Blog 10- Sight

Hey guys, I hope you are having a very merry Christmas and joyous holidays. If this may not be the case for you then I still hope you are having a pleasant day! This will be my last blog for now, after this I will just take a break for a bit and I will also be looking forward to seeing some interactions with my blog if that is possible! If I see more people intrigued then I will plan something new for another blog. We have raised a lot of money during this time and I couldn’t have done it without you all! Today, the eve of Christmas eve, I am going to talk about Mahraj Ali who is an Afghan boy and lives with his family (father, mother, 5 sisters and one brother) in a district in Muzaffarabad, Azad Kashmir. His father works as a waste picker (along with his son) and his mother is a housewife. He has an angelic face and is, unfortunately, typically quite small for his age. Luckily, his father came up to Children First for help.

The eyes are powerful things, just right after the heart and mind I would say. The eyes have the power to make us see the world and give us something to perceive in our minds. Without them we wouldn’t have anything to perceive things around us...or at least not fully because we can still do this with our noses, mouths, and ears but for me the eyes are really important for some reason. They can change things almost instantly. Maybe this is why as soon as something gets modified in the physical structure of the eyes we become disturbed when looking at them and maybe even scared (referring to horror movies or things as such).

Mahraj Ali’s eyes are immense and reassemble swimming pools of caramel and cocoa along with a hint of honey. The pupils are dark and deep, tunnels leading to the outside world, and framing these beautiful colors are thick eyelashes that form a dark line almost around them. They seem wise despite the age of the little boy and it is quite a pity that these shiny, lively eyes see their only world as it is. These eyes, along with all the others, do not deserve what they see in front of them, they are worthy of so much more. The eyes need to widen with joy when the mouths laugh and teeth gleam. They need to close peacefully when their ears listen to the sweet notes of songs and lullabies and they need to crease a little bit at the corners with a smile when the nose sniffs at good aromas of fresh food placed right there, for them.

Hopefully, the eyes will see a better future, especially with the help you all have given me. This boy is still smiling thankfully and with your help, he and others will continue smiling and not just their mouths, but the eyes too! They will hopefully keep surviving, keep fighting for their future while we help them, keep dreaming, keep laughing all in the hopes that they too will be found some day. It will only be for certain when more people start to realize what world we are ALL living in and not only their own little bubbles. This may take a bit for some to do but I do not stop for anything and certainly Children First will not. I will keep going and I will be glad if you would be willing to help me. Not me, these children. I will end with a quote from Helen Keller, “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but not vision”. Thank you all, have a very delightful rest of the day/evening!

Have a happy new year! (Hopefully some things will go back to normal at some point next year!)

Bye for now!

#gooutthereandchangetheworld

Blog 9-Survivor

Hello reader, It is in fact the ninth blog and I am really touched by every story I have read of every child so far. They all, even if different, send out the same message and that is that they are all just trying to make the most out of their lives. I will talk about an orphaned girl by her father. Fortunately enough, her mother is with her. Uqba lives with her mother and three sisters as well as two brothers. Their mother is a housewife while the father passed away due to a brain condition. The money that comes in is not much and provides the family with just some very basic and little food. The death of a loved one is one of the most soul damaging and heart breaking events that will at some point happen. It is that which scares us...the not knowing when it may happen. It is especially hard when it occurs when you are at such a young age with fundamental memories still having to be made and you still need that person in your life, for support, for love and also for the good times. It is just not right for life to be taken away from us so quickly, almost as if it had not meant anything in the first place, but it DID mean something! A lot! That is what hurts us. I cannot imagine the exact feelings Uqba may go through and how they come and go, like very long trains passing stations or if they always stay stationary.

Whatever these sentiments may be, she still shows her beaming grin and that is heartwarming. With all the coughing she may do due to lung infections in the winter, the illnesses she may be enduring, the skinny body she has as well as some dental conditions too, it is so encouraging to see someone like that still smile, like a survivor from an earthquake sticking their hand out from beneath the rubble and waving. Yet here some of us are, lamenting about how things didn’t go out as well as we expected it to and getting mad and frustrated at ourselves as well as everyone else around us while, at the exact same time, there is Uqba still smiling and her eyes still hoping. Her house is small and cramped, but it is the only home she has, her bed is the only bed she has, her siblings; the only siblings she has, her food, the only she has. So everything is treated like a gift because in reality it is one. The House, Children First, is the only opportunity she has so she makes use of that to the fullest, there is also no time to sit there and cry and get lost in mental things because if they waste time doing that, they won’t get the money needed for food. So what I think she may have figured out is that it is best to keep going and to not stop, otherwise it will all come tumbling down. Sort of like a bicycle; you have to keep pedaling otherwise you lose balance and fall.

So she incessantly goes to the grubby, grimy, garbage, collects it and will also incessantly look forward to the time in the House. What gets thrown at Uqba may slap her in the face or hit her in the stomach but she stands. Seeing this tiny figure be stronger than me, just because I live the more fortunate life is mind twisting but in a good sense. I really do wish that this suffering ends though because as much as it may make someone vigilant, it could also slowly eat them inside. It consumes them until there is almost nothing to consume but the bare, white bones. So, if you could donate, raise awareness, help me spread the word or share these blogs with someone, it could change someone’s way of life. I, just by doing this, learned new things and found a way to tend to my ignorance in some topics. Though I must say, I did already know a lot about these children. Hopefully, you will feel something too!

Thank you guys, have an amazing rest of the day/evening!

Blog 8-The two sides

Hey! We have come a long way but I still feel I haven’t said enough! Words just tumble out accompanied by feelings! Rimsha Bibi is a girl. She lives with her mother and father as well as her siblings (three brothers and two sisters). Zareena Bibi, her mother works as a housewife while Gulshare Ahmed, her father is an occasional worker. She lives in an area in Muzaffarabad in Azad, Kashmir (you will see that this is the area where Children First are for now mostly focused on). Rimsha Bibi has aspirations of becoming a great cook and, despite her circumstances, is a very glad, day dreamy girl with a committed mission to try and realize her wish. She may be weak physically due to the nutrition that she is not getting but in the head, she may be stronger than than the toughest people out there. It is really emotional to think that even when you are in this state, you have the great power on how to deal with it and even though you may have every bit of the right to cry and not at all be pleased by almost everything, it takes a really strong heart to keep going in some way, it takes a really strong mind.

Rimsha Bibi has, like other kids who look at the slightly happier side, a jubilant smile. What would a path to her amazing cooking life look like, what would she do in that path? The goal would be to get a good foothold in life and try your best not to slip. I pray that she somehow finds a gap in the great circle of fire she is surrounded by and maybe, with the right timing and circumstances, flee. I wonder what a life like mine may feel and look like to her...the reasonable answer would be: Wonderful! Amazing! Out of her world! But you never truly know what it may feel like/look like to someone like that without actually being that someone. There are generations in this world but somehow each one existing now can be split into different groups: the side living in great poverty or in places where war and the side living in quite tranquil situations and some even living a wealthy life, out of the grasping flames from the fire. These sides are very different as we can already guess and the side where they live in poorer conditions is usually the side that knows better the pure version of gratefulness and happiness.

I will just put as an example my generation. Gen Z. We (the side who live stable lives) tend to get caught up in many things involving social media, gossip, bullying and many other things regarding social interaction. There are also others from this side of the spectrum who have struggles such as which outfit to wear for an occasion or which course to attend. We (generally speaking) are prone to have identity crises and other dilemmas as well as conundrums that are very, very different to the struggles that our same generation faces in another part of the world. These starving kids do not have time to have these crises. They will just have to skip the part of being the good old, typical teenager and just grow up as soon as possible because their family needs money to keep going. I just hope that if some people, in some way got into or nearer the more stable side, that they do not ever lose the one true gold that they had before the journey. The things that were inside themselves.

I hope that Rimsha Bibi will keep that forever, because a person without that powerful key may be one of the weakest. She is a strong, determined girl and all she needs is to be alive to live this strict life and to just be able to live in acceptable, good conditions should not, in whatever universe, be a luxury but a very basic right.

Thank you guys! Have a splendid rest of the day/evening!!!

Page