A Cultural Defeat

Unexplainable

I can’t even begin to put into words what I just felt, in a world so far from mine, I find myself on the verge of tears as I watch this young boy, this child of only 4 years grow up in a place so harsh, so cruel, so impatient, so neglecting, so mean to him. I make an extended effort to give him love, comfort, joy, praise, and interest every time I see him. It pains me to see how psychologically he will be at a loss. Children’s cries are only met with more beatings; these children will become the problem we volunteers are trying to change; laziness, de-motivation, boredom, violence, crime, rape, teenage pregnancy, etc. This may not be another world, but it is so completely foreign and in your face all the time you have no choice but to watch with peeled open eyes and a head strap. Seeing violence here is unusual in the sense that I don’t think they believe in what’s right and wrong. Yet they praise religion but majority of the people here have yet to read the Bible. And there are translated Bible’s so the means are there. Corporal punishment is part of their culture, its difficult to know there can and is a better way of living yet knowing that it is almost impossible to get these people to believe it and want it. I have no doubt the bursts of anger and violence these women lash out on their children is a cause and effect relationship. The oppression they feel, the neglect they get, is all released on these children and the animals. Their second rate status to the men, their over-worked and under appreciated lifestyle, its all correlated. But to me there is something wrong with a group of men sitting under the mango tree eating mangoes for hours on end as the women busily cook, clean, wash, look after the kids, without so much as a thank you. How they do it I will never know. How this country can ever expect to change, I will never know. Yet, they claim to want development, whatever that means.