Bloggers Unite For Human Rights Day

Today is Bloggers Unite for Human Rights Day. Blog Catalog and Amnesty International have joined forces to increase awareness of human rights violations in the world. They have urged the bloggers who have signed up to blog about a human rights issue today.

The first article in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights states that:

” All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”

The basic rights to life: freedom of speech and religion, freedom from torture, and the right to health, education and an adequate standard of living are violated throughout the world every day.

The recent cyclone in Myanmar is a grim example of this. In Myanmar before the cyclone hit, 90% of the population were living below the poverty line. 60% of the population consisted of women and children. Now thousands of people are dead, missing, homeless, displaced, dispossessed, desperate. They have no homes, no food, no water. There is a real and terrible threat of cholera, malaria, and other diseases.

The people of Myanmar need aid desperately but the country is under a military regime, which is prepared to receive supplies but will not allow foreign aid workers into the country. Without those foreign aid workers there is no guarantee the aid will be distributed at all.

In the aftermath of a national disaster it is one’s right to receive aid if needed. The Burmese generals are denying their people that right. I hope that this movement, this day, will raise awareness of the need in Myanmar for relief and recovery.

Imagine your home, your heart, your life, being hauled apart by the wind and the rain. Imagine the thought of your life, your breath, being peeled back like the husk on an ear of corn, then blown away. Imagine watching your mother die. Your father. Your sister. And being able to do nothing about it. Imagine hearing screams of terror, of pain, and blocking your ears only to realise you are the one doing the screaming.

Imagine afterwards when it is quiet and you can do nothing but stand, all skin and bone, the storm still raging in your veins, unable to recognise the place you have lived in all your life. And knowing, really knowing, with a pain that thrusts its ragged fingers into your heart, that you have nothing but the damp, mouldering clothes you are standing in.

Spread the word, raise awareness, our responsibility is a collective one. One voice can become a thousand voices very quickly. This day isn’t about being part of a fashionable cause, it’s about keeping people alive. Raise your voice. You can make a difference.

The Faithful

This week on Writers Island the prompt is - faithful.

If you enjoy writing you should give Writers Island a go.

It’s a great way of challenging yourself.

Here is my story.

THE FAITHFUL

The city looks French-washed from the rooftops; brushed with white by the mist of early morning. We sleep on roofs now. There’s less hassle that way, but the cold, the cold hangs in the air, dropping on the rooftops like snow, seeping into our skin till we feel weals rise like ice.

At night we watch the stars, wrapped in newspaper and sacking we steal from fruit shops. Some of us drink, plotting the constellations, seeing what we think is Alpha Centauri and Orion; wishing we were far enough north to see the Aurora Borealis. We have heard it is like a glimpse of heaven.

Boz stays up all night. He is the self-proclaimed leader. Ambitious, adamant, shameful. We look up to him. We fear him. We love him. We are the faithful.

When I was a kid I dreamed of this time. My sweet sixteen. I planned the dress and the party for years. Three shades of pink with hand-stitched beading and fruit punch in crystal bowls with extra strawberries in every glass. And maybe an ice sculpture, preferably a swan.

I never dreamed I would end up on the streets. I never thought things would fall apart so suddenly. It’s like an earthquake came but only hit my life, turning everything to rubble. I try not to think of it, of how I got here, but sometimes at night I cry as if I am mourning someone who is dead, except the person who has died is me; and actually, I am still alive.

Ceece helps. She is my best friend, my sister. She hates sleeping on the roof because the cold gets into her bad leg and aches all night. She is 17. Her Dad shot her in the leg and the bones never healed properly because Ceece was afraid the people in the hospital would put her into care and she ran down the fire escape stairs when the nurse wasn’t looking. Sometimes it hurts so bad she wails like the poor little stray cats you hear down by the river, calling for their mothers. Then I steal painkillers from convenience stores and heat pads that I warm on the air conditioning units of the big offices round the corner - and orange juice because Ceece needs her vitamins.

Boz thinks Ceece is a liability. ‘She can’t run like the wind,’ he says. ‘My faithful need to run like the wind to back me up. A general needs his soldiers with him at all times, not limping along like an old granny.’

Boz wants to let Ceece go, to leave her floundering down by the docks where the drunks holler and trade insults. ‘Over my dead body,’ I say. ‘If Ceece goes, I go.’ ‘Don’t push me,’ says Boz, throwing bricks onto car windscreens and laughing in the high-pitched, whiny way he has that gets on your nerves. It is his favourite sport. To throw things.

I can take liberties with Boz, give him cheek, because I am valuable. I am a good thief. Exemplary. Penultimate. I have techniques no one else has. I can walk silent as a ghost. No one knows I am there. And I can run like the wind just the way Boz likes.

The other night I was mad. Really mad. Boz cornered a young guy on his way home from work and stole all his money. Two hundred in cash. We can eat for a month on that. But Boz couldn’t stop there. He had to teach the guy a lesson. That’s his thing, his mantra – teaching people a lesson, as if it’s their fault he’s living on the streets. He and his main thugs – Hanny and Sid – worked the guy over. The guy’s eye puffed up like someone had poured tomato pulp all over his face. Blood was pouring out of his mouth. Ceece and I were screaming at them to stop but they wouldn’t. The guy whimpered, desolate, like he could feel his life slipping away from him and I felt like I was going to throw up. I grabbed a piece of wood from a dumpster and hit them with it. I knocked out one of Hanny’s teeth and put twelve splinters in Sid’s face but I didn’t care. I wanted them to stop.

They ran off, dragging Ceece with them. I used the last bit of money I had to call an ambulance. I hid behind a stack of bins while the paramedics examined the guy. Their faces were grim. They didn’t speak to one another. I knew what that meant.

Now Boz wants me to think about what I have done, to re-examine my position. Ceece is in tears thinking of how she’ll get by without me. She doesn’t know that no matter where I go, I’ll take her with me.

I am in a bit of a sweat. I am used to this life. The streets aren’t so bad when you have a pack to run with, but on your own it’s a different story. Or with Ceece. She has no outstanding survival skills, she just tags along and hopes for the best. Sleeping with one eye open is only fun when you’re pretending you’re in a movie – like James Bond or The Bourne Identity. When you’re sleeping with one eye open for real it means days, weeks of no sleep. And the world becomes shrouded in fog.

Sometimes I have a waking dream where I dream with my eyes open. I call it my oasis dream like I have been stuck in the desert for days with no water and suddenly I see a shimmering lake surrounded by palm trees where I can drink gallons and gallons of exquisite water, sweet and cold. An oasis dream can never come true because it is an illusion. I know that but it doesn’t stop me from dreaming it anyway.

I dream of a mother who looks and me and smiles. And a bedroom with clean sheets and pillows as big as the span of my arms. There is roast chicken and chocolate pudding for dinner. And hot cocoa with cream.

My mother knows I am cut and bruised, that much of me is frayed at the edges. She sees my struggles to put myself back together, to fill in the cracks and the chips. ‘Don’t give up,’ she says. ‘I am with you.’ Then I shake my head and she is gone. So is the lake. It was just an oasis, after all.

Ceece has come to sit beside me. The lights are amber in the darkening city. We can see all the way to the waterfront, see the beacons on the tug boats. We talk about the joke we have where we stowaway on a ship all the way to the South Pacific. We would get jobs cleaning hotel rooms in some big holiday resort and live in a little house on the beach. It is a dream we share.

‘Boz says we’re out,’ says Ceece. ‘We’re useless, both liabilities. That we’re on our own.’ There is a slight tremor in her voice. She is afraid. If I were to tell the truth right now, right this minute, I would admit that suddenly the night seems too large. There is so much space out there in the dark. But I lie because Ceece needs me to. ‘We’ll be fine on our own, ‘ I say. ‘We’ll get our own little flat with a TV and proper beds. We’ll even get some books, bestsellers. It’ll be the life we’ve always wanted.’

Ceece sighs. She is happy. She snuggles against me and quickly falls into sleep. I am dizzy, resolute, exposed. I am no longer one of the faithful. I am just me. I knew that one day it would come to this. I knew that there is a danger the present can be just like the past. But I know that the future is unmapped, untrammeled; ever-changing like the sea. And that is enough for me.

Cooking Stories

One of the prompts from Cricket’s Slice Of Life this week is - a cooking experience.

When I was a child my mother and grandmother used to bake in my grandmother’s spacious kitchen. There was an enormous oak table in the middle of the kitchen that contained all the ingredients needed for baking. My cousin and I made a game of asking where everything came from.

‘Where does cinnamon come from?’ we would ask.

‘From the far, far East,’ said my grandmother. ‘Where men wear long, flowing robes made of the finest silk and rings as beautiful as that of any King. The cinnamon flavours their tea and their puddings and maybe, just maybe, it is flown to Ireland on a magic carpet threaded with real gold.’

‘Where do apricots come from?’ we asked.

‘From sunny glades in Italy where entire fields are full of trees bearing dark orange fruit so that when you look out of your window in the morning you think the fairies have cut tiny orange circles out of the sun and placed them amongst the green leaves.’

‘Where do walnuts come from?’ we asked.

‘From a place called California where people rejoice in the sunlight and the land is full of richness and plenty and smiles are wide and warm. And sometimes, people say, the streets are paved with gold.’

This game would go on for hours. We would seek out more and more exotic ingredients to add to our stable of stories. Allspice, ginger, star anise, saffron, tamarind, juniper berries.

Our hands smelled of brown sugar and currants. We lived for days on the taste of the stories rather than on anything that was baked. There was a power in adding milk to batter and sifting flour. We laughed and talked and laughed some more. We were safe. We were busy. We were euphoric.

As the smell of scones, bread and tea cake wafted under the doors, the sparrows and robins gathered, watching us from window sills. We couldn’t be sure if they had arrived to taste the baking or to hear the stories. My grandmother shook the crumbs from plates and aprons onto the ground and the birds feasted as we had.

As we fell sticky and full into bed the scent of the day’s cooking lingered, and we dreamed with delight of a bigger world.

Little Wren

In the garden today I saw a piece of silver paper, long as a ribbon, flowing behind the deep pink face of a camellia like a wedding train. It had been blown, separated from somebody’s present, maybe a gift for someone’s mother, up into the wide, blue sky and had fallen like a dream into the pink upturned faces of the perfect flowers.

A little bird came down, a tiny wren, catching sight of his reflection and prancing, performing a show for the flowers. He smiled at himself in the silver paper mirror, charmed by his own beauty, warbling at his delicate feet and shimmering wings.

The wind swooped, twisting the silver, snatching it back up to the sky where it coiled and whirled like a shooting star. The wren watched, momentarily deflated, then raised his wings to the light and followed.

Mother’s Day.

Mother’s Day can be hard for many people. For people whose mothers have passed on, for mothers who have lost children, for people who are estranged from their mothers. For women who have tried unsuccessfully to have children for years. The day can be a painful reminder of what you don’t have rather than what you do.

Every year my friend, Jules, sends her mother flowers on Mother’s Day. And waits for a call from her Mum whom she hasn’t spoken to for 12 years. Last year she waited and waited, and like every year, heard nothing. She drove past her mother’s house and saw the beautiful bouquet she had spent over a hundred dollars on unceremoniously dumped in her mother’s bin.

Jules and her mother are estranged because her mother, a wealthy socialite, doesn’t approve of Jules’ choice of partner. Ben is an artist and musician. A soul of the earth. One of the most giving, caring, nicest men I have ever met. He loves Jules and their two kids but he has no money and in Jules’ mother’s eyes that is a mortal sin. She had a man picked out for Jules who had a top corporate job, went to all the best schools, came from the best family, and had all the right connections, but Jules didn’t fall for him the way she fell for Ben.

Obviously, the backstory is a little more convoluted than I am able to tell here; there were infractions such as Jules and Ben being busted years ago for growing pot, but the gist of the matter is that Jules’ mother has rejected her only daughter because her partner is unsuitable in a socioeconomic sense.

Jules finds Mother’s Day difficult. She has chosen a life that suits her, that allows her to be the person she wants to be. She feels her mother has rejected her for being herself. So on this day, I say, give a hug to those people you know who for one reason or another find Mother’s Day difficult and give thanks if there is a positive motherly influence in your own life, whether it be your own mother or not.

And now I’m off to fire up the barbecue because I don’t actually feel I ate enough yesterday (yeah, right) and it’s time for a nice, juicy steak. And I have people here who are mothers, who have lost their mothers, have children who live overseas whom they never get to see, and who are estranged from their mothers, who need to be fed. And we’re going to enjoy the day together and forget for a bit how complicated family life can be, because for the moment, we all have each other, and I do believe that family is where you find it. Have a good day.