I will never show you pictures of poor children, dressed in only worn rags, with a swollen belly, because there are things that neither a photo nor a video can portrait.
What I would like to let the world know, however, is all the anger, indignation and pain that fill my heart.
In Africa I saw hundreds of smiling children running towards me hoping for a gift, a candy, while hundreds approaching from the other side of the road, I saw a child about 7 years old.
He stood at the edge, watched everything, especially us, our clean clothes, our new shoes.
When he met my gaze he lowered his head, his eyes became elusive, he tried desperately to pull and adjust that dirty and short shirt that he couldn’t cover enough, which unfortunately didn’t make him invisible to my eyes, he was ashamed.
If you have a heart you cannot ignore.
You must do something to respect yourself.
It would have been easy to erase everything, cowardly, turn your head away and pretend you never saw that kid, go home and forget about it.
Then at a later time if the conscience were to make itself felt, it will be enough to look for some good excuses to make her stay in peace and to blame someone else.
I have heard so many faults and excuses and this is a good list:
the fault lies with these Africans who have too many children, the fault is ignorance, multinationals and globalization, the fault of imperialism, colonialism, climate change, different culture, the infamous destiny and much more.
Blame it on everyone, but not on that child.
It is not that child’s fault, if he did not eat today, if he does not have shoes and did not go to school, if he will probably never turn 12 years old.
This list of faults is of no use to him and let us admit that we do not need them either.
We, on the other hand, need the courage to fight every day so that that child can eat, have a clean suit, go to school, grow up and become an adult.
We need to find a way to help him, giving his parents work and the necessary tools so that tomorrow we will no longer need our help.
Donating tomorrow to those who do not have anything also means for us to believe in the same tomorrow, without listening to those who repeat to us that nothing ever changes and therefore it is worth doing nothing, without listening to the masters of hatred and selfishness.
Believing and fighting against indifference and the doors that many will close in our faces, against all the cynicism that surrounds us, counting on our strength and doing our best, because that child who today is ashamed of himself, tomorrow, can finally raise your head, look into your eyes, have hope, smile and shake hands.
So tomorrow, meeting him, we can also thank him because he has given us courage, awareness of our strength, hope and respect for ourselves.
Barka Burkina!!
Andrea Magrini
