Although this topic is discussed a lot, I have become very angry about the whole thing. Prepare for one of my rants, fellow Bloggers.
Last week I was researching for my Art project; I typed in "child searching" in Google images since my theme is "expectation". I was hoping to find an innocent child looking for snails or searching for someone when playing hide and seek. I scroll down the page to be absolutely horrified. My stomach jolted and I felt like my heart was fluttering away like the wings on a humming bird. I come across a picture of a starving child in Africa searching for food... in the anus of a cow. Yes, you read correctly. I thought I must have misread it first time but no...it is what it said.
This photograph will haunt me for the rest of my days, I am deeply sure of that. That night I visit my grandparents and my father has his daily rant about money and how much is going out and how little seems to be going in etc. The topic of the trams being built in Edinburgh came up. What a load of rubbish. Edinburgh used to have trams and then buses came along and so people thought, "oh... well there are buses now, we don't need trams too." So then they were taken away. Nowadays there is more traffic than ever on the roads and now they are making the place even more cluttered but re-installing trams for a second time for a whopping sum of money. We have cars, we have trains, we have taxis, we have buses... Surely there is enough motorised vehicles on the roads as there is?
My gran then picks up a newspaper and reads out an article about actors being paid £200, 000 to be "difficult" customers for people getting interviewed for BBC television or something like that. I mean, really?
There are many, many examples out there. I'm sure you are aware and I assume you get my point. I just can't see how the people with all that money and all the power to change those things opt to go with such a reckless and needless route. I will do my best with getting involved with charity and sponsor and voluntary work as much as I possibly can. But really... people who have that power and all that money should stop re-installing trams in Edinburgh and cut out all this 'fancy' building work for the Scottish Government (which quite frankly...looks a bit crap) and pull their socks up and actually give all this money to these countries in need.
would money help? sure it seems like an easy answer but even if you invested a whooping sum of money in feeding africa the only thing that could be achieved is a temporary stabilisation of population growth, if that. an increase in food would be followed by an increase in mouths to feed. what africa needs is birth control primarily condoms, and the sad thing is it has them. religion rears its ugly head once again.
ReplyDeleteYes, you're right. A vicious circle, so it is.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I'm from Canada and I have been feeling the EXACT same way! The last few months I have been feeling really passionate about this subject. It's like you took the words right out of my mouth. I feel like we are so rich in comparison to most of the world, and most of us don't even REALIZE IT! People don't all live like this with big huge plasma and LCD TV's, picking and choosing whatever cell phones, shopping sprees, what brand of cereal we want, the colour of our couches... it sickens me when I think of things in the grand perspective. People are dying in the world of hunger, people have lost everything in their lives due to natural disasters globally, and what are we doing to help? Nothing! Its because we're being ignorant. They say ignorance is bliss. I get that. But I also feel like if I didn't have a community of people in my own culture depending on me in this lifestyle, I would give it all up and help the poor. I just wish that as a nation, we'd contribute to a global change.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you feel the same, Jane! I know exactly what you're saying, I totally agree. Yeah, I really wish that the government (certainly in my country)would really think about these issues in the grand scheme of things and spend the money and supply the countries in need.
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