July 28th, 2006, I met two friends from Sierra Leone, the country in west-Africa, where people are trying hard to make a living. It is the first time I heard about the real stories that ever happened in the world now by people who really experienced through the toughest journey of human disasters. It is the first time I felt deeply miserable about the weaknesses of human beings, though I have already .knew about the truth that men can be selfish and brutal in some kind of situations. .It is the first time I am certainly sure that I need to do something to awaken people to the right way that it should be.
By the chance to attend the International Compassionate Youth Conference hold by Dharma Drum Mountain, I learned that there are still more things we should know about the world. I was honored to join in the workshop where we discussed about the conflict resolution. There I met Sylvanus, the delegate from Sierra Leone, who shared the story about his country.
Sierra Leone is famous for diamonds but also well-known by domestic conflicts and poverty. People have been lived in war for decades until UN entered and garrisoned. On 14 May 2002, new president was elected. Under the help by UN, he started to rebuild the country. However, people still need more than everything they have already provided. I asked Sylvanus about the real life that children and teenagers have now.
- Do children have enough food now and where do they live?
- There are still many children wandering on the street and begging for food everyday. Their parents died during the war time. They have no where to go.
- Who gives them food?
- People who have more food will give them. It’s not always the same ones. We call the children number 001 that means they only have dinner in one day, and 010 means that children have only lunch, and 100 means they only have breakfast.
Hearing about the children’s life in Sierra Leone and looking around the place I grew up in, I feel how fortunate I am to be here. Youths in Taiwan now have chance to go to school and seldom of them experienced starvation. We couldn’t imagine the life far away from us in Sierra Leone. People who live in the world but have totally different life experiences, and now we know it is never fair for everybody to not have the same life quality since we are born, however we can know one thing is that we should pursue a world where people all have enough food and nutrition to live and have chance to be educated, and then have the ability to create a hopeful future..
What can I do to make the ideal be realized? I can have long-term plan to make progress of people’s life in Sierra Leone, but now I’d like to let people know more about the unique place which should be more concerned about.
by Jen, Oct. 2, 2006, in Taipei
