About a year ago, one of my Scientific & Technical Presentations students did an informative presentation on the $100 Laptop. Her audience was my unusually diverse class (although it’s really not so unusual in the Twin Cities). She was Moldovian, and there were students from Thailand, China, Ethiopia, and Somalia as well. (The Somalian guys ended up being some of my favorite rambunctious students ever. But I digress. They deserve a post all their own someday.)

The presentation was more or less an encomium for the project and Negroponte, as so many pieces on the topic are. When she finished and asked for questions, H., who was the only Ethiopian in the group, raised his hand. He rarely spoke in class and stood apart from the other Africans he hung with; he was quieter, taller, and thinner. Skeletally thin still, having been born during the mid-80s famine in Ethiopia.

He was a remarkably reserved man, but when he spoke this time, his voice shook with anger. “People who are starving do not need laptops,” he said in his softly accented English. “When you have not eaten for so long that your brain cannot work, that you have dementia, a laptop will not help you. Sending us machines does no good! You need to send food to Africa. You need to send doctors and medicine. Not computers!” He stopped then, not wanting to insult the speaker. She looked at me, along with the American students. Clearly, there was no rebuttal for his argument, and no opposition to his ethos.

I was reminded of that moment the other night while watching the 60 Minutes special on Plumpynut. The product is being called “a revolution in nutritional affairs,” and it provides a new, hopeful solution for starving populations. It’s a paste made of peanut butter, powdered milk, powdered sugar, and enriched with vitamins and minerals. It doesn’t require refrigeration, cooking, or water. The chief nutritionist for Doctors Without Borders said in the interview, “It is like an essential medicine. In three weeks, we can cure a kid that is looked like they’re half dead. We can cure them just like an antibiotic. It’s just, boom! It's a spectacular response.”

Watching the video (linked above), all I could think about was H.’s impassioned speech. These kids don’t need laptops. They need food and doctors. A month’s supply of Plumpynut costs $20 per child. The real cost of the $100 Laptop — between $140 and $208, depending on what you read— could feed a child for 7 - 10.5 months. In terms of childhood development, that’s a tremendously significant length of time.

Before, I might have been able to come up with an argument against that — educational resources, cultural participation, etc etc etc — but my students teach me, and sometimes they change me. I cannot find a compelling counterargument for H’s speech these days. Certainly there are not-quite-so-impovershed countries who will benefit from this program. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that we are none of us free until all of us are free.