Everyday can be a struggle

Have you ever wonder how refugees can live through bad conditions when many of basic needs are far from being met? They lack of everything: food, clean water, sanitation, shelter, etc. To deal with poor living conditions, they earn their livelihood by doing dangerous and illegal work.


This photograph shows a group of children who were playing around the coal burning fires. For almost a century now coal mines have been burning in the state of Bihar, India. As the fires spread at a rate of fix to six meters a month, thousands of people live with the ground beneath them burning every day. Refugees collect the coal and pre-burn it in order to improve its quality. This coal will be sold at local markets for about a dollar a basket. However, the consequence of burning coal is far more dangerous. As a result, those refuges live under the polluted atmosphere containing carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and fine coal dust which strongly affect their health. Their lives and jobs become part of the carbon culture.

Those children in the photo also suffer from the poisonous air. They have no choice because selling illegal coal is the only way to survive. They have no future because the terrible conditions destroy the chance to gain the skills they will need in their future lives. Everyday can be a struggle just to survive.

Works Cited

Salgado, Sebastiao. Photograph. "Migrations: Humanity in Transition [Leaving the Land for the Cities]". Legends Online. PDN and Kodak Professionals, n.d. Web. 25 Feb 2010.

Shaikh Azizur Rahman. "India's illegal coal mines turn into death pits."  25 Nov. 2006. Web. 25 Feb 2010

Left to Tell- Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

 Immaculee's book “Left to Tell" is an inspirational story about the other side of the world where genocides, wars and battles still happen every day. Her experiences during the awful slaughter remind us to be aware of what is happening to our world these days and recognize that we are so blessed. While we exaggerate small issues in our lives, there are others in this world that undergoes tragic circumstances. Immaculee is an example of fortitude, courage and determination to overcome life’s challenges.


During this ordeal she discovers not only an amazing depth of faith in God but also the true meaning of forgiveness. I wept as reading Imaculee’s message when she eventually meets the killer of her family: “Forgiveness is all I have to offer.” Her profound message is so meaningful to me, which conveys the triumph of the forgiving soul over the feeling of hatred and revenge. If a person like Immaculee who suffers lots of pains and bitterness can forgive her enemies, why don't we forgive our friends, our acquaintances for making harmless mistakes?

Her moving descriptions of how she is able to build such a strong faith in God and her true feeling of how she learns to forgive during such a hard time make her story more powerful and engaging. This book gave me an opportunity to look back at myself, get in touch with my spiritual side in a more personal way and learn to forgive past offenses. Everyone who is seeking forgiveness, trying to forgive someone or struggling to go through hardships should read this wonderful book. It’s a way to purify your souls.

Keep the faith

 Photograph by Sebastiao Salgado

After 30 years fighting between North and South, finally the Vietnam War ended. Many people who didn't follow Communism decided to flee Vietnam. "Boat people" were born. It is described that hundreds of people sat next to each other like fish in a can. They suffered the storm, the robbery, the rape repeatedly. They lost family members, relatives. 

On Vietnamese boat people web page, many tragic stories from refugees were collected. A refugee told her own story: "Hours later, another boat appeared. When it got close to us, five men jumped on our boat and started searching again. They also took some clothes we were wearing. Then they told everybody look away, undressed two teenage girls and took turn raping them for hours. I was so terrified, held my son tightly in my arms and totally shook!  We heard the girls cry for help, but we were helpless! What a shame!!!  Later on, they left." I was so terrified by her story. As a Vietnamese person, I truly feel the pain as well as the emotion of those refugees.

This photograph was taken on the beach Of Vung Tau in 1995. Those people in the photo hold the faith of seeking happiness, the strength to overcome their fate. They had to survive, maintaining their lives to tell the world their tragedy and what hardship boat people endured. There were no more tears on their face, no more complaints. When the pain is too big, you will feel nothing at all.

Works Cited 

" A true story". Boat people. June. 1999. Web. 17 Feb. 2010

Salgado, Sebastiao. Photograph. Migrations: Humanity in Transition. Aperture. New York, 2000. 60-61.

 

Just a little bit of hope

 

Photograph by Sebastiao Salgado

There are many kinds of migration. Mostly, we talk about migration over national boundaries, which mean someone moves to a different country. Another type is internal migration which refers to change of residence within national boundaries. This process takes place in developing countries such as Vietnam, China, etc. Internal migration is becoming big issues for the developing countries.

Millions of migrant workers who had left their farm for factory work are now facing the possibility of making an urban-to-rural migration. Although this process is a good signal of a new stage of development, Cu Chi Loi- a researcher in migration situation in Vietnam argued that: "However, confront with a huge flow of rural-to-urban migrants and poor urban planning migration is seen as a negative process."(115)

I like this photograph because it just look so artistic. Some people are standng near the windows under the dim light. They are waiting for the bright light outside their obscure lives. The shadows of night surround their undefined futures. They just need a little light to keep their faiths. Just a little bit of hope...

Works Cited

Cu Chi, Loi. "Rural to Urban Migrationin Vietnam". n.d. Web.10 Feb 2010

Salgado, Sebastiao. Photograph. "Migrations: Humanity in Transition [Leaving the Land for the Cities]". Legends Online. PDN and Kodak Professionals, n.d. Web. 10 Feb 2010.

Where to go

 

Photograph by Sebastiao Salgado

There are thousands of Salgado's photos that I can choose to talk about. However, I tend to pick the photo which reminisces about my country.

This photograph was taken in Burundi in 1995. The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by the Hutu dominated government under the Hutu Power ideology.However, the 1994 genocide was targeted mainly at Rwanda's minority Tutsis population. The perpetrators came from the majority Hutu. In the western media the killings were widely portrayed as tribal hostilities.Between April and July 1994, at least 500,000 Tutsi were killed when a Hutu extremist-led government launched a plan to murder the country's entire Tutsi minority and any others who opposed the government's policies. Tutsi rebels won control, which sent a million Hutus, fearful of revenge, into Zaire and Tanzania. In Burundi, the Tutsis yielded power after a Hutu won the country's first democratic election in 1993.The fighting created large numbers of refugees; over the next two years 250,000 Burundians, mostly Hutu, escaped to safety in neighboring Zaire (Congo) and Tanzania, countries burdened by 2 million Rwandan Hutu who fled Rwanda after the genocide of Tutsi civilians in the spring of 1994.

Photograph by Hugh Van Es

                                             

                                                                  

                                                  

The similarity between my country- Vietnam and Rwandan was the evacuation. Surely if war came it would be better for families to stick together and not go breaking up their homes. That's why they decided to moved to safety places where they can live together. This photograph was taken in Da Nang- a city in the middle of Vietnam in 1969. There were all women and children in this photo. I can see their frightened eyes; I can feel their worrying feeling. They didn't know how to escape from the fierce fighting. Hugh Van Es explained those women and children was waiting to be evacuated. They were so hopeless that they just sit there and waited for the help. Human nature is to struggle to survive. However, there is also the love existing in each person. Those women can run away and leave their children behind; but they didn't do that. Although the war threatened their lives, the most powerful emotion still existed. And the love never fails to stir my soul.

Works Cited

Meisler, Stanley. "Rwandan and Burundi". The Atlantic Monthly, n.d. Web. 3 Feb 2010.

Salgado, Sebastiao. Photograph. “Migrations: Humanity in Transition [The Human Family Around the World]”. Legends Online. PDN and Kodak Professionals, n.d. Web. 3 Feb 2010.

---. "Migrations: The Story of Humanity on the Move". Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Havard, n.d. Web.  3 Feb,  2010.

Van Es, Hugh. Photograph. "Van Es Hugh, Photojournalist who covered Vitenam, dies at 67". The New York Times, 15 May 2009. Web. 3 Feb 2010.