A sewer cleaner cleans road manholes near Jatrabari Dhaka in Bangladesh. For this one-day work, the cleaner gets about $8. (KM Asad, Human Press, wsj.com June 16, 2017)
Tag: poverty
But what is Hope?
“A Somali girl displaced by drought wears a pair of mock spectacles cut out from a cardboard box as she carries her brother around a camp just outside of Mogadishu. Somalia’s drought is threatening three million lives.”
Notes:
- Inspired by: “But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence.” by Lord Byron
- Photo: Farah Abdi Warsameh, AP, wsj.com, March 28, 2017
There is nothing, and there is not one bloody thing.
In September, 2007, Mary-Louise Parker adopted a child from an orphanage in Ethiopia. The child’s Uncle walked a distance that Parker stated she would complain if she had to travel to in a car. The journey was made with his children, three of which were under 10. The baby was carried on his hip. This excerpt is from a letter written by Parker (“Dear Uncle“) as a tribute to him. In their first meeting, he said: “I hope that she will be taken care of, go to school and perhaps one day be something, a doctor.”
There are so many reductive adjectives used to describe those materially less fortunate, words the privileged use to anoint them. Words like proud, or graceful…It never rings true. Having seen what I saw when you brought me to the hut where my daughter was born, and introduced me to the people in your village, I felt like I was hovering over every judgment of my reality and yours, unable to land. None of the families I met were intact, everyone had lost children, parents, or a spouse. There was not enough of anything for anyone. The only bounty was in categories of suffering or possible ways to die. I didn’t feel them looking at me with distance, they all smiled and shook my hand.
I hid my embarrassment at how stupid I felt when I entered your hut and was alarmed by the darkness that swallowed me despite it being late morning. Of course I knew there was no electricity, no light would be there except for what might creep in through that ceiling of straw. I knew it, but I couldn’t fathom it until I stood inside with you and stared at an actual nothingness and my eyes adjusted to near black. There is nothing, and there is not one bloody thing. As you pointed at different parts of the hut that were designated for the cows to sleep, or the spot where your family of twelve eats when there is food, or where you slept, I saw spots with absolutely nothing in them. There was an absence of comment on your situation that made you seem twenty feet tall. It’s something I could never know if I hadn’t stood there, with you showing me what life is like on another planet where there is no complaining, or showing disappointment. Continue reading “There is nothing, and there is not one bloody thing.”
Breakfast
A boy eats a free meal, part of a program by outreach group World Mission Community Care, at a slum area in Tondo city, metro Manila. (Photo: Romeo Ranoco / Reuters)
Hunger.
If my life weren’t complicated, I wouldn’t be me.
This is triggered by the tail end of the book title by E. Lockhart:
If my life weren’t complicated, I wouldn’t be Ruby Oliver.
Ruby goes on to say:
I can’t forget things, or ignore them–bad things that happen. I’m a lay-it-all-out person, a dwell-on-it person, an obsess-about-it person. If I hold things in and try to forget or pretend, I become a madman and have panic attacks. I have to talk.
Travis Bickle (De Niro/Taxi Driver/1976) pops in: “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Then who the hell else are you talking… you talking to me? Well I’m the only one here.”
I can’t forget things, or ignore them? Most certainly Yes.
Not so many bad things happen, and I’m (very) grateful for that.
I’m certainly a lay-it-all-out person (often to much regret),
and boy, can I obsess. Master class here.
As to a madman,
that depends from which side of the desk you are sitting on in evaluation.
And, as to having to talk, not so much.
It’s Tuesday morning.
It’s overcast. It’s drizzling and traffic is snarled.
I’m running late to a 9 am start at a volunteer event at a Food Bank.
There’s a logistics snag.
The Food Bank manager wasn’t expecting us for 3 hours.
There’s frustration etched in her face, but she puts on her game face and scrambles to coordinate activities for two corporate groups, in a space designed for one.
She proceeds with her introduction: Continue reading “Hunger.”