05.11.2009. 1.15pm
From 9am we went visiting other schools in very poor areas.
Many children in terrible infrastructures.
My thought for the day…
This trip has a very distinctive profile due to the ‘violent stream’ of emotions with its overwhelming flow of images, words, sounds, reflections…
One image and one sound are already taking over all others becoming the frame of this experience.
THE SOUND: the children voices, uninterrupted and ever-present.
They are LOUDER than the jeep on a rough ground;
LOUDER than any surrounding sound…
…the children voices are everywhere, at night and day…
THEY BECOME PART OF YOU AS SOON AS YOU VISIT THE FIRST VILLAGE, SCHOOL, HOSPITAL.
There are no specific places associated to this sound-there are voices arising from every corner-I CAN HEAR THEM NOW…
THE IMAGE: there are so many images……but similarly there is ONE:
…the countless number of children , very little ones that run after you, the ‘WHITE STRANGER’, waiving and smiling.
I have started ‘breathing’ this intensity of sounds and images from day one, and they have become part of me.
It is impossible that I will one day, forget about them….I only need to close my eyes and I will hear the same voices and see the same images.
And once the trip is over, I probably won’t remember how I made it through such an emotional journey, how I managed to survive…
I probably won’t even be sure, whether this reality has ever existed… But one thing is certain.
Once back to my fictitious reality,
I won’t be the same person EVER AGAIN.
We went back to the place where we are staying to have lunch (yam and fried beans balls) and it’s now 2.30pm…Anna is sleeping next to me.
I am recording my emotions…
I was about to forget…
This morning, we also went to visit another ‘family’ home where there is one ‘mama’ that usually takes care of several orphans; we took more pictures of the children that are part of the adoption scheme.
And another flashback that made me reflect…
….before going to visit the schools, we stopped by a local shop to buy some sweets and biscuits for the kids. In this little shop filled with the ‘impossible’, there was a little boy left in one of the empty carton box used to store the products; he could not stop crying and crying more while his mum was taking care of the customers, us.
Only when Anna paid attention to the boy moved by his tears, the mum decided to take him in her arms….
There is one very small, insignificant thing at first that stroke my attention!
the little boy had his face full of tears and his nose dripping when one cries incessantly….there was nothing used to clean the little boy face and nose…no tissues, no attention.
Such thing came to me when Anna offered a tissue paper to the mum and she didn’t really want to take it…For them this is not a PRIMARY NEED, therefore not a need at all.
The priorities in this world are very different from ours-here people fight for survival whereas we only fight for ‘accessories’.
Looks very similar to the poor rural area in China!
I would not have imagined….