Three Square meals after devastation
18 January 2015. By Abi Giwa
Muhammed Sesay (Courtesy:BBC)
Listening to Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and reading BBC's "Meeting the children orphaned by Ebola", puts one on nostalgia about human struggle.
A short while after birth, one begins to be aware of events in the environment and thereby gaining experience about difficulties of human life. Before that time, one knew nothing about what difficulties humans experience in life, while in the womb.
But after a spell, one comes to reality of human life as not a bed of Roses, as it is often said of marriage by couples who have the experience.
The thought about human struggle and family makes one to think that the BBC's report concerning Muhammed Sesay, 12, of his experience about rejection by his grandmother and later the grandmother's friend before arriving at an orphanage is typical story of rejection and abandonment.
"I feel good here. They take care of me well. I eat good - three times a day! I play, and I study. I am a strong boy and I will be OK." Note the exclamation after "I eat good - three times a day!" It sounds like a journey from misfortune to fortune. But it will be hard for young Muhammed to forget what he went through to get here. He probably will never forget how his grandmother had rejected him out of fear of the unknown. Although his grandmother's friend took him in and took care of him before he was shown the way out after two days, the feeling of abandonment could not erased.
Abandonment is what we feel, when some people who are supposed to care for us, leave us to our own fate in times of difficulties and either grapple for their own survival or just careless. About 10,000 children are currently in Muhammed's shoes as a result of the Ebola outbreak and consequences in West Africa. It was what made that period an equivalent of war, because it is only in a war or serious environmental devastation that one will see so many children orphaned. It is unnatural for a grandmother to deny a grandchild whose mother had passed a place, but Ebola made that happen out of the fear of death. Even though life is difficult with barely enough for a three square meal a day, we still want to be here and not go without being ready for the journey.
"When you are down now, when you are on the street. When evening fall so hard, I will comfort you. I will take your part, when darkness comes and pain is all around," Simon and Garfunkel's sings, but Muhammed's grandmother and others who are supposed to be there for Muhammed and others like him forget to remember to give the comfort, because they don't want to lose not just their own comfort, but life. They don't want to be like Jesus Christ who died that others might live. Discomfort can be managed, but not unwarranted and untimely death, which cannot be negotiated with medication - the curse that Ebola represented.
One lesson here is that many people interviewed by the Global Pentorch said the way Muhammed was treated by his grandmother and extended family was not only inhuman, but an outright rejection and abandonment. They say a 12 years old could be one's child, and if he is infected, take him to the treatment center rather than shut your door against him.
Muhammed has lost his father and mother; his extended family and neighbor has treated him and sister badly, but now he has something many people struggle hard to get - three square meals a day.
A short while after birth, one begins to be aware of events in the environment and thereby gaining experience about difficulties of human life. Before that time, one knew nothing about what difficulties humans experience in life, while in the womb.
But after a spell, one comes to reality of human life as not a bed of Roses, as it is often said of marriage by couples who have the experience.
The thought about human struggle and family makes one to think that the BBC's report concerning Muhammed Sesay, 12, of his experience about rejection by his grandmother and later the grandmother's friend before arriving at an orphanage is typical story of rejection and abandonment.
"I feel good here. They take care of me well. I eat good - three times a day! I play, and I study. I am a strong boy and I will be OK." Note the exclamation after "I eat good - three times a day!" It sounds like a journey from misfortune to fortune. But it will be hard for young Muhammed to forget what he went through to get here. He probably will never forget how his grandmother had rejected him out of fear of the unknown. Although his grandmother's friend took him in and took care of him before he was shown the way out after two days, the feeling of abandonment could not erased.
Abandonment is what we feel, when some people who are supposed to care for us, leave us to our own fate in times of difficulties and either grapple for their own survival or just careless. About 10,000 children are currently in Muhammed's shoes as a result of the Ebola outbreak and consequences in West Africa. It was what made that period an equivalent of war, because it is only in a war or serious environmental devastation that one will see so many children orphaned. It is unnatural for a grandmother to deny a grandchild whose mother had passed a place, but Ebola made that happen out of the fear of death. Even though life is difficult with barely enough for a three square meal a day, we still want to be here and not go without being ready for the journey.
"When you are down now, when you are on the street. When evening fall so hard, I will comfort you. I will take your part, when darkness comes and pain is all around," Simon and Garfunkel's sings, but Muhammed's grandmother and others who are supposed to be there for Muhammed and others like him forget to remember to give the comfort, because they don't want to lose not just their own comfort, but life. They don't want to be like Jesus Christ who died that others might live. Discomfort can be managed, but not unwarranted and untimely death, which cannot be negotiated with medication - the curse that Ebola represented.
One lesson here is that many people interviewed by the Global Pentorch said the way Muhammed was treated by his grandmother and extended family was not only inhuman, but an outright rejection and abandonment. They say a 12 years old could be one's child, and if he is infected, take him to the treatment center rather than shut your door against him.
Muhammed has lost his father and mother; his extended family and neighbor has treated him and sister badly, but now he has something many people struggle hard to get - three square meals a day.
