Dirty Pretty Things

When we imagine London we automatically see beautiful places in our head. Big Ben. London Eye. Tower of London. Tower Bridge. The Parliament. Piccadilly Circus. Whatever. For us this is London, an amazing city with tons of amazing places. Many dream to come here for living or just for holidays. But for others this dream is a nightmare.

In hope for a better life, many people come to London. But it gets complicated when you are an illegal immigrant.

Always running away from the police, illegal immigrants have to work clandestine many hours a day or have a couple of jobs to earn some money to buy their documents to be a normal citizen. However documents are very expensive and they receive very low salaries.

These men and women live in permanently danger, they are blackmailed every time by their bosses, if they are hurt they cannot go to the hospital, if they have kids they cannot attend school, they cannot use public services and they hardly have food to eat. Women are even in a harder position, once they are sexually abused, and they cannot do anything about it.

Many of these clandestine immigrants are so desperate that they don’t mind to swap a kidney for a forged passport. Organ trade is one of the main business of the Black Market, dealers get a lot of money by selling inner organs such as hearts, livers and kidneys. So they “help” illegal immigrants in getting them a false passport, but immigrants have to give them a kidney or another organ. As these operations cannot be found, they are not performed in hospitals; instead people do them under careless ways. This may result in complicated infections for the clandestine people, or even their death.

If you want to become aware of this reality and realize how terrible this situation is, I suggest you to watch the movie ‘Dirty Pretty Things’, which tells a story of two illegal immigrants, a Nigerian man and a Turkish woman, who live in London and who face horrible atrocities. I must say that I got inspired in this movie to write this article, although I’m perfectly conscious that this not only happens in London, but all over the world. 

Strange Fruit

“Southern trees bear strange fruit”. That’s how some people feel. Strange. They feel like they don’t belong to the society. This song by Billie Holiday was produced in the 30’s with the main aim to protest against discrimination that people from the southern countries were facing in America. It is simple, spare but effective poetry. It portrays the atrocities that these minorities were suffering in America: “The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth”, “then the sudden smell of burning flesh”. 

It was not easy to record this song at that time. The mentality of Americans from the 30’s was really close and they didn’t accept differences. “Strange Fruit” was played only rarely on the radio. 

“Here is fruit for the crows to pluck”, I think nobody who never faced any kind of discrimination cannot understand what those people felt, that feeling they are considered nobody, that nobody cares about them, that they didn’t have a voice.

“Here is a strange and bitter crop”. And after all, they are like everybody. We are all equal.

Native Americans

It happened a long time ago, in the 16th/17th centuries, probably. In America people were living happily and peacefully for many hundreds of years before Europeans reached America. They usually hunted animals, gathered plants or fished in order to survive. They were approximately 10 million people living there.

When Christopher Columbus arrived in North America he thought he had reached India, so he called Indians to the native people. Native Americans were pretty amazed by the arrival of the Europeans, because they brought new things from Europe that Americans totally didn’t know, such as metal cooking pots, cloth, guns and alcohol. Not only this, but diseases as well. As Native Americans weren’t strong enough and had no resistance to those viruses, many of them died and others became extremely ill.

But Europeans wanted their land. For Native Americans, land wasn’t supposed to be own, once they were nomads. Consequently, as Americans didn’t know the effects of alcohol, Europeans gave them a lot of drinks, and then it was easy to negotiate their land as well as low prices for their goods. When the chiefs of the tribe got sober, they started to fight against the settlers. Some white people died during the fights and it constituted a proof for Europeans that natives were “wild and had to be controlled”. So America no longer belonged to Native Americans. And according to the article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property”.

Today only 550 tribes remain, which is about 1.2 million people. They live in reservations, where they have the right to fish and hunt as they wish, while other Americans have to get a license. Although Native Americans are US citizens, who have the rights and responsibilities of any US citizen, reservations have their own governments. But it’s difficult to live the traditional life for these people, once activities of other Americans affect the way they live and also their resources.

It’s wrong to call these people Indians, because this name is based on a mistake. However Americans don’t care, once they have little interest in Native Americans and most ignore them. Besides, the natives are often used in films and in books about the “Wild West” to represent the enemies of the cowboys.

The point is that the America that so many people dream with was built on a land stolen from the people who lived there first. And these people are suffering from discrimination because of their race.

The silent reality

I’m going to tell you a story. It’s an unpleasant one, but everyone must be aware of this situation. It’s a story about a woman, Daphne Pratt, who was forcibly circumcised by a cult which defends women circumcision. It happened at night, like so many other cases. They accused her of spying on their activities and later on, divulge their traditions. They grabbed her and cut her genitals with no anesthesia. After leaving her in the middle of the street, she went to his uncle’s house, who took her to the police station. The police couldn’t care less about this issue, instead they told her to go to a tribal court, because it was a “tribal matter”. Weak and unprotected, she went to the hospital. She had to stay there for a month. According to the gynecologist, she needed 15 stitches and a blood transfusion. Daphne is 28 years old and she lives in Sierra Leone. In this country, 90% of women are circumcised when they are young, in order to deny them any sexual pleasure during their lives. Every society has its own rules and traditions, but this one, female genital mutilation is totally harmful and it can lead to death, in some cases. Some of the instruments they use are broken glass, for example, and they use them in a great number of girls, which increases the risk of blood transmitted diseases. There are different types of female mutilation, but in all cases if the child or woman dies from complications, nobody is not held responsible, rather the death is attributed to evil spirits or just fate. Imagine all of those women worldwide who had been circumcised. How do they feel psychologically? Probably incomplete or depressed, they may have lost their self-esteem or trust in themselves. They must be weak and they don’t have any mean of expressing their fear or look for help. They suffer in silence. And looks like nobody cares.

Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan was born on February 4, 1921 in Peoria, Illinois, USA. Her mother was a journalist and worked on a newspaper before marry. When she married, she had to give up her dream job and the loss of that career affected her deeply. Later she tried to make Betty to pursue the career in journalism that she was never able to achieve.

When she was young, she usually wrote about how she felt isolated from society, and her passion against injustice. In high school she became involved in the school newspaper and launched a magazine with six other friends called "Tide". The articles were about home life as opposed to school life. She was doing the journalism work that her mother would like she had done.

She married Carl Friedan in 1947, however she didn't stop writing like her mother. She kept on writing even when she was raising three children. But somehow she felt unfulfilled by her role as wife and mother. It was not enough for her.

Women at that time were victims of a pervasive system of delusions and false values that urged them to find their fulfillment and identity vicariously, through their husbands and children.

Due to a small investigation she got replies from two hundred women who revealed that they were unhappy with their lives. She later wrote an article based on her findings, but the editors of the women's magazines with whom she had previously worked refused to publish it. Those refusals only made her more determined to share her findings with the world. She decided to investigate the problem on a much larger scale and publish a book.

Friedan published the book "The Feminine Mystique" in 1963, which began by describing what she called "the problem that has no name". The book was very successful, selling over three million copies. It helped to drive the second wave of feminism and the women's movement. She demanded that women be given more rights.

"Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night - she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—'Is this all?' ". Women felt frustrated, her dreams weren't being fulfilled, they were alone and had to keel silence. They didn't have a choice, they didn't have a voice. They had to accept to be submissive and perform the traditional and passive role of women in society.

As a consequence, women started a rebellion to fight for equality between men and women in public services, in work, in education, in pay and in opportunities.

From 1966 to 1970, Betty Friedan co-founded the National Organization for Women (NOW) which was dedicated to achieving equality of opportunities for women.

She also helped to found NARAL an association which defends women's choices in abortion, birth control, sexual health and contraception.

We should think that if now we, women, can be protected in a sexual relation or have the choice to opt if we want to have a baby or not, we owe it to anyone. Anyone worried about us. Thank you, Betty. 

Violence against women

Even though we are in the 21st century, violence against women is still a common issue in our society. Women's rights aren't being respected and nobody cares, not even the governments take any action in order to protect women and punish their batterers. And this is totally wrong!

Violence can be physical, psychological or sexual agression, and the most shocking fact is that it is commited by a man who is really close to the victim. In the developing countries not only due to a great lack of education allied to the totally wrong mentality of the people, but also because of religion matters or traditions, women are not valued and they are treated as garbage. In some situations women are trafficked to work in forced prostitution or to marry and have sex with a person they don't desire.  

In the developed countries women are more valued, but they don't have the same rights as men. Yet, most of the victims prefer to hide themselves instead of sharing their stories with friends or family or looking for help, because they are ashamed of what happens to them. 

In Europe domestic violence is the biggest cause of death and disability for women between the ages of 16 and 44. Every year 6-10 per cent of the women in Europe suffer domestic violence. In the USA one woman is battered every 15 second, usually by her partner. 45% women and 26% men had experienced at least one incident of inter-personal violence in their lifetimes. On average, two women a week are killed by a violent partner or ex-partner.

The following real story is about Michelle, a woman who has suffered from domestic violence for four years. She said in an online website that her husband used to make her feel useless, as if she couldn’t do anything properly on her own and he called her bad names too often. Their relationship took that long because every time he kicked or punched her, he said he was sorry and he always told her how much he loved her. But then she got pregnant and it got ten times worse, she stated. In the end he kicked her so badly that she lost the baby. Time come to leave him.

To conclude violence against women is an entire disrespect of human rights, and in my opinion men who keep with this practice should be severally punished or sent to jail. In the future I hope the number of the victims will diminish and women can have a voice, defend their opinions and take full control of their bodies because they aren't property of man at all!

Mahatma Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in India in 2 October 1869. Later, he adopted the name "Mahatma", which means "great soul". His parents were merchants, however he broke the caste tradition and went to England at the age of 19, to study law. The other students didn't like him and they avoided Gandhi because he was an Indian.

He went to South Africa in 1893, where he developed his politics of peaceful protests and struggled to obtain basic rights for Indian immigrants who lived there and who suffered from racism. He founded the Natal Indian Congress to agitate for Indian rights in 1894.

He was the country's first "coloured" lawyer to be admitted to the bar. However, he was sent to jail twice because he didn't obey to anti-Asian laws.

In 1914 he returned to India where he lauched a campaign of peaceful non-cooperation with the British authorities which included boycotts of British goods and institutions, like courts and government. Besides, Gandhi led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, ending untouchability and increasing economic self-reliance. He was imprisioned again from 1922 to 1924.

India finally won independence in 1947. Unfortunately, one year later on 30 January 1948, Gandhi was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist who thought Gandhi was too sympathetic to India's Muslims.

During his lifetime he lived modestly in a self-sufficient residential community and wore the traditional Indian dhoti and shawl, he was a dedicated vegetarian and he sought to practice non-violence and truth in all situations, and advocated that others do the same. 

He is known in India as the Father of the Nation. His birthday, 2 October, is commemorated there as Gandhi Jayanti, a national holiday, and world-wide as the International Day of Non-Violence.

Dalits

The term "Dalits" stands for broken people, people who are denied all possible human rights, and consequently they are victims of social discrimination. More than 160 million people in India are considered "Untouchable"—people tainted by their birth into a caste system that deems them impure, less than human. Dalits have been oppressed, culturally subjugated, and politically marginalized.

Dalits face pain and violence every day. They live in constant fear of being publicly humiliated, paraded naked, beaten, tortured, burnt alive and raped with impunity by upper-caste Hindus seeking to keep them in their place. Merely walking through an upper-caste neighborhood is a life-threatening offense.

Dalits are not allowed to eat with other caste members, to marry with other caste members, to enter into village temples, to ride a bicycle inside the village, to wear sandals or holding umbrellas in front of dominant caste members.

This broken people are forced to perform the most disgusting jobs that nobody wants to do. Some are forced to clean toilets, transport human excreta manually, clear animal carcasses and human remains, while others are forced to work in the hazardous leather and tanning industry.

If a Dalit enters a tea shop and request a cup of tea, they are served in a clay cup rather than a glass or metal cup that others receive. After drinking their tea, they are expected to crush the cup on the ground so that no other person risks being polluted by the cup the Dalit touched.

The Dalits are history’s longest standing oppressed people group. The only parallel to the practice of untouchability was apartheid. In a country where everybody is supposed to have equal rights and opportunities, one out of four people is condemned to be untouchable.

Every hour two Dalits are assaulted; every day three Dalit women are raped, two Dalits are murdered, and two Dalit homes are torched.

Child Marriage

Although both girls and boys can suffer from this violation of human rights, there are mostly girls who are forced to marry an older man. According to Universal Declaration of Human Rights, people have the right to free and full consent to a marriage. Anyone under the age of 18 is not able to make a fully informed choice whether or not to marry; even if a young girl consents to marry, she has no idea about her decision. 

Child marriages occurs due to poverty, in the majority of the cases. Parents who have few resources cannot afford school for their daughters, instead they see marriage as a way of giving them a better future by providing male guardianship, protect them from sexual assault, avoid pregnancy outside marriage, and hope they can benefit from it financially. However, girls who marry young have an increased chance of being poor and remaining poor.

The consequences of child marriage are several. Girls are sexual abused and exploited. They have to face a separation from family and friends and become social isolated. They cannot count on anyone except on themselves. 

Child marriage compromises the girls' development once they are forced into sexual activity with her husband at an age where the bride is not physically and sexually mature. This has severe health consequences. Furthermore they are exposed to such serious health risks such as early pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, like HIV/AIDS.

They are constantly under pressure, they always have to perform large amounts of domestic work, take care of their children while still children themselves, and they have no opportunities for employment and self-realisation.

Child marriage is a worldwide phenomenon but is most prevalent in Africa and Southern Asia. It is estimated that in the next decade more than 100 million girls are likely to be married before the age of eighteen. That is 25,000 new child brides every single day for the next ten years. 

Due to these facts governments must take immediate action! For example they can establish 18 as the legal age of marriage for girls, as well as boys, and ensure its implementation. Promoting birth and marriage registration will help enforce these laws. Besides expanding children’s knowledge and empowerment is crucial, particularly for girls once educated girls are less likely to agree to marry at a young age.

Couple guilty of trafficking children

Mohamed and his wife Petra were arrested yesterday by the national police cooperation, because of the selling of children in an auction in Mirjapur, India. They are the founders of an employment agency, which the main objective was negotiating children to work in factories, earning money with their pass.

Their employment agency hired children both from India and China. They used to talk to parents in a very difficult economic situation, and say that if their children went with them, they would get good education in order to have better job opportunities in the future. They made parents sign a document and Mohamed told them it was said that their kids would have a better life. Because parents were illiterate they did not understand what was really written in the document and they actually signed it. Then kids went with Mohamed and Petra, and they sold them to factories.

In the factories, children were forced to work too many hours a day in very poor conditions, doing very hard tasks and receiving very low salaries. Sometimes they only got a bowl of food during a whole day. They were kept working with threats to death if they tried to escape.

"They used to hit us if we have done something wrong. We are only kids, we cannot do everything perfect. Nobody does.", said one of the children when asked about the life in a factory. "It was not a school at all.", another one accomplished.

As child labour is prohibited in India and in China some people have joined together and created a foundation against this kind of human rights violation. It is called "Children are not slaves!" and has done a lot of progress recognizing children's rights by the government and making it take action in these situations by punishing people. The members of this association are currently organizing an operation to alert the most number of parents as they can so that in the future the number of children trafficked will diminish.

Education for better health

It's a human right for everybody to have education for free, at least basic school, so governments have a duty to ensure that every child is able to realize this right to receive a free basic education. We can find the highest attendance of primary school in four continents such as Europa, America, Asia and Oceania, but in some countries of Africa there are still kids uneducated. Even though school is free, they cannot attend it because they are poor kids and have to work to get money to help their families to survive, or because they are orphans and they don't have nobody to tell them to go to school or they are children with disabilities. Another reason is the fact that some schools are way too far from some children's homes and the walk to school can be unsafe and very dangerous, specially for girls. Also they cannot attend school because they are forced to leave their homes to fight in war. 

Why is it so important to kids in poor countries to attend school? Well firstly, educating children helps reduce poverty. Not only reducing poverty but also diseases. How? In school children learn basic skills like reading and writing. With these skills they develop others and get more confidence. As a result they will have a better life, because they can find a better job to support their families. Countries where more people go to school and become literate are able to grow their economies more quickly and become less poor.

School gives to the little kids a safe environment and support. In school kids can socialize and make new friends which can be a way to escape of the daily problems they have at home.

Education improves children's health because at school children may receive vaccines and medical assistance, fresh water and nutrient food. Besides, there children can learn how to prevent/avoid diseases such as HIV/AIDS and malaria. A study found that AIDS spreads twice as fast among uneducated girls as it did among girls who were educated.

There are some organizations which the main aim is education for every child around the world. One of them is UNICEF (stands for the Universal Nations Children's Education Fund) and its goal is to ensure that by 2015 all children in the world have access to primary school and actually complete it. That hasn't been an easy task once there are still 93 million children who don't attend school. More than 95% of these children live in developing countries and the majority are girls. Another 150 million children will drop out before they finish primary school.

In my opinion richer countries should give extra aid to poorer countries to help them improving their school systems, building  more schools in more places so children don't have to travel too far to get courses, plus there should be a higher number of teachers with experience and training to avoid one teacher for a huge number of students. It is especially important that many of these teachers are women because hiring more women teachers can help increase the numbers of girls that go to school, and that can help make sure girls and boys are treated equally in the classroom.

Who is Emmanuel Jal?

Emmanuel Jal is nowadays a hip hop star who sings about what happened to him. He was born in Sudan and at the age of seven his mother was killed by soldiers. Then he decided to be one of the ten thousand children who went to Ethiopia because they had been told they would be educated there. But it was a totally lie and they were forced to fight in Second Sudanese Civil War.

Fortunately he was very lucky and he survived, but many of the children who were fighting along him did not. After the war he went to school in Kenya and he started a completely different life. Then he went to America to tell his story to the world through the messages conveyed in his music. 

"Music is powerful. It is the only thing that can speak into your mind, your heart and your soul without your permission," he says. He feels the responsability to help kids who fight in war because he was once one of them. Approximately 250,000 children under the age of 18 are thought to be fighting in conflits around the world. 

His album "WARchild" was the first lauched in America and it describes war and his desire of changing mentalities, specially the clear message that children have no place in wars.

He also participes in several campaigns of non-profit African's organizations, besides he has found a charity named Gua Africa. "Gua" means "peace" in Sudan's language. That organization is dedicated to educating children affected by war and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

Brandenburger Tor

The Brandenburger Tor is a monumental gate, which replaced an older city gate, built in the 18th century as a symbol of peace. It is situated at the end of Unter den Linden, a grand boulevard in Berlin, Germany. This gate is related with the worst moments of the Berlin's history and is probably the most well-known landmark in Berlin, it now stands as a symbol of the reunification of the two sides of this great city.

The gate led directly to the city palace of the Prussian monarchs. It was commissioned by King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia as a sign of peace and built by Carl Gotthard Langhans from 1788 to 1791.

The gate consists of twelve Greek-style Doric columns, six to each side, forming five passageways. Citizens originally were allowed to use only the outermost two. Atop the gate is the Quadriga, a chariot drawn by four horses driven by Victoria, the Roman goddess of victory. In 1806, during Berlin's occupation by France, Napoleon ordered the quadriga to be taken to Paris. After the Battle of Waterloo, the quadriga was triumphantly taken back to Berlin, and it was turned into a symbol of victory, that's why the quadriga is called Victoria.

During WWII the Brandenburger Tor was badly damaged but not destroyed by allied bombing. After WWII, the gate was incorporated into the Berlin wall during the years of Communist government. Consequently, it became a symbol of a divided city.

With the fall of the wall in November 1989, people flocked to the reopened Brandenburger Tor to celebrate. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the gate has become the symbol of a reunified Berlin and a symbol of unity.

The importance of Barack Obama in America's society

Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961. His father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas, and he was born in Hawaii, raised with the help of his grandfather, who served in Patton's army, and his grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management at a bank.

Although he has humble origins and African roots, he was given a chance to graduate from Harvard Law School, one of the most selective and distinguished schools, before ascending to the position of the USA presidential candidate.

He was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4, 2008. Besides, he was the first African-American president ever in human history, which is an extraordinary achievement.

The election of Obama represents the merits of American democracy, in a society deeply characterized by slavery and prejudice. He recruited to his candidacy voters of all stripes: black, white, Hispanic, southerners and northerners, educated and non-educated, the politically engaged and those who had previously stayed on the sidelines, which means that Americans placed their faith in Obama and turned their backs to the past.

Right after he was elected, he made a victory speech in which he conveyed a message to all the American people. In that speech he talks about a woman, Ann Nixon Cooper, who was 106 years old at that time (she has already died) and who hadn't been able to vote for several years just because of the color of her skin and to the fact that she was a woman.

But now things are different and she has seen America being through several changes during the last century.

The whole speech is all about hope and faith, and although there have been progresses, Obama says "there is so much more to do". He holds a promise of uniting the country to bring all the races together and to look toward a common future, and finally begin the healing process that centuries of discrimination and oppression have inflicted.

Obama was a unique candidate who faced a new American electorate. Also, the times in which we live played a huge role in his election. Obama made himself the candidate of change just at the right moment.

In my opinion, this human dimension of his triumph is more important than the details of his election program. This victory opened a new door of possibilities for America and for the world. People in other countries see America differently now and Americans have a chance to think again about who they are.

If I had had a vote, I would definitely have given it to Obama!

A big surprise (short story)

Jakob was absolutely furious when he saw what was going on outside his window. He was sleeping when a tremendous noise coming from the street woke him up. Still half asleep, he went to check, trying to find out where the noise was coming from.

At the first sign, he couldn't believe what he saw: construction machines, lots of them to be honest, were everywhere around the park in front of his house. There were also workers dressed with a horrible yellow jacket. They were destroying the park - his park, or at least the park where he had spent his childhood.

Completely furious, he went outside and found some people protesting against it. He realized that the workers had permission to destroy the park in order to build a shopping center.
"How could that be possible?", it was the only thing Jakob could think about. For him the human race was terrible, destroying lots of lives and ecosystems to build a place to reinforce one of the biggest diseases of this century: consumerism.

The future of the English language

It is proved nowadays that English is the most widely spoken language all over the world. It is the language of business, international politics, advertising, the recording industry, science, technology, travel, media, and especially the Internet. People can communicate all over the world thanks to this language. If it weren't for the English language, it would be difficult for people from different countries to communicate effectively. Therefore, it has become a link between many different cultures.

The English language emerged in Britain and gained a lot of importance due to the British overseas empire. It was the dominant language in these colonies until after World War II when the British lost their power to the USA. This is why English is such an important language. The USA is a powerful country with an enormous economy and industry that uses English as the universal language to communicate with people from many different countries.

What's next? What is the future for the English language?

English is being learned all over the world as a first foreign language. In general, this is making it the most learned language outside the English speaking countries. On the other hand, the population in the countries in which English is the first language is steadily declining.

As a result, many new varieties of English will develop in these countries. Each country has its own pronunciation of many English words, and they also have their own way of adapting to the English language. While adapting to the English language, they are also trying to find a way to learn the language while trying to express their ethnic identity.

In conclusion, we can't say there will only be one form of English. In the future, it's possible to say that English will be combined with other languages and it may come to be spoken in many different variations that we can refer to as "New Englishes."

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Introducing me

Have you ever had something you would like to try? Like something different? Like something you supposed you hadn't any time to do it, but you still can find some?

That's what I'm pourposing to myself as a new year's resolution. Writing is something I enjoy to do, something that allows me to be free. So I'm starting this blog to publish some texts I often write. Also I'm publishing some articles about current topics nowadays. I don't have any target readers, this blog is to everybody whom it may concern.

I just noticed I haven't really introduced myself. Where should I begin? Well I'm Sara and so you know. Maybe through the texts in the blog there may be a lot of english mistakes, and I guess it's normal to happen because I'm from Portugal and I'm still learning English as a second language. Also, this blog can help me writing better English and have a good score in my English FCE exam that I'm doing this year.

So I have this little invitation to you: will you be my reader? 

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