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. 

Salgado Photo No. 3

The woman on the far left of this photo is named Nadia Tahir Ibrahim. At the time this picture was taken, Nadia was 40 years old, the mother of seven, and stuck in a Lithuanian detention center, "unable to go forward or backward, not knowing whether her husband is dead, with no news of her children" (Salgado). Nadia's husband, an officer in the Iraqi army, was going to be arrested by Sadam Hussein's secret service when they fled Kurdistan. Later, she was separated from both her husband and her children, attempted to enter Turkey without a visa, and was put into the detention center.

Salgado said that Nadia was crying every day that he went into to photograph the center. Can you imagine being in a foreign country without anyone you know, where everyone around you is speaking a language you don't understand, and without any assurance of ever seeing your family again? Living with such uncertainty must be extremely hard and stressful. One person who in 1998 had been in Pabrade Detention center, the same center where Nadia was detained in 1997, said, "People have no human rights there, they treated them like dogs. Life in detention center is miserable. Immigrants have no good foods no good cloths. Soldiers beat them badly. Those days are horrible."

Surprisingly, the detention center in Pabrade is still around. Now it's called Foreigners' Registration Center (FRC). Just a few years ago, in March of 2010, there was a report of guards beating detainees, even breaking the ribs of one man. The chief of the FRC at the time, Roberto Patraitis, said of the incident They resisted, they got what they deserved. Using violence is understandable" ("Violence").

While I don't support illegal immigration, I definitely do not support violence without due process. I think it's valuable to recognize that while doing something illegal like crossing a border illegally should never be condoned, we can at least understand that most of those who commit such crimes were driven to them by circumstances that to us would seem unimaginable. And whether that immigrant is a Kurd who ended up in Lithuania like Nadia or a Mexican crossing the American border, they at least deserve our compassion.

Aggrrrh! "Detention Center for Illegal Immigrants, Pabrade." Flickr. Yahoo!, 23 Sept. 2009. Web. 11 Feb. 2013. 

"Violence against Immigrants in Lithuania." Indy Media. N.p., 27 Mar. 2010. Web. 11 Feb. 2013. 

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations. New York: Aperture. 108. Print.