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.