"I've been up for days, trying to find a way to write this confession down..."


What gets me every time, is that just when you are ready to celebrate someone's happiness, someone else's injustice enters. A daily combat against hunger, ill health, against loneliness, hopelessness, poverty, inequality, and you get over the hurdle, you witness an obstacle removed, you begin to rejoice for all that is good in this world, you turn around, and notice that the distortion has taken a-hold of someone new.

Wonderful things have happened, miracles, people healed, families fed, houses rebuilt by the community. Some of our kids graduating school and moving on to study at university. We are proud to see accomplishment, proud to see healthy and happy children playing, communicating and relating better then they were a year ago. I stopped for two days and saw all the good that was happening in Tejipio despite the material difficulties, and was filled with joy.The community is rebuilding itself after the floods, families are moving back in to their houses, the schools have opened new projects which not only entertain, but feed and shower the kids during the day, which our project hadn't managed to do. It feels like finally someone is stepping up to take responsibility for the forgotten. These are thing that we can find joy in.

But then, you realize that around the corner, there is another community, in fact poorer, more violent, more in need then ever, and you feel like just that thought completely drains the energy out of your body.Because it feels like there is going to always be this injustice. And it's just not fair. God created a beautiful world, He created us to take care of each other to be apart of each other, and a community, and then the world became distorted, and we no longer think like that. Now we think that the best way to do things is take care of ourselves. Us first, then those nearest to us, and after that everything is surplus, so we will go back to helping ourselves. I am not speaking of just individuals, or families, or neighbourhoods, but whole governments.

These days Brazil is in up roar about a new law that is coming into force, against homophobia, which is causing discussion, rallys, protests, people are up at arms about it. A friend of mine today, eloquently echoed my frustrated thoughts with words, saying that, whatever we feel about this issue, there are others which deserve at LEAST this amount of attention if not more, we spend our lives lobbying, protesting, having strong opinions about political issues, celebrity issues, but we have forgotten the hungry, the single mother, the lonely in our own midst. We forget that children are being prostituted on our street corners, having their lives taken from them for ever by decisions made by people who have probably lost their lives in the same way decades earlier. And we protest for free speech, we protest peripherals (that are important, don't get me wrong) so much so, that we become tired, and we no longer have enough energy to be touched by the man sleeping beside our bins in the morning. Or the fact that that girl across the road is pregnant. She is 12.

Wake up, look around, do what you can. You deserve to be a citizen, and so does your neighbour. You both deserve the same things, so share what you have, your time, your energy, your love.

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