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| A family stands outside their makeshift tent in BadBado camp in Mogadishu, Somalia
© Kate Holt/IRIN |
We all have a story to tell: our own history.
We share it with our friends and our relatives. When we suffer, we seek consolation of someone close. And in the happy times, we expect to share them with those around us. A succession of moments, happy and not so happy, that make up our lives.
Even the individual history of each one of the millions of people living in absolute poverty is a succession of shared moments, of solace, pains and joys, in short, the story of a life.
And so is the history of peoples. A history that lasts generations and speaks of times of prosperity and times of decline. Of wars and peace. Of justice and injustice. With the only difference that the history of peoples is written by the rulers through the media, while the personal history is written by each individual.
No one can steal our own personal history. Perhaps the only thing that truly belongs to us.
However, there are peoples whose history barely appears in the media.
Forgotten stories of hunger, of misery, of death, of rapes, of slavery, of evictions, or of exploitation. Only appearing on covers when they reach unimagined levels of cruelty.
And what is the history of a people but the history of their peoples?
Women and girls who hide their faces in shame for having been raped. Their silent scream of rage and pain due to the impunity enjoyed by their attackers.
Mothers and fathers who make every possible effort to care for their malnourished children, mourning their deaths and leaving their fates to Divine Providence.
Children who are exploited, sometimes even enslaved, who dream of going to school, leaving behind a past of work, and prepare themselves for a better future.
Families evicted from their land, without roots and without means of livelihood.
Entire communities fleeing armed conflict, traveling hundreds of miles to refugee camps where thousands of displaced people are crowded together.
Millions of helpless human beings with a story to tell of which we know very little, except that they also need solace and to share their meager joys.
Tell their stolen stories, break the silence and get them out of oblivion is perhaps the best way to console them and make them feel connected to the world around them, that somehow has contributed to their history and has an inescapable responsibility to change their fates. For if a people can not tell their stories will be doomed to oblivion and extinction.
We share it with our friends and our relatives. When we suffer, we seek consolation of someone close. And in the happy times, we expect to share them with those around us. A succession of moments, happy and not so happy, that make up our lives.
Even the individual history of each one of the millions of people living in absolute poverty is a succession of shared moments, of solace, pains and joys, in short, the story of a life.
And so is the history of peoples. A history that lasts generations and speaks of times of prosperity and times of decline. Of wars and peace. Of justice and injustice. With the only difference that the history of peoples is written by the rulers through the media, while the personal history is written by each individual.
No one can steal our own personal history. Perhaps the only thing that truly belongs to us.
However, there are peoples whose history barely appears in the media.
Forgotten stories of hunger, of misery, of death, of rapes, of slavery, of evictions, or of exploitation. Only appearing on covers when they reach unimagined levels of cruelty.
And what is the history of a people but the history of their peoples?
Women and girls who hide their faces in shame for having been raped. Their silent scream of rage and pain due to the impunity enjoyed by their attackers.
Mothers and fathers who make every possible effort to care for their malnourished children, mourning their deaths and leaving their fates to Divine Providence.
Children who are exploited, sometimes even enslaved, who dream of going to school, leaving behind a past of work, and prepare themselves for a better future.
Families evicted from their land, without roots and without means of livelihood.
Entire communities fleeing armed conflict, traveling hundreds of miles to refugee camps where thousands of displaced people are crowded together.
Millions of helpless human beings with a story to tell of which we know very little, except that they also need solace and to share their meager joys.
Tell their stolen stories, break the silence and get them out of oblivion is perhaps the best way to console them and make them feel connected to the world around them, that somehow has contributed to their history and has an inescapable responsibility to change their fates. For if a people can not tell their stories will be doomed to oblivion and extinction.
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