Left to Tell

Such an amazing Book. When I was in high school we studied the Rwandan Holocaust and I was horrified that something like that could even happen, but it was still fairly distant in my mind. Reading Left To Tell gave me a whole new perspective on the situation. Immaculée Ilibagiza tells her personal story in such a way that you are able to understand the fear, the hurt and the devastation that this event caused these people. She has such an incredible story to tell, and she tells it in such a way that you are only left to admire her courage and fortitude. I was left so impressed and moved after reading this book. Anyone who has even considered reading a good book that will change their life forever, read this one, it is so worth it.

The ripple effect

Have you ever thought about a refugee's family? Because honestly, I don't think I ever used to. Not until this year. I didn't even think about refugees but when I did, their family was definitely not the first thing on my mind. Many times when my mind wandered into Refugee thinking space, I would imagine 30+ year old men leaving their countries looking for a better home. I thought very little about the fact that they may have left children at home, they may have brought children with them, or maybe the refugee is just a woman and her children, or an entire family! This picture taken by Salgado was taken Africa. These were a few of thousands of children that were forced to leave their home and endured sever hunger. The two on the left made it, the one on the right with the glazed look on his eyes was not so fortunate.
The children of this world's hatred are those who are most affected. It is them that will one day to inherit the mess that the older generation leaves them. When treated with extreme hunger, prejudices and hatred, the way in which these children will treat the world cannot surprise anyone when it is the same. I feel that the best way to help this world is by showing and treating the younger generation with love care and acceptance. If we can show one generation love and compassion all the worlds issues would end. It would be like a giant ripple effect. By the efforts of one older generation the destiny of humanity could be changed forever.

Waste Land

Pictures of recycled material. 

I would have never imagined that I could have fallen in love with pictures of garbage more so than after I watched the documentary behind these incredible pictures by Vik Muniz. The documentary, Waste Land, follows his journey back to his home country of Brazil to the landfill of Rio de Janeiro. The people who work picking through the garbage all come from hard situations in life that have led them to picking through the garbage for livelihood. Vik Muniz changed their perspective on life with just showing them their potential as they all worked on their own personal portraits and had them be sold around the world and placed in world class museums. This movie is so motivating, I was changed by watching it. It really made me think of really what is most important. After watching it, I just want to do something! I want to go out and help, maybe I can't make amazing pictures out of trash but it has made me contemplate on how exactly I can use my own talents to help others realize their own self worth.  Think about all the good we could do if we could just reach out to those around us, not out of pity for what someone is, but rather out of hope for what they could become.  Below I have attached the trailer. You can find the movie on Hulu or on Netflix if you have an account. So worth it.

Am I too small for this?

Going through Salgado's book, I found about 100 pictures on his excursion to Africa. This was one of the hardest trips that Salgado took in his entire life he said, he even had to take a break after doing this piece on Africa. He went to various countries and photographed many of their trials but one that stood out to me was a certain picture from the Rwandan Genocide. This picture is very graphic and I'm sorry for those who can't stomach it. I couldn't help but feel something move in me as I saw such a tragedy. The background to the picture is as follows. You have two types of people in Rwanda, the Tutsi and the Hutu. The Hutu had taken over the government from the Tutsi in the early 1960s after they had reigned for a few hundred years, and felt that it was necessary to eradicate all Tutsi. After 30 years in the 1990s the tension had dissipated a bit, however it was quickly being reignited by a Hutu dictator. This is when the killing began. Women raped, men and children dismembered. This is what the Rwanda Genocide looked like.
While looking at these pictures I couldn't help but reflecting on human cruelty in general and all of the horrible things that happen in this world. I want to do something about it. I want to make a difference. I feel like I need to make a difference. It is no longer a question of whether I will act or not rather its more a question of how can I help? I feel really small when looking at these issues, I feel almost...unworthy, to even think I can make a difference. That is why I am going to do what I know how to do, and write these posts about refugees. These people in the photo were those who could not leave in time, however some did make it. They walked and hid for many years, many still have no idea if their families made it through or not. They are refugees, left in countries that will never be their home, and always haunted with the fear they once felt of extermination and hate.
We can help these people. We can help refugees. There are refugees in our community, we need to just love them, let them know they are accepted here and that we are here. Raising awareness is the biggest issue, especially now days. There is a lot of negative ideas about refugee especially in the media out there that are spurred from fear, we are above that. We are here to show that we are all part of a global family willing to help one another. We are entitled to such incredible luxuries in the states, we have no idea. We don't fear whether someone will come to our house and slaughter every last member of our family, or whether or not our car will be checked randomly on the street by men who are willing to shoot anyone they find as "unfit" for their ideal country.
We are blessed.
So let's bless the lives of those less fortunate and offer them the love and comfort they need as they run from death and fear.
I hope you can join me in this call to action to learn more about the refugees or our community and seek out to actively help them.

To be a refugee

So recently, I haven been thinking about what it would be like to be a refugee. When I came across this picture I thought it summed it all up. These were a few of about 15,000 refugees who had fled to a chicken-breeding farm in Batnoga, Croatia. There were 20 large houses in which they could live, each one housing around 700 people. They were not free to live as they pleased in this new country they had stumbled upon during their exodus, and they certainly could not go back to what was left of their homes, so they lived as livestock. Once a week they would be able to receive mail from loved ones, all of which was first checked for sensitive material and marked as "read". Devoid of home, many family members, and dignity their last bit of humanity was stripped away from them as they lost their privacy too. This is what it is like to be a refugee. To live somewhere and be labeled as an outsider, you are safe, so to speak, but are you really living? Their are many who would argue that it would have been better for them to have died than to go to a refugee camp.

Refugees. They are feared in masses around the globe, these issues are not singular to Croatia. Salgado took these photos but he soon realized that he was just beginning a ver long documentation of the spectrum of human cruelty and bias that exists in a world as large as ours. 

Maybe this is not how all refugees are treated, but for the many around the world it is just like this, accepted,yet exiled; brought up, yet humiliated. 

God grew tired of us

So I watched the most incredible movie the other day, it's called "God grew tired of us" I've included the trailer so watch it!. First I will have to give you a little background on the story for you to understand. In Sudan there was a mass genocide of black christians by northern muslims in the late 1980s (specifically of men and boys so as to eradicate their existence). However, there was a large group of young boys who fled into the forest and embarked on a 5 year exodus to Kenya so as to survive, these young boys became known as "the lost boys". This movie shows these lost boys 15 years later still living in the same refugee camp, never having left. It follows the story of a handful of them who were adopted into the US so as to better their life. I was shocked. These men had never even flipped a light switch before in their life. They had to learn everything that we as a culture take for granted at the age of 20+. They struggled at first trying to adapt to "normal" life. It really just made me think. How many times do you see a little kid who can barely even talk pick up your iPhone, open it, and look for the game applications? These men couldn't even comprehend the idea of potato chips in a bag. They had been stuck in their situation for years because they simply couldn't go anywhere else. The Kenyan government only had them in the refugee camp without access to anything, they couldn't go home to Sudan for risk of being killed immediately, they had no choice but to stay. The first thing that really came to my mind was, "what is really happening in this world right now?" This was the early 2000s when they filmed the documentary. It's recent. I always thought of these things of happening in the past, but no, it's happening today. The refugee camp in Kenya is still there, nothing has changed and there are over 150,000 people living there that have not been so fortunate as the handful in the documentary to leave. Watching this documentary it made me think, there are real issues out there, the issues of the world extend beyond history class and our silently hidden in our everyday reality. It's time we go looking for them.