Does anyone here know this photo and the story behind it? This has haunted me for years, both the image & the story.
I will elaborate later. For now, is anyone willing to compose a poem based on how this photo makes you feel?
I can try… but I do know the history…
So… I’ll hold off for now.
a haiku
African child
famine victim - AIDS-orphan
–vulture babysits
No, I don’t know the specific story behind this picture; but I am certain it has something to do with the latest in the long litany of tragedies that occur on that continent on a regular and ongoing basis that the West only does anything about when the country affected has natural resources that we need. Otherwise, it’s fend-for-yourselves for those countries that don’t have those natural resources to get that help. This president of ours has our military strength spread-thin and bogged-down in Afghanistan and Iraq while we just watch the genocide going on in the Darfur region of Sudan, weap our crocodile tears over the insanity going on “over there”, push diplomatic papers around but do nothing demonstrable about it b/c they have no significant supplies of petroleum to bribe us with. So more innocent men, women and children die and are raped every day we do nothing about it.
lhw - AKA: The Straight-faced Clown AKA: M.C. Tape-Hiss
It won’t be long.
I did try;
But the spring of hope
Ran dry.
A vulture landed
By a boy one day,
But he was still alive,
So it flew away.
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood,
the birds are singing,
the sun is shining,
but make sure
you don’t step in that
dead Baby
If you can picture a dying african baby
pipe cleaner thin nothing but a pick of meat
croutched like a Mohamadan praying
as a vulture stalks feet away waiting
to feast upon this baby carrion
If you can picture this:
please take a photograph
to offend civilisation…
imagine!
needle sharp beak
knitting at the corpse
gouging flesh tugging
a tangle of heart strings…
There was no hope
It was all but dry
For only birds that prey
One can only ask why
“What you are not, you cannot percieve to understand; it cannot communicate itself to you.”
Maslow
It’s a poor village with a high class diner
The bare rib cage poking through the main course
Simmered to perfection in the radiating heat
A feast in a foreign land
The dark continent
I tried cheating. Right click+properties “kevin carter”.
I like those poems. The story: Carter was a journalist covering some African famine. When he came across the vulture hovering near a young girl, weak from hunger and trying to reach an aid station about 300 yards away where food was being distributed, he realize he had the photo op of a lifetime. If I remember correctly he circled the scene for nearly an hour waiting for the perfect shot. Once he got it, he shooed the bird away and went on his way, leaving her where he found her. He never never knew for sure what happened to her, but his (logical) assumption was that she died, just hundreds of yards from the supplies that may have saved her, or at least given her a chance. In later years his inability to understand why he didn’t carry her that couple hundred yards and his associated guilt overwhelmed him- he eventually committed suicide.
Thirst’s poem about driving past the stalled car made of think about this, for some reason, and I googled til I found the pic. Perhaps in some small way our daily actions are tantamount to driving by the stranded motorist or walking away from that dying child, but confronted with the immediacy of another persons suffering, when it’s the magnitude of suffering the child must have felt, could any of us do that?
NOTE: Didn’t he win a Pulitzer for the photo?
I myself have no poem or words just now. Oddly, the enormity of despair in that picture leaves me at a loss for words. I want to reach thru the screen and carry her to safety myself, but of course I can’t. She’s likely long dead. And thousands more will feed the vultures before things change, if they ever do.
Yes, he did win a Pulitzer. Winning a Pulitzer apparently is not an effective solution to warding off suicide.
I guess I’m exploring the same question he himself couldn’t answer- why didn’t he save her, when doing so would have been so easy? Obviously he couldn’t save everyone, but that’s not really the issue; I doubt he killed himself over the guilt of not saving Africa, but rather not saving her.
Why didn’t he carry her? Why don’t we pull over? What is wrong with us?
Are we not doing that?
Depends on how you want to parse it. Many Buddhists will eat some meat but still hold the person who actually does the butchering in the lowest possible esteem (as relayed by the Dhali Lama in his excellent book “Freedom in Exile”). Hippocritical? Undoubtedly. If a country has capital punishment- are you a killer, then? You don’t stop it (not that you could, I’m not necessarily saying you should), so is permitting it the same as doing it?
Most of us give to charities and try in some way to help. Okay, maybe not most, but many. The per-capita charitable donation of Americans far outstrips any other nation. Of course, we give with one hand and take with another, but on a human level I think we care.
To change the channel when the “African kids” commerical comes on is perhaps tantamount to allowing them to die. But isn’t it different when you’re confronted with that same child face to face, in the flesh? Isn’t that a bit like the way it’s easy to insult someone behind their back but difficult to do to their face?
I’m trying to take this to a personal level, not make it a discussion of geopolitics. One man, one child. When it’s reduced to just that level of simplicity, that level of immediacy, how can we turn away?
I would argue that the world has made it such that it is hard enough to take care of ourselves, let alone anyone else. I think we don’t get involved simply because our personal burdens and experience with helping often seem to indicate that the additional trouble for doing a good deed is simply an extra complication that carries with it no reward.
What it DOES do is saddles us with additional burdens in addition to the ones we are carrying.
In this day and age where good samaritans are sued, it’s hard to blame anybody for not wanting to get involved. Granted, the situation in this photo is dire…but we have been programmed that someone elses problem is not our own. We hardly accept personal responsibility, let alone the responsibility for someone else, and those that do get bitch slapped.
That’s my two cents anyway.
I can’t disagree with you, Shinton- you make excellent points. Yet I wonder if the price we are paying isn’t just too high.
Our world is dying. When we put others first, we literally infuse the world with life force. We awaken it. This is called true love. “Those who are last will be the first in the Kingdom of Heaven.”
A
I also think our willingness to help is directly proportional to the severity of the need and the likelihood of the harm. For example, a scruffy looking bum asking for change isn’t going to drop dead if you refuse him. Many people will walk past him with disdain. But if that same bum were drowning, almost any human would attempt to save him, if doing so could be done with minimal risk to themselves. A rare few would instantly dive in to save him even at serious risk to their own life, with no thought to the relative value of his life vs theirs.
To me, the little girl fell under the ‘drowning’ category more than the panhandler. He could have done something very easily, with virtually no risk to himself whatever. His suicide tends to lend credence to my view, I think. I imagine a journelist, like a doctor, has to try to stay detached, lest they do mad from all the dying they can’t prevent. But at the end of the day no one can deny their essential humanity.
I’d trade your imaginary Heavenly Kingdom of wonders for the life of that one small child, in a heartbeat. The sooner we all quit focusing on some better, other world, the sooner we can begin to make the real world better. We keep gazing at the Heavens to find the answers that are here in the ground.