Dressed in a pink robe with matching slippers, she wept furiously. One of those advertisements, from Oxfam or Greenpeace or some organization like that, ran and ran and implored her to help the starving denizens of some small nation in Africa whose name Meredith didn’t even dare try to pronounce. The situation there seemed tenuous. She couldn’t tell whether the government was a victim of imposed circumstances, whether they were especially corrupt or just poor. The camera panned across another woeful scene, and more buffalo tears welled as Meredith realized how fragile everything was. The most permanent of fixtures was nothing more than a well-built tent, houses shoddily constructed of canvas, threadbare schools with throwaway books, scantily dressed children in scantily fed bodies, and dust everywhere. Everything was so thin she knew that one brave gust of wind could push this tiny civilization into the sea. But there was hope. Development could come into existence and be sustained, but it wasn’t going to be easy.
