Poverty in Photos

Also in our war, poverty, and hunger unit, we also look at "photo essays." These are high quality pictures with a brief 2-3 sentence description underneath. The photo essays we have been viewing recently are about poverty in other countries. The essays featured in my blog came from boston.com's Big Picture. The website for this is at : http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/

This is The Big Picture's description of the picture: Two Afghan refugee girls and a boy make their way through a muddy alley, following a rainy night, in a slum on the outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, Jan. 16, 2012. The Pakistani government and the United Nations refugee agency reached an agreement in March 2009, to allow some 1.7 million registered Afghan refugees living in Pakistan to continue sheltering there until at least 2012, thousands of them still live without electricity, running water and other basic services. (Muhammed Muheisen/Associated Press)

I saw this picture and I immediately thought of World War I. As abstract as that may seem, this picture makes me think of the movie, All Quiet on the Western Front. In the movie the main characters spent time in trenches, which look very much like the scene in this image. In both places the walls and floors are made of mud. It reminds me of how the people in the trench used to get "trench foot,"  and how that could possibly occur here. I didn't know that some people literally live in the mud. I am shocked to see this.

The Big Picture's description:
25 Gold miners pass mud along a human chain in an open pit at the Chudja mine in the Kilomoto concession near the village of Kobu in north-eastern Congo, February 23, 2009. (REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly)

This is another picture where I am shocked to see people living in the mud.  It seems like terrible work, I could never imagine working in the mud all day, and being covered with it. It really makes me think, "are there jobs in America like this?"

The Big Picture's description: Children walk along a road above a camp for people displaced by violence near Minova in eastern Congo, February 12, 2009. (REUTERS/Finbarr O'Reilly)

In this picture I can really see how poor this area is. There are so many people living here, but it seems almost in the middle of nowhere. The closest city or town is probably miles and miles away. And the types of houses here aren't even houses! They look like tents. I've never seen an area as poor as this. It really shocks me.