Just returned from an eye opening journey overseas documenting Colombian poverty. Here there is no government help at all just sheer hard work and courageous living.
These are people who live in cramped and over crowded dwellings with dirt on the floor and just enough room to sleep and eat, but they are filled with dignity and grace. There is not much time for childhood here. Girls as young as twelve have become mothers. Teenage boys and younger,spend their days digging up sand from the river bed to be transported and sold to the building trade for a pittance of a wage and have to adopt the role of the males of the community, while fathers have often lost their lives fighting the drug barons of an endless cocaine filled war.
It probably comes down to “what you haven’t experienced you don’t miss” The rest of Colombia is filled with hard working determinedly happy people who do not spend money on endless material objects but do enjoy close family rapports and celebrate small events and joys with collective pride.
