2009/06/04

Garapa in Brazil and anywhere in the world

Boiled water with sugar. That’s the main meal of the children living in poor villages or suburbs from Brazil. Nothing shocked me in this documentary – Garapa. Their way of living, their mentality, their habits are very similar with those of the Romanian families living in poverty.

Once again, I learned that the poverty is the same wherever you go in this world. People are hungry, the kids are sick, undressed and they don’t go to school. Their parents have no job, they live in dirty houses. Drugs and alcohol addictions, STDs, hepatitis, crimes are only some of the problems that affect every single poor community.

What did I find out? With the hunger in their bones, these people don’t make any connection between their actions and the situation they are living in. They are poor and hungry because: there is no rain, “God gives”, the government doesn’t help them, the city is far away, there are no jobs for them, they don’t have IDs. And they are right. They are not able to see any solution for themselves. And why would they listen to others? Why would they trust people who judge or hate them?

They have no education, they had no positive adult models in their childhood, they don’t have enough power and resource to cope with their problems. Besides these, people living around treat them bad, and just one century ago others were making plans to exterminate them, in order to clean the society and put in practice “eugenics” theories.

These poor people get frustrated or resign, eating normally only 12 days out of 30. They close their eyes, and turn their back to their own child when this one is crying because his/her teeth hurt. There is no money for medicine drugs, the city is far away, and the doctor is expensive. There is nothing they can do for him/her. He/she has to deal with the pain, the illness or the hunger alone. Those who lose these every day battles are dying, and every day, around the world, 16,000 children are defeated.

Image credit: Alexandre Lima

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