Horoscopes
Everyone's a Winner
This is Makalaka and his sister.  He is
6 years' old.  Makalaka lives in one of
the poorest nations on earth.  In fact,
he is already defying the odds having
lived past his second birthday:  most
of his peers do not.
By the Small Monkey
Back
Makalaka's average day involves
struggling to find enough dirty water
to keep himself and his sister alive.  
He must trek for miles across the
scorched West African terrain in the
hope of finding water.  He uses half
of an old chemical drum to store what
little cholerea infested water he can
find; with any luck the caustic residue
will kill some of the nastier bugs.
Makalaka doesn't have too much of a problem finding food;  this is
largely to do with the fact that he has an amazingly broad definition of
what he is prepared to call food.  He lives in what most westerners
would call a 'mud-hut'.  This is for the simple reason that it is a hut,
made of mud.  Actually, Makalaka's family is quite upmarket, they also
have a piece of corrugated iron to help hold up the roof.  This
probably makes them 'middle-class'.
Still, Makalaka's quite upbeat, as you can see in the photo'.  This is
because he has just read his horoscope, and discovered that 'despite
a number of small setbacks in his love-life last year, he now has the
confidence to move onwards and upwards.'  He also now knows that
he 'needs to avoid making any rash business decisions later on in the
month.'
No wonder he's happy; imagine if the poor guy hadn't known all that
and jumped into a misguided leveraged-takeover of a large
multinational in a couple of weeks'.  Phew.