as if days no longer had a purpose anymore..
as if moments are simply meaningful only to the day...
today has been a very long day for me. i had a group meeting after school that lasted till midnight. we ordered chinese take out for supper.
i watched Lalee's Kin on HBO, a documentary "that follows three generations of African-Americans as they battle poverty and illiteracy in America's Mississippi Delta" while i was waiting to go to my group meeting. it only reaffirms my belief of how sheltered we all are from real suffering. i hate it when people tell me that everyone in America has it good. it's all relative, yes. perhaps in other parts of the world, people have it worse. yes. i'm aware of that. however, these are our neighbors, our fellow countrymen and we can't see it. how can we when we're too busy supping up our mocha chinos and muffins?
there was one scene where the kids missed the first few days of school because their mother couldn't afford the pencils and papers they needed. i just sat their baffled. i throw away pencils and papers. we have closets full of these things that we'll never use.
the family they tracked also didn't have running water or an income. the grandmother was taking care of five children. her own children were either dead, in jail, or working two to three hours away.
the most heartbreaking part is that the world they grow up in doesn't tell them that there is a world other than poverty. the kids are illiterate and one of the children has flunked out of kindergarten twice. the public school was on probation and the teachers are of the lowest rate.
my brother came and sat down to watch it for a few minutes and commented on how depressing it was. jeremy came home early from playing basketball and watched the ending with me. he commented on how much better off those children would be if people like he and i would volunteer our time to teach the kids. i told him that conditions like this exist in Austin too... we just don't see it.
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment