Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2005/09/12
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]B.D. - I just got back from Guatemala at 2 AM this morning and have 4,000 e-mails to go through, but I couldn't let this one go by without answering. I am in Guatemala and Honduras at the most 2 months out of the year. The other 10 months I am working as a mission consultant here in our five-county presbytery. I work with Meals on Wheels, food pantries, senior citizens day care centers, and hunger relief programs. I've been doing this for 20 years and I don't think I've lost sight of the realities of the poor in the USA. There are, of course, very deserving underprivileged, elderly and handicapped people who are receiving help from those agencies and our church groups; however, there are many more who are not interested in doing anything to improve their lives and are only looking for a way to get as much as they can without putting forth any effort. I have tried on many occasions to do what I do in Central America and stay for a day or two with one of the families who receives aid and take photographs to use in our Dimes for Hunger programs. Once the Rock Hill HOPE agency sent me to stay with a family that they thought would be a good example to include in our fund raising projects. The couple had come to HOPE for help with their electric bill and received several bags of food and a frozen turkey in addition. I went to their home and spent the day. The husband and wife, both morbidly obese, spent the entire day sitting on their couch, drinking Pepsi, eating potato chips and watching the Shopping Network on their 36" color tv. They actually called in and ordered a huge cubic zirconium ring while I was there. Their son spent the day in his room playing Nintendo on his color tv. I didn't get any photos I could use. Another time I spent the day with an elderly woman who receives Meals on Wheels every day. I did get some good photos of her, but her wealthy lawyer son heard that we were going to use photos of her for fund raising and refused to give us permission. A third time I stayed in a housing project with a single mother, also morbidly obese, who lived with her five children all with different fathers, and her sister and her three children. Both sisters had dropped out of school in the eighth grade when they got pregnant and neither had ever held a job. They lived entirely on welfare and what they could get from local agencies. They spent all of their food stamps and WIC coupons on snack foods. I tried to suggest that maybe some fruits and vegetables would be a good idea, but they said the children wouldn't eat them. The women and children were all overweight. That family did not make good examples to use in a program on hunger relief. I get very frustrated trying to work with local agencies and wish that they were as efficient in actually helping as the agencies that I work with in Central America. After 20 years of working with both, my conclusion is that the difference is in the willingness of the people to get involved in their own self improvement. Our churches and local agencies do focus on the poor in this country but their situations are not improving through the handouts that they receive. In Central America I can document a true difference in the people and agencies that we have supported through the years with workshops on nutrition, healthcare, agriculture and water projects, because of their own hard work and interest in improving their lives and the lives of their children. I do include many local photos of the people who really need help and you can see some of them here: http://www.pbase.com/tinamanley/dimes_for_hunger&page=4 and here: http://www.leica-gallery.net/tinamanley/folder-6426.html But the realities of the local poor are very depressing compared to the realities of the poor in Central America whose children do have a brighter future because they pull together and work hard to improve their lives. Off the soapbox now. Tina At 07:48 AM 9/2/2005, you wrote: >Tina, I suspect you've been spending far too much time in developing >countries, have become far too emotionally involved with them, and have lost >sight of the realities in your own. > >If you want to condemn someone in the U.S., Tina, condemn the system that >has allowed this poverty to continue unabated since people first started >acknowledging it almost 50 years ago. The Mississippi Delta isn't much >different from the way it was in 1900 - and yet we condemn these people >because they don't pull together like the benighted poor of Central America? > >Maybe its time that the church groups that so lovingly pour all their >resources into countries outside the U.S., and send photographers to >document their work, start shifting their focus to the poor in this country. >For they are poor, and they are suffering, even if they are not "as poor" as >the people in Honduras. > >B. D. > > >On 9/1/05 9:28 PM, "Tina Manley" <images@InfoAve.Net> wrote: > > > > >> Scott > > > > What unique conditions? No money, no job, no education, no > > infrastructure? All of that is present in rural Honduras > > > >_______________________________________________ >Leica Users Group. >See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information