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