Making a Difference No. 1

So, I'm sure after you've seen all these amazing pictures of refugees, you're probably like me and wanting to do something to help. But all of these people are half way around the world out of our reach, right??

NO!

There is a large community of refugees living all over the United States who have come to start new, hopefully better lives for themselves and for their children. In fact, right in Salt Lake City, there is a huge community of refugees.

I've been researching Bhutanese refugees in particular for the past couple weeks. Hundreds of thousands of Bhutanese refugees, due to an prejudiced government, were forced to leave their homes and go to Nepalese refugee camps back in the 1990's. There government still hasn't allowed for any to return to their home country. Now, sixty thousand of those refugees have come to America, and many of them have come to Salt Lake to build higher quality lives

You can volunteer there in any number of centers and start making a difference in the lives of refugees today. I particularly recommend the Hser Ner Moo Community and Welcome Center; they do great things for the SLC refugee community, although they are certainly not the only ones.

Look around you--there are people around that could use your help. I found this quote the other day: "There are feet to steady, hands to grasp, minds to encourage, hearts to inspire, and souls to save."

I love this quote. It inspires in me questions that I want to ask myself every day for the rest of my life: Am I doing all I can? Have I kept my eyes open for those that need my help? I know that if I live my life striving to always be able to answer "yes" to these questions, I will be living a happy life.

Salgado Photo No. 9

Shown here is the Istiqlal mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia, the largest Mosque in Southeast Asia. Ten thousand men can fit on the ground floor shown. The women worship in a separate part of the temple where the men cannot see them (Perlez). 

Ever since I visited a mosque in Salt Lake last semester, I have been fascinated with the Muslim method of worship. When I visited the mosque, I wore a scarf over my hair to be respectful; Muslims view hair as the most sexy part of the body, which is why their women cover their heads. I also took off my shoes as another sign of respect. I went with the other women to a balcony-type floor above the main floor of the mosque. There, the women could worship privately but still hear the Imam on the ground floor. 

Before going to the mosque, I thought the separation of women and men in this way was sexist and out of date. After watching the women pray however, I realized that it the separation of the women and men is actually a show of reverence towards the women; The Muslim mode of prayer is very active--worshippers will kneel and stand sometimes many times--and it might not be completely appropriate if a man was standing watching behind a women in prayer. The women and men, by being separated, can focus solely on their communion with Allah instead of worrying about who is watching you.

I am also extremely impressed by the commitment to prayer that Muslims have. While I believe that I should pray as often as possible, and always have a prayer in my heart, Muslims exhibit a level of physical dedication that isn't often seen in other religions. Muslim prayer, called Salah, is one of the five pillars of Islam, and is practiced five times a day at specific times. Muslims have to set apart that time, whether at work, home, or elsewhere, for prayer every day. Muslim dedication to communicating with God inspires me to be more diligent in my own prayers.

So much can be gained from learning more about the world around you. Whether it's understanding or experiencing someone else's belief system, like I did, or learning about the hardships that people all around the world face, like I've been writing about all semester, being aware of other peoples and cultures can greatly enrich your life--I know because my own life has been enriched and changed this semester.

Works Cited 

Perlez, Jane. "Jakarta Journal; A TV Preacher to Satisfy the Taste for Islam Lite." The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 23 Aug. 2002. Web. 5 Apr. 2013. 

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations. New York: Aperture. 396-7. Print.

Salgado Photo No. 8

This photo depicts a man aiding a fellow gold miner who has been injured during the work day. The injured man lost the tip of his right thumb and damaged one of his eyes.

When I see this picture, I see a man, beaten down, who has had little or no opportunity to become the person he could have been. Maybe he could have one an Olympic medal. Maybe he  could have found a cure for cancer. Maybe he could have been a brain surgeon or that teacher that changed your life or a diplomat that changed the world. But due to his circumstances, he ended up in a high-risk, low-return job with no room to grow.

Each of us holds within us a spark that can grow into something bright and scintillating and beautiful. Some of us are born into an environment that fosters the growth of that spark--in a good home with a good education. But some people are born into a place with no air to feed the fire.

Sometimes, when we experience success in our education or our career, we look down at those who aren't experiencing success and think, "if they just worked harder, they wouldn't be having such a hard time." But you never know: maybe that person would be leaps and bounds above you if they had the same resources that you did. That's not to say that you don't deserve success if you work hard--I just think that we should keep in mind that we ALL have a spark--we all have the potential to make a difference. So use what you have to make a difference for those in the world who have a spark but nothing to help it grow.

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations. New York: Aperture. 343. Print.

Salgado Photo No. 7

What do you see when you look at this photo? When I first saw this picture, I saw happy children, maybe at day care while their parents are working high-powered jobs in the city. In fact, that's what I've seen every time I've looked at this picture over the past few months (which has been quite a few times). I thought the picture was just an artful depiction of normal kids who would grow up to have normal lives.

But it's not. Each of the nearly forty children in this picture were abandoned on the streets or given up by parents that could no longer care for them. Four hundred and thirty children lived at the pictured facility, an FEBEM (Foundation for Child Welfare, now called CASA) center. Those four hundred plus children didn't have much chance for normal lives later either. Many of the kids would become street children, roaming São Paulo at night, addicted to crack or sniffing glue. 

10% of children were abandoned for a long time in São Paulo, but approximately when this photo was taken, in 1996, that proportion jumped to 35%. The population shift to the city is partly to blame for this huge abandonment rate. With thousands of people moving to the cities, so many people are seeking to share the same space that resources become scarce. Terrible though it is, families are sometimes forced to choose which mouths to feed when there isn't enough to go around. Children are sometimes forced to go into prostitution or other illegal activities in order to provide for themselves or their families.

Children live on streets in conditions like these all over the world. Even here, in Utah, homelessness rates of children have gone up in the past few years. These homeless children have a high possibility of committing juvenile crimes and then growing up and committing felonies. 

These types of problems that affect what our children will grow up to be, and what the world will be tomorrow, should be at the top of our list of things to solve. These types of problems are difficult to find a solution to; children need to be helped, but they also should be taught so that when they grow up, they don't perpetuate the problem by falling into old habits. I certainly don't have an answer. I only know that there are children that need help.

And what wouldn't you do to help a child?

Bello, Marisol. "Report: Child Homelessness up 33% in 3 Years." USATODAY.COM. USA Today, 13 Dec. 2011. Web. 18 Mar. 2013. 

Lyon, Julia. "Number of Homeless Utah Kids Skyrockets." The Salt Lake Tribune. The Salt Lake Tribune, 14 Oct. 2010. Web. 18 Mar. 2013. 

Salgado, Sebastio. "Landless Voices: The Sights and Voices of Dispossession." Landless Voices: The Sights and Voices of Dispossession - Error. School of Modern Languages, 16 Feb. 2012. Web. 18 Mar. 2013. 

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations. New York: Aperture. 314-15. Print.

"Street Children." Childhood USA. Childhood USA, n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2013. 

Salgado Photo No. 6

This girl is an Ecuadorian from the community of Yaracruz whose parents were among a group of farmers that tried to acquire a fertile plot of land in 1983. The farmers agreed to pay fifteen percent, 3 million sucres, or about $120, of the total 20 million sucres and the Ecuadorian government agreed paid the rest. The farmers paid the 3 million, but the rest was never paid. Meanwhile, inflation soared out of control until, fifteen years later, the property was worth 3 billion sucres. The landowner claimed that the farmers had to pay the rest of the 450 million sucres (around $17,000) that was the new fifteen percent. This pressure due to this disagreement built up and led to the destroying of the farmers' homes, crops, and in some cases, lives.

When the farmers first tried to purchase the land, Ecuador was just coming out of a seven year period of military reign. Those first few years of democracy were unstable, and the economically shaky years that followed added to that instability. In fact, much of the huge inflation was caused by the then President of Ecuador, who changed the official currency from the sucre to the dollar, leaving the wealthy wealthier and the poor scrambling to try and change their useless sucres into dollars.

This, to me, stands as a warning against excessive government involvement in the economic activities of a nation. While government has it's place, uncontrolled participation in an economic system often has dire consequences for that system and those affected by it

"Ecuadorian Sucre (ECS) Currency Exchange Rate Conversion Calculator." Calculator for Ecuadorian Sucres (ECS) Currency Exchange Rate Conversion. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Mar. 2013. 

Halberstadt, Jason. "Ecuador Government Overview & History." Ecuador Economy Government. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Mar. 2013. 

"History of Ecuador." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 24 Feb. 2013. Web. 07 Mar. 2013. 

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations. New York: Aperture. 270-71. Print.

Salgado Photo No. 5

Pictured here are refugees from Mozambique. These lucky survivors have lived through cholera epidemics that have left many children motherless and alone in the Malawian refugee camps where they were probably born. In acts of great love, many mothers who survived took on these orphaned children as their own. Salgado said that, "sometimes a mother appears to have twins, but in fact she has taken in one of the children in an act of solidarity."

These women are significant examples of selflessness and charity. Imagine their situation: they are raising their probably fatherless children in the questionable conditions of a refugee camp where they have had to take shelter from the war tearing their own country apart. They've lived through fear, sickness, hunger, and other trials. Yet, when they see the need of another child, though they may barely be able to provide for their own, they take that child on and give it the love that it needs.

I love the peaceful look on the baby's face in the front of the photograph. It looks as though nothing in the world is wrong or hard; it could be a well-cared for child in an affluent family that will want for nothing and grow up to have many opportunities and privileges. Yet this baby's future is uncertain and maybe even bleak. The child's expression reminds me that all children have potential to grow up into something great, even if their situation doesn't allow for them to reach the same heights that another child's situation does. 

The mothers in this picture knew of this potential in those children whose situation left them orphans. Raising any child is an enormous challenge, and agreeing to raise an extra child is a great sacrifice, but the women who stepped up to the challenge in Malawian refugee camps didn't see it that way; instead, they knew that each child deserves to be loved and that each child has the potential to change the world. Think of how the world would be changed if everyone saw that potential in everyone around them.

Collins, John S. "An Analysis of the Voluntariness of Refugee Repatriation in Africa." Thesis. University of Manitoba, 1996. University of Manitoba. Web. 6 Mar. 2013. 

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations. New York: Aperture. 233. Print.

Salgado Photo No. 4

Of all the photographs I've discussed so far, this one by far haunts me the most. These children are Rwandan orphans, left parentless amidst the terror and chaos of the Rwandan genocide that occurred from April to July of 1994. The genocide, caused by deep rifts between Hutus and Tutsis, two Rwandan ethnic groups, resulted in the deaths of between 800,000 to a million deaths. Only 300,000 to 400,000 managed to stay alive through the massacre. 75,000 of those survivors were orphaned children.

The eyes of the children in this photo weigh heavily on me, especially the eyes of the child in the center. Those eyes seem so wide for such a little tiny body. What those eyes have seen is unthinkably horrific. This child witnessed the deepest, darkest part of humanity, the part where unquenchable hatred and cruelty are buried, the part that is meant to never see the light of day. This child saw men hacking at  their neighbors with machetes. This child heard the sounds of men, women, and children screaming in pain and terror and the sounds of shouting, angry men.This child felt more intense fear than you or I will probably ever know.

How could any child have a future after witnessing such atrocities? How could anyone move on from such tragedies? I would have thought the answer was that there is no recovering from acts of monstrosity such as many Rwandan children experienced. Yet humanity is an amazing thing. While mankind may hold the potential for terrible darkness as shown by the Rwandan genocide, mankind also holds overwhelming potential for light. Somehow, humanity has the capacity to overcome the odds; somehow something good and pure and strong can arise from the ashes of something terrible, like a forest that becomes stronger after a fire.

Many of the Rwandan children left vulnerable from the genocide have miraculously moved on from the horrible things they experienced to create good lives for themselves. About fifty miles from Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, in a village called Agahoza Shalom (meaning "tears are dried" and "peace") about five hundred young people orphaned by the genocide live together in groups of about sixteen. This village provides education, activities, and, most importantly, emotional support.

One girl in Agahoza Shalom, named Grace Muhizi Unutesi, said, "I feel very powerful, and I know that if something is good it is wonderful and if it goes wrong it is an experience." Both of Grace's parents were murdered, and she was raised by her aunt in such poverty and hardship that she often missed meals. But now, she dreams of being a software engineer. A boy from the village, Innocent Nkundiye, aspires to be a doctor so he can help the people of his district. He said, "Maybe I can change something, and I can solve these problems." 

These wise words instill hope for humanity into my soul. I draw strength from these children, who are mostly grown up now, who can be strong even after such suffering, and I hope you can, too.

Demby, Gene. "Orphans In Rwandan Genocide Find Hope In Village." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 24 May 2012. Web. 22 Feb. 2013. 

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations. New York: Aperture. 195. Print.

"Statistics of the Genocide." Survivors Fund. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Feb. 2013.