Like last week's picture, this photo especially pulls at my heart strings because of the children's faces. These Vietnamese children, who are shown in a detention camp in Hong Kong, live a life devoid of color and beauty, surrounded by concrete and barbed wire. "Cockroaches and rats are the only animals they know"(Another). The camp, called Whitehead Detention Center, held 29,000 Vietnamese "boat people" at one point. It "exemplified a prison like regime," with limited movement and starvation rations for inmates (Human Rights).
About 70% of Vietnamese boat people refugees in Hong Kong were women and children. The children in the picture are about the same age I am, but our childhoods differ vastly. While I was going to a good school and reading books, without a care in the world, these children were living in squalid conditions, with only occasional education, and with dirt and rocks as their playthings. And yet, beyond all expectation, in the photograph above, one little girl has a smile on her face. Somehow, at least this one child had found some happiness even with the difficult lot life had given her.
These children have grown up now, and Whitehead is closed, but today there are still many children in refugee camps around the world. They may be receiving little to no education, food, or clothing, and many die from diseases or starvation. Keep these children in your thoughts and prayers, and be a little more grateful for what you have. But most of all, look around you and give children a reason to smile. Smiling children are what hope for our future us built on.
Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations. New York: Aperture. 25. Print.
