My name is Dylan. I am a student at BYU and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. These blog entries are posted weekly as a project in my Writing and Rhetoric course at school. They are posted with the hopes that the reader might be made more aware of these people and their unfortunate circumstances. If you wish to do your part to help, please visit this site: www.ldsphilanthropies.org
“Home is where the heart is.” But what about those who don’t have a home? How can we consider passing along such cheerful words to those who are without these luxurious? I speak without experience, but my guess is that it probably isn’t an easy thing to do. We might tend to take the comfort and protection of homes for granted from time to time, but homelessness truly is a problem of serious concern. Recent studies showed that worldwide, there is an estimated 100 million who are homeless, and just in the U.S. alone there are 3.5 million people who experience homelessness at some point during the year (Homeless World Cup). This same source also explained that “the average life expectancy of a Homeless Person in the UK is42 years, compared to the national average of 74 for men and 79 for women” (Homeless World Cup). Homelessness also causes other long-term effects, especially in children. Dakota Woodlands is a group that works towards providing an opportunity for comfortable and reasonable living for those who might otherwise be denied these things. On its website Dakota Woodlands claimed that, “Homeless children are not simply at risk; most endure physical, psychological, and emotional damage due to the circumstances that accompany homelessness. Homeless children suffer from poor nutrition and a higher rate of infectious diseases, asthma and related conditions. They lack access to consistent health care, which increases the severity of the illnesses. Children’s academic performance is hindered both by poor cognitive development and constant mobility. Homelessness inhibits physical, emotional, cognitive, social and behavioral development in children” (Dakota Woodlands). This photograph of Salgado’s is one that captures the raw reality of what living on the streets (or in this case, the sewers) could be like. Because the population of Jakarta is so colossal, many are forced to live in places like this for an unknown amount of time without any source of real shelter.
I believe that everyone can learn something of value from Immaculée Ilibagiza’s book Left to Tell. It is the very personal story of how Ilibagiza survives the horrific Rwandan genocide in 1994. With her tale comes incredible insight into building a very real relationship with God. It is ultimately this relationship that saves her life.
What is it that makes Immaculée Ilibagiza’s story so compelling? For one thing, the events that unfold before Immaculée are heart-stopping; I discovered a thorough understanding of the atrocities committed during the genocide of ’94. These events were far from joyous (ignorance may be bliss), but it is far more important and enlightening to perceive the world for how it really is. It is arguable that keeping atrocities like this one in the Shadows of Unawareness makes it significantly easier for these events to repeat themselves; Left to Tell shines a light here that helps stop the darkness from spreading.
But while awareness may be the book’s pearl of great price, its magnum opus is Ilibagiza’s enlightening insight into forgiveness achieved through a sincere relationship with God. Reading this book is like witnessing a miracle; the reader watches Immaculée suffer again and again and then immediately put her trust in God to take away all of the pain. Never before has developing complete trust in God been laid out in such a sincere and raw real-life example.
I have recently finished this book, and I have no doubt that it has had a profound impact upon my life. Immaculée Ilibagiza believes that God has spared her life with the purpose of telling her story. She has dedicated her life to helping others forgive and learn to rely upon God to heal their own pains. Take a chance on this book. Immaculée Ilibagiza’s story Left to Tell is one that has been blessed with real power.
This is a photograph of a refugee working at a construction site in São Paulo, Brazil. Here refugees are greatly blessed with the opportunity of finding jobs even when these men are without education or proper qualification. But, unfortunately, the rest of the world is not as gracious as São Paulo’s construction industry. Throughout the world, refugees struggle to find jobs and earn a sufficient amount of money. This problem becomes even more serious when you consider how refugees have given up basically everything and left their homes, sacrificing so much, with hopes of finding better opportunities elsewhere – without some sort of job they will find themselves with nothing and no way of getting anything.
This all made me think back to my first job. I was job hunting in the middle of the economic troubles facing the US about a year ago, which was no easy task. I remember applying at a countless number of places and competing with not only teenagers, but also with experienced adults who were recently laid off of work. If it was such a struggle for the average US citizen to get hired at a minimum-wage, basic-difficulty level job, then I can’t even begin to perceive just how near impossible it must have been for refugees trying to compete. An article on syracuse.com shares some insight into the mind of Maria Sanchez, a 48 year old woman who was employed ever since leaving Cuba for the US in 2005 but was laid off last year due to the economic troubles: “‘It's a difficult situation,’ Sanchez said in Spanish. ‘We left Cuba because of the economic problems and to find better life for my children. If we don't find job, it's going to be bad for us’” (Thompson). Despite how much effort and sacrifice these people put in towards fixing their lives, so much of the process is out of their hands. All they can do is put forth their effort and hope.
Works Cited
Salgado, Sebastião. Photograph. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. Aperture. New York, 2000. 317.
This week’s photograph is one that was taken at the S.O.S. Orphanage in N’Dosho, a small city in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This orphanage holds more than 4,000 children. I personally find this amount to be mind-blowing – N’Dosho is just a tiny, obscure city buried deep in the colossal continent of Africa. This understanding led me to research more on the subject. What I found was troubling. According to the Inter Press Service News Agency’s website, “between 1990 and 2000, the number of orphans in Africa rose from 30.9 million to 41.5 million” (de Queiroz). This article was published in 2006, and it predicted that by 2010, there will be a haunting total of 53.1 million orphans. Whether or not they were successful in projecting their statistics four years into the future, I was unable to determine. But part of me can not help but to think pessimistically and wonder if the beginning of this decade has proven to be even more upsetting than the Inter Press Service News Agency had hoped. But like I said, this is just me thinking pessimistically. Please pray for these children.
This photograph of Salgado’s is, without a doubt, the most graphic photograph used yet in my blog. It captures the paralyzing scene of the “burial” of 4,000 Rwandan refugees. These people have all died at the refugee camp in Kibumba because of various health difficulties, such as cholera, dysentery, and starvation. Because there are so many corpses, tractors (like the one shown in this picture) pile the bodies up against mounds of volcanic lava and then cover up these stacks with heaps of earth.
“Scholars of these sorts of events say the killers, armed mostly with machetes and clubs, nonetheless did their work five times as fast as the mechanized gas chambers used by the Nazis” (Amanpour). These are the words of former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who held the position as president throughout this awful event. To present a more tangible understanding of just how terrible the Rwandan Massacre was, Wikipedia claims that from the massacre’s window of approximately 100 days, “estimates of the death toll have ranged between 500,000 and 1,000,000, or as much as 20% of the total population of the country” (Wikipedia). The Rwandan Massacre was indeed genocide. It was born out of a history of much contention and open differences between the nation’s two major ethnic groups – the Hutu and the Tutsi. The contentions peaked when Hutus established control in the government and began to exercise ideologies that the Tutsi planned to enslave the Hutu. Spreading ideas such as this by means of propaganda, a significantly large portion of the nation’s Hutu population began “cleansing” the nation of Rwanda of the Tutsi’s evil ways.
Machetes and machine guns were the tools used to “cleanse” the nation. What they really did was stain the lands red with blood. So many lives were broken and altered forever because of these long 100 days. Even today the story of the Rwandan Massacre is told and retold again and again. Hopefully we can learn from the mistakes of our past and avoid another catastrophe such as this one. But, ultimately, it is up to us.
Photograph by Sebastião Salgado
