BLACK AND WHITE IN A SNAPSHOT
It is just an ordinary day. One of those days, when sun shines with all force and brings out a crowd out. I am walking in a park, nearby my house. Everywhere, the green lawn and the fresh smell of some drops of rain left from the night before and the scent of its touch on the soil.
A peaceful day if I should give it a name. I see the laughter of kids, big and small playing and near them their families and sometimes nannies watching over them. I close my eyes and the scene harshly changes as I see smog covered air of Guatemala, covered in thick black. A horrible stench permeates the air and burns my nose. I feel sick, but then I see the shining dark eyes of the children of Guatemala glitter in the wild landscape of the dump.
I shudder and feel cold. This place is called the fourth world and here kids smile no matter how little they have. Guatemala is formed from the soil of the Mayans and is enriched with a lot of natural resources; yet, only a small number own 80 percent of land there and country suffers from poverty after 40 years of civil war there. Around 4 generations have spent their life in this dump and kids are born and die here in the middle of stinking garbage.
They dont receive any education and they play only with whatever they find in the dump. The only excitement is when the garbage truck arrives so everyone competes to get more through the garbage, vultures included. I open my eyes and see well-fed wealthy kids’ birthdays, christmas and Bayrams all celebrated with such a glory. Then the attitude of kids that have had more than enough. One throws away his toy and another spits the meal out of his/her mouth. Mums who compete for winning the best mum award feeding them, dressing them, protecting them and nearly doing whatever they are normally able to do on their own.
The overprotective mums of our time, we can call them. Then my eyes close and darkness descends. Thieves rob and burn down the houses of Guatemalans all for a morcel of food. The kids are being raped, abused, killed in the silence of a night. Its a place where human beings have long lost their values. Then oneday an American woman named Kari Engen leaves her hometown and decides to help these kids. She cleans them, feeds them and educates them. She has a heart that knows no borders. She thinks that one can feel God through being closer to people in need.
And she makes huge difference in the life of these people. She enhances the way to make them become more self-sufficient and through strenuous days, she manages to get help from benevolent people to support her mission. I open my eyes and see sad eyes of children, housewives with depressions and a lot of mouths nagging their dissatisfaction at trivial matters.
Then ı get confused which one to call world and which is real. I can’t imagine that we who are supposed to be born as intelligent beings can leave our own types to suffer and die from hunger and mal-nutrition.
Are we too busy with ourselves? Or are we so naive to think that we are born with privileges and thats the order of the world. Stories like children of the fourth world should go more viral and be a topic in our lesson books. Isnt it better to prepare a sensitive, well-informed kids instead of catering them with a Walt Disney world which is far from reality?
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