The Faceless and Voiceless Just another day in Africa …perhaps! Recently the mother of a young teenager had requested a meeting with One Horizon. As a former student at a centre we are involved with, the youngster had experienced a series of physical problems over the last few months. What we know, and the most disturbing fact amongst all this, is how common the problems are in their community. The mother had originally taken her youngster to the local hospital but from the beginning her ability to influence the situation, to get the medical care her child required was about as remote as it ever could be. You see, the family are not well off and live in a place where the circumstances of over a million of their fellow citizens are the same. With unemployment rates of 50% the income of the family is non-existent. And the community in which the family lives has few roads, no sanitation systems and few have access to water or electrical power. Of those services which are provided, many are provided by ‘internal gangs’ – nothing more than vigilantes who divert the limited water supply and then re-sell it to the residents at exorbitant prices. Retribution is swift and brutal for those who complain. If you cannot obtain the protection of the police, then your human rights are even more at risk. All this within the centre of a major city in 2014. And so with limited economic power, the mother had little chance of influencing the hospital to respond. And the hospital requires payment before diagnosis and treatment can begin. Amazing that in a third world country where the health of the population is afflicted by all the miseries of poverty, payment is required before medical treatment will be effected. And it’s not uncommon even if money could have been raised, that they would have had to wait in long queues before treatment could be obtained, sometimes its days. It’s common for people to sleep overnight in the waiting room or outside so they won’t miss their place in the queue. Who speaks up for the faceless and voiceless people who cannot speak for themselves because no one wants to listen? The medical condition of her child won’t go away and like many thousands, indeed millions of people, the future is fraught with great difficulties. Like countless others, this mother went home in a state of hopelessness and despair. The hospital that she can see, that she passes each day offers to others what she cannot afford because of the families poverty. There is no happy ending for this family nor for millions of other families like them – people without voice and face. But yet as we sit in front of our televisions in the west and watch another documentary on the plight of people in the third world somehow many believe it is their fault. Whatever the answers are, it is the indifference of the rest of the world that allows this appalling situation to continue that is the bigger crime. And to blame it on ‘the government’ is an excuse that many hide behind. Better to issue a travel warning so that our holidays are not interrupted than to help solve a problem that we can all help solve. And to say that the problems are too difficult to solve is by itself the answer offered by those who choose to do nothing.
Posted on: Mon, 26 May 2014 16:59:49 +0000
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