Tag: Poverty
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The disease called poverty
Olufolakayomi Christiana ThomasLagos State, Nigeria It is a hot Friday afternoon in Lagos, Nigeria. Everyone is gearing up for the weekend and already starting to leave work. The clinic staff does this each week under the guise of attending Friday Jumat prayers, even though the clinic does not officially close for three more hours, and…
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The paradox of blood donation
Beukou SteveLimbe, South-West Cameroon “Please I urgently need a donor who is blood group O rhesus negative for my sister to be operated. Please tell any of your friends.” These types of messages have become the newest type of notifications on our social media platforms in Cameroon. The notifications, while made up of different combinations…
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Humanitarian for all: The life of Henry Dunant
Stephen KosnarLima, Peru In his late thirties and bankrupt, Henry Dunant lived in abject poverty, on occasion being forced to eat bread crusts and sleep outdoors in Paris. It is a bitter slice of one man’s history, particularly given that only a few years earlier he had founded the International Committee of the Red Cross.1…
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Consumption, Collapse, and Family by Alice Neel
Gregory Rutecki “The personal images in Alice Neel’s work not only reflect her life, they also provide metaphors …There is no peace…in (her) paintings, only agitated recognition of inevitable struggles.”1 “…Alice Neel described the 20th Century as she experienced it, living in the ghetto with those against whom most of society discriminated. She has provided…
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Laundry
Susan BeckFort Collins, Colorado, United States Smell is the sense below the surface; tangled like seaweed, moving in currents, unfurling in the depth of the open ocean. “Why does poverty smell like laundry detergent?” I never expected an answer. The long and tangled history of the question began in Baskerville, North Carolina, when I was…
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Of starlit huts and Sahelian sand
Sara BuckChicago, Illinois, United States Landing in Dakar airport, the Air Afrique flight from New York hummed into the humid night air. Having traversed the nocturnal waters of the Atlantic, our plane descended upon the capital city, its sparse lights glittering along the coast and the nearby Île de Gorrée as if lava were streaming…