Overflowing Jails

After the Rwandan genocide, more then 40 000 people were in jail, most of them Hutu. There were so many that every jail was full way past capacity. The main prison in Kigali that was built to hold 1600 held 8000 people and the population was growing every day. There were many that were guilty and had participated in the genocide, but there were also many innocent people being held in jail. About 4 prisoners died each day of suffocation.

It is so crazy that the jails were so full that people died from suffocation. The picture I looked at was a picture of a jail cell that was absolutely crammed full of people. And many of those people were innocent!

When the genocide was over, there were many Hutus that fled to neighbouring countries because they were scared of revenge while many Tutsis returned home. The new Tutsi authorities agreed that those responsible for the genocide had to be punished, but many of the worst offenders had already fled.

The fact that people were suffocating in jail because there were so many people is what really hit me about the description of this picture. There shouldn't be so many people in jail that people are suffocating! This fact speaks volumes about the genocide and how so many people participated in it.

Works Cited

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. New York: Aperture, 2000. 207 Print.

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. (Pamphlet) New York: Aperture, 2000. 12 Print

Independence

Boys huddled in an abandoned building. A doorway through which light enters and silhouetted in the doorway, another group of boys. Young boys. Teenagers and younger. No girls, no older boys that could be fathers, no mothers. Just young boys. Why are they hiding in this building, why are they alone?

In Southern Sudan during the civil war, boys from an early age were forced to leave home. If they didn't leave home, they would be captured and forced to fight either for the government or for the rebels. So the boys would leave home in groups and travel to northern Kenya where they would become refugees and live in camps. In the pamphlet's description of one of the pictures in Migrations, Salgado says that as he traveled through Southern Sudan he would see groups of boys looking disheveled, hungry and half-hiding out of fear.

What really hits me about this is the huge responsibility and complete independence that these boys have at such a young age. They don't get to be taken care of by their parents, they need to take care of each other instead. They need to find their own food, their own water and safe places to hide. For me, responsibility and independence were chosen when I decided to go to university away from home. But even now I still depend on my parents for money; they pay for my meal plan, my housing and my tuition. In many ways I'm still not independent even though I feel like I am. These boys have a completely different kind of independence, it's complete and total independence. It’s not one that they got to choose. They can't receive care packages from their parents or extra money when they're running low. They're completely on their own.

Works cited
  
Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. New York: Aperture, 2000. 157 Print.

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. (Pamphlet) New York: Aperture, 2000. 11 Print

Living in a Chicken-Breading Farm

What if one day you're family told you that you had to pack up your things, but only what you could carry. That you were leaving your home and there was a good chance you would never return. That if you didn't there was a good chance you wouldn't live. That you were going on a long journey to live in a chicken-breading farm. That after all your hardships you wouldn't even achieve national refugee status and therefore wouldn't be getting a lot of help. That after everything you lost, even your mail would no longer be private.

This is exactly what happened to the people who fled the Bihac pocket. They ended up living in Batnoga in a chicken-breading farm. There are twenty large farm buildings which each house about seven hundred displaced persons and there are even more who are housed in tents. They receive mail once a week from family and friends who stayed behind in the Bihac pocket. This mail is read by the local military, by Red Cross and others before it reaches the intended recipient.

Here in North America, people would be outraged to hear that other people had read their mail. It's a crime to read other people's mail! The picture from Salgado's book I was looking at was a picture of a large crowd of children surrounded by chicken wire. The picture got me to read the description. The description described all the things I talked about above, but the fact that their mail isn't even theirs is what really got me. It's interesting that it's the little things that generally affect people the most.


Works Cited

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. New York: Aperture, 2000. 124-125 Print.

Salgado, Sebastião. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. (Pamphlet) New York: Aperture, 2000. 9 Print

Waste Land

The movie Waste Land is about an artist, Vik Muniz, who goes to Rio de Janeiro’s Jardim Gramacho landfill and makes a difference. In Jardim Gramacho, there are people called pickers who hand pick various recyclable materials from the garbage. These people don’t earn a lot of money for their work. Vik’s goal is to help these people. He does this by making portraits of them using the recyclable material and then auctioning off these pictures and giving the money back to the pickers.

What really impressed me about this movie was the way Vik went about his project. He really got to know the people on a personal level. He also got them to help in the making of the art. They helped create their portraits. I love that he gets them involved in the art. I think it helped them see that there was more they could be doing. 

The way Vik went about getting involved with that community and helping them was a really great example for me. It showed me that to be able to make a change or help out, you need to get to know the people you want to help. You need to be humble about what you are doing. Vik was very humble. He was able to understand the pickers because he grew up very poor in Brazil as well. He was really able to connect with them, which is so important when trying to interact with a community or helping in a community. 

I really enjoyed this movie. It gave me a different view of helping. It also made me think about my garbage and what it says about me. At one point in the movie, one of the pickers had found a book that looked practically new and was near tears that someone would have thrown it in the garbage. It makes me re-think the things I throw out.

Here is a link to the movie :

 http://www.hulu.com/watch/397079