Why The Sky Is Far Away

This ancient African Pourquoi tale explains why people today must grow and harvest their own food.

In the African pourquoi tale, long ago people could take bites of the delicious Sky whenever they wanted to. People gobbled and gobbled and gobbled the Sky. Soon the Sky had to make some changes.

Sun and Moon must leave their earthly home after Sun invites the Sea to visit.

Some were paid. Some felt compelled by a duty to God. Some volunteered. Some died doing it. All flew on rickety old aircraft into a nighttime, wartime patch of African forest called Biafra. Far Away in the Sky gives the personal account of one of them, a young American volunteer who joined the largest international humanitarian relief airlift ever attempted. In 1968 millions of people, mostly children, were starving due to a military blockade of Biafra, the former Eastern Region of Nigeria. The World Council of Churches and Caritas International mounted a relief airlift. Flying at night to avoid Nigerian Migs, without radar or any modern navigational aids, landing amid bombs on a stretch of road in the rain forest, the old planes delivered thousands of tons of food and medicines. UNICEF recruited six former United States Peace Corps Volunteers, including the author, to help unload the planes. The former volunteers had served in Nigeria and were familiar with the area and the people. To David Koren the people of Biafra, his former students and fellow teachers, constituted his motive for joining the airlift. More than just a memoir of events, Far Away in the Sky promotes a discussion of international aid, of the balance between the grace of giving and the dignity of receiving aid, and the policies of governments toward intervention or non-intervention in humanitarian disasters. How do the lessons of Biafra apply to modern eruptions like Rwanda, Darfur, Libya, Syria and those yet to come? .

The sky was once so close to the Earth that people cut parts of it to eat, but their waste and greed caused the sky to move far away.

A retelling of the Navaho legend that explains the patterns of the stars in the sky.

Perform this tall tale from Nigeria about a village that is wasteful with the sky's riches.