These are our children
They are beautiful
And i love them <3
And i love them <3
I want you guys to check out my latest writing endeavor. I read an article about a starving child in Niger. It really hit home with me, so i wrote somewhat of an interesting essay to raise awareness to the issue of children starving.
I made a pact, long, long ago, that in order for me to bring new life onto this planet, and have children of my OWN, I will feed the starving one's that already exist here first.
There is no need for me to bring new life to a planet, that has plenty of life, but not enough resources. I love children, don't get me wrong, but we have too many to save before I could possibly bring my own into the world.
I hope you enjoy:
I read a
news article recently about young girls who are being forced by their fathers
to be married off, because their father can no longer afford to feed them. The
article was written on one girl in particular, her name was Zali, she was from
Hawkantawki, Niger and she was only eleven years old. In the article, Zali was
described as “A whisper of a girl, whose waist is so tiny you can almost
encircle her with your hands. She has no breasts to speak of. Her voice hasn't
broken yet”.
Zali’s
father harvests stalks of millet in order to support his family, his normal
stalks are usually around 13 feet high, and are sold during the harvesting
season which lasts his family throughout the year. This time Zali and her
family are not so lucky, the stalks of millet are barely reaching Zali’s waist,
and the highest one reaches her shoulder. The drought in Niger has caused her
family’s plants to be stunted. In order to save the rest of his family, Zali’s
father has to marry her off so that he has one less mouth to feed. Zali’s
father already had to burry his three year old son, who died earlier in the
year due to malnutrition. The crisis that this town is going through is
something that needs awareness brought to it. This is a family, just like you
and I have, and they are burying their children because they die from starvation.
To die from starvation, that child would
have literally had to emancipate away in front of his parents eyes.
The
saddest part about this whole story is that Zali and her family have no choice
in this; she has no voice in what she wants to do. She grew up in unfortunate circumstances,
where she does not have choices to make like you and I do, instead her only
choice is for her own survival. When speaking to the translator, she told the reporter
“I know what is ahead of me, I know that this time the bad harvest will mean
more than just my hunger”. Zali knew
that the only way she could stay alive was if her father married her off.
What
about how Zali’s father feels? This is a man who lost a son earlier and now he
is about to loose the innocence of his daughter. Marriage is not a choice for
them, it is a mechanism for survival and I think that is what crushes me the
most. These people don’t have the means and access to basic necessities. Here I
sit, typing on my $1,000 apple computer, but across the world there is a family
who does not have the basic necessities to sustain their lives. The paradox of
our world will forever baffle me. How did we let things get like this?
The
international aid organization “Save our Children” has ranked Niger last on
their scale for children who are receiving “The minimum acceptable diet”. In the small town of Hawkantawki, almost
every family has lost one child either due to hunger or some other illness
related to malnutrition. The lack of food has also caused the children to be
stunted; their bones are not growing to their full potency during puberty. A
total of 51 percent of children in Niger are stunted, according to a report
published by Save the Children. The average height of a 2½-year-old girl born
in Niger is around 3 inches shorter than what it should be for a child that
age.
My
feelings on this are sadness and disgust; I’m partially disgusted by the way I
live. I cant even fathom the fact that this family has lost their three year
old child due to starvation, when I have an over abundance of resources and
materialistic things. Instead of buying the things I do not need, I should be
giving back to these children, these people. It breaks my heart to read this,
to look at my own life, with full honesty and see the wastefulness I incur.
There are times when I throw out perfectly good food, because I no longer want
it. To think that people really live this way, wondering if or when their next
meal will be, makes me feel inadequate because I am not doing anything to stop
this. This article had such a strong resonance with me, it made me look inward
and see if there was anything I could change on the surface, which one day could
alleviate some of the suffering.
In
yoga we call “prana” which translates to breath, as the life force. My
spiritual teachers have always taught me to come back to the prana when I need
grounding or protection. It is the most
basic mind state, yet it is the most difficult. The difficulty comes from
accepting that the only thing in life that matters is the actual life itself. This
connects to my feelings that no matter how caught up we get in our daily lives;
we always have to come back to the prana, and protect the lives of our starving
people. In this case Zali and her family are part of the prana or life force,
and therefore we owe a moral obligation to making sure they are fed.
It
makes me angry that this is happening, I’m partially angry at myself for the
gluttony I take part in, and I am also angry that no one is doing anything
about this. We have so much personal wealth in the United States, if every
person of great wealth would donate 1,000 dollars every year, just that could
help to stop the hunger in our world. We
have politicians that spend an insane amount of money trying to get re elected,
instead of spending their money to good use. Wouldn’t it be nice to see a
candidate offer all their campaign money to helping starving people? Isn’t that
what we would want in world leaders? Instead we have politicians, who tell us all
of the good they are going to do with the money, but they never actually do it.
It seems like such an easy fix, and I think that is where my anger comes in. As Americans, we waste so much, and its our
world leaders the set the precedent for our wastefulness.
Intuitively,
I know that it is not an easy fix, and words are a lot easier to say than
actually writing out a check. Logically, I don’t understand how we haven’t
tackled this issue, and why, in the year 2012, do we still have children dying
from malnutrition? It seems as though it’s a holocaust for these Niger people.
It enrages me with anger, yet I take part in it. I think that is why this
article is so humbling to all.
Viewing
this as a moral standpoint, we owe it to these starving people, as Americans,
to save their lives. As Americans we sometimes get so caught up in the
materialism, and the gluttony, and our own problems, that we forget the real
problems in our world. As Americans we
owe it to society to take care of the less fortunate, who don’t have the
resources, to take care of the ignorant, who don’t have the knowledge we have.
We have a moral demand to take care of the most sacred part of this world- the
people and most especially the children in it. Yet somewhere along the line, we
lost what seems to be our compassion for others, and we deal more with our ego.
Choosing compassion over our own ego could be the difference between saving
thousands of children, or gaining social status and money.
I probably won’t ever no what happens to Zali
or her family, if she survives, or if she perishes from hunger, but she will
forever live in my heart, she sparked a place inside of me that wants to fight
this injustice we have in our world.
love,
Carrie Turco
love,
Carrie Turco
I hope you enjoyed! I love you guys so much. Read, understand, and then raise awareness for others. You are needed in this world, your love is needed!
#FEEDOURCHILDREN
@CarriiCat
@CarriiCat
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