic necessities.

To save, we must first have a surplus, which we then utilize to invest in different crops or maybe cattle. In the film, the extreme poverty is typical in the area of Neil of Perch. The majority of fisherman made less than a dollar per day. While the vital needs such as clean water, food, and the hospital do not even satisfy, how can people in Nile Perch have an extra resource such as money or food as savings?

Trade is absent

In the Nile Perch, the biggest resources are fish, and youth who are orphans live on the street. A pile of fishes will only worth about $110 U.S dollars. And most of the fish fillet will export to Europe and Japan via the European Union. Besides of majority fish product exported, there are no resource left but rotten fish and harmful ammonia gas to villagers. For the youth part, the film indicates that there are a lot of orphans lives on the street after father died due to fishing or mother become a prostitute due to the virus infection of AIDS/HIV. People living locally would anticipate the war because airplane fly in Mwanza with the cargo of guns but leave with a load of fish. Children are hopeless, and famine lives on the street, the only choice they have is to be a fisherman like the father or be an army to kill for food, money, and power. The whole economic is stagnated with absent of trade. How can people in the Nile, Perch to be expected to trade when the only resource is either selling in extremely low value or being a force to take away and leaves children for the weapon of guns as a gift?

Technology is not presented

As a resident of U.S, we are fortunate to live in an advanced technology world. Industries that engaging with machine means more efficient on production. However, most of the fisherman who lives along the lake would be using a simple wooden boat with no power nor navigation system. The villagers who processed the fish product still using the most traditional way to make smoked fish so it can be exported as fish products. While most of the people are illiteracy unable to receive proper or general education, they have no access or opportunity to exposed themselves to learn and to engage with technology.

Resource is declined sharply

While the main economic resource is fish production. It has dropped because of the ecosystem is highly polluted and overfishing. In the initial process of handling the fish because of the fish is a high content of fat, they would rather sun-dried or smoked the fish. During the process also caused the contamination of the environment and made the soil impossible to grow any plants and limited the clean water resource.

Besides of failed four pathways for reaching the economic flourish, Sachs also indicates there are eight problems of why countries fail to achieve economic growth. In the documentary film, we witness six out of eight issues as listed below.

Poverty trap

When the village is lacked factory capital as equipment and factory, peasants are lacked human capital as knowledge. “When poorly is very extreme, the poor do not have the ability by themselves to get out of the mess.” (Sachs 3)

Physical Geography

Victoria lake is located in a place where has unique wildlife, even its known for oversized fish but the only major transportation appeared in the film is old trucks or wooden boat. When people are in their last breath, they do not have affordable transportation or paved road for them going to the hospital. People are cold-hearted or shy away when they aware people near them are about to die. Highly contagious disease such as AIDS/HIV, malaria and dengue caused by mosquito bite and polluted water are foreseeable and prevalent in the film.

Government Failure

Government incompetence to fulfill basic needs such as health care, transportation, and education for their country.

Culture

At the beginning of the film, priest advocated it is a sin to against human nature to use condoms. Due to the culture and religious reasons, men and women are prone to get HIV and AIDS unexpectedly.

Geopolitics

Residents in Mwanza nearby Victoria lake would invade by IIyushin-76 cargo plane with weapons but leave with full of fillet fish for European consumer and trade weapon as a gift. The consequence was waiting for Africa to perished itself.

Demographics

Based on figure 1: Fertility and Economic Development (65) in the chapter of Sachs, it indicates the lower GDP countries has high fertility rate compare with high GDP countries who has low fertility rate. In the tradition society, men’s role still seems like a basic labor force, and women still consider as a tool for rearing the kids. In the film, the tragedy is predictable and repeats itself, and the man goes to work as the fisherman, when he passed away by drawing or infected by virus or AIDS, the wife still goes to the river and become a prostitute, leave the kids behind on as an orphan or street kids. They never have the opportunity to receive basic health care, education. They have no money or ability to help themselves out in the extreme poverty.

In conclusion, “requisite human capital” are essential to be able to end the poverty trap. In the particular case of abject poverty, first would be general education must be prevalent from toddler to teenager, most villagers in the film are illiteracy. Their job and opportunity are limited because minimal or lacked proper education. Second, Professional vocational training as fisherman and female farmer who works in hazardous toxic ammonia gas needs to know how to protect themselves. Workers need to be acknowledged and work efficiently and work safely. Third, contraception or safety sex to prevent AIDS/HIV needs to be advocated from the priest or related health organization and society as a whole. Otherwise, will have more innocent people died from it. Fourth, implement the technology for fisherman and fish farm. Invest research and development on fish and agriculture industry.