I’ve heard that in some countries people don’t know who their President or Prime Minister is. Life in these countries runs smoothly, people mind their own business, rarely anyone bothers to watch the news, flowers bud, children play, the sky is blue. That sounds much like a Neverland to me. And for those who find living this unruffled life a little boring and wish for some adrenaline rush, well, there is an answer even to that. They can hop in a virtual world of Alice in Bomberland and see how good they are at escaping bombs. In case one gets tired or just needs to pee, no worry, they can simply press pause or the exit button.
I once got carried away thinking that I could be Alice and that I could press the exit button myself and boycott politics in my life by ignoring the everyday torture of endless political ramblings on TV screens realising that I have no influence on it whatsoever. I needed to break free and tried to push it out of my life. Soon after, I was woken up from my reverie and brought back to reality by the bombs falling “out of nowhere”. My friend who was with me when it happened was no better. She had mistaken the first one for a thunder. The only thing that didn’t quite fit in was that surprisingly the lightning came after the thunder and that it came out of the perfectly clear starry night. If we had watched the news that evening we would have seen the bombers taking off in the direction of where we live. From then on I prefer to be informed.
Our reactions to the bombs were very different however. My friend stood in wonder, watching the sky, still trying to figure out whether it was the lighting or some sort of unsuccessful military experiment, whereas I didn’t waste time. I started running towards the nearest building looking for the shelter. Only some time later, the blood freezing, apocalyptic wailing of the sirens announced the beginning of another hard period that would last for months.
My first moment of wonder and fear paralysis happened years before while Mum and I were watching the news in our first out of many places of refuge. We were staying in a flat of some people whom we in turn let in our home on the opposite side of the battlefield. In an unfamiliar town, with only few acquaintances, we anxiously watched the news hoping for a miraculous turnover when it happened. Well, not exactly the kind of miracle we hoped for. There was some violent ground commotion as the night lit up for a few seconds and went back to darkness with a deafening noise. A minute later we were standing in the corridor confused. We were supposed to join the quick steps running down the stairs but I wondered how to talk my knees into it as they declared autonomy from the rest of my body and were shaking uncontrollably. However, it didn’t take me long to progress from a terrible knee shaker to a speedy short distance runner.
Years later, I stopped running. We all did. We got tired. When the sirens announced themselves, people would get out and climb to the rooftops to watch the anti-air artillery producing firework effects on the sky. While others were out watching the spectacle, I used the rare opportunity to have a nice shower with enough water to run up the shower head. In the lack of electricity and popular entertainment provided by the computers, phones and TV sets, young couples made a lot of babies in the longish dark nights, kids played volleyball in the moonlight, parents talked to their kids and even recited some long forgotten verses. A rare car that would appear on the streets would stop to pick you up even without you asking for it. I have never seen more solidarity and good will than in those days. So, along with a record number of antidepressants sold daily, lethargy and indifference to whether a bomb will find you or not, even some good came out of bombing.
On one of those summer days, hot from the heat and the omnipresent threat of bombing, I opened my doors to some unexpected visitors whom we rarely had at the time. I saw my three friends standing in front, smiling at me with their pink, sun-burnt cheeks while holding a small gift for my birthday. They had been riding miles on bikes through the bumpy fields on a scorching summer day, simply to wish me a happy birthday. I framed that picture in my mind and I bring it out whenever I remember bombing. Perhaps I didn’t have a choice and couldn’t escape the reality at the time, yet now I can choose how to remember it.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Have you helped someone today?
Once again it was morning, in another city, in another country, sunny, fresh and full of surprises. The bus stopped after a half an hour of rhythmical clink-clanking and I stepped off a little drowsy into an early morning hustle and bustle of the city market. Rivers of people hurrying to work were intersected with sellers dragging huge bundles of this and that, honking, grumbling, bellowing. So even I, who normally wouldn’t notice if an elephant walked by at that time of the morning, spotted an old lady ahead of me stooping to pick up some dropped oranges. I quickened my step to give her a hand but, just before I reached her, she had dunked the last one into her bag and was already marching in front of me. A minute later an orange missile whizzed past my ear straight into the old lady’s back and was soon followed by another one. The granny surprisingly didn’t look back. She just kept on marching, even if not a little faster. A shout that accompanied the second flying orange made me drop my jaw, “Shame on you! Stealing in those years! Here, take some more with you!”.
A little further, if you turn left around the corner, a long street will get you right to the city center. However, after only a couple of days of walking up and down the local main street, you might start approaching it as if it were a ski path and adopt a zigzagging technique trying to evade “the money collectors” bumping into people, getting into their way or dragging them by the sleeve to sell some cards or badges to help the abandoned kids, animals or refugees. Always the same plastic smiles on the same faces, never early in the morning though. If they hadn’t been smiling so much they might have persuaded me that all the money was really going to end up in the right hands and not just some symbolic percentage of it.
Obviously, so many phonies in the streets account for some of human disregard for those who really need help, yet not for all of it. Many studies have confirmed that a person could easily die in the middle of the street full of people if they suddenly collapsed. The scientists explain this social and psychological phenomenon as the Bystander Effect. I witnessed one such unfortunate event and was horrified feeling all the cruelness of the humanity in those very long minutes of trying to call for help as I realised that I couldn’t move a collapsed man on my own. He was lying in the middle of the street and the cars just kept circling around us. The man was unconscious and in some sort of physical agony his body shaking and twitching, whereas I trembled for quite a while later from the emotional agony of this shameful incident.
Anyhow, such human reaction, or rather lack of it, in a situation in which somebody is spread on the street and another person cries out loud for help gives you a clue of what happens to those who are not as loud.
However, being ignored is not the worst that can happen to a person. In a clash of two ethnic groups, at the time of madness, when my family had to leave home, not only were we ignored, we were kicked out of a temporary shelter we managed to find in the exile. We were kicked out into the street again, only this time by the people of the same nationality, the locals. The motive was as ancient as the human race - pure, old-fashioned, insatiable greed. Somebody needed more space for themselves. So it happened that our lives were threatened again. An important lesson was learnt however on realising that one is not to fear any ethnicity or religion but some ever present human flaws.
The society is indeed full of controversies. On the one hand you have a whole new spectrum of volunteering agencies making money on the increasing number of people who want to cross oceans to help and, on the other, you have people dying before the eyes of passers-by. Sometimes people don’t realise that you don’t have to go far away if you want to help somebody. Why not start with your closest members of the family, friends and neighbours, fellow citizens? Perhaps volunteering agencies would then go bankrupt.
An interesting idea has been launched through a book called Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde and later a film made by it in which a little boy Trevor does a favor for three people, asking each of them to "pay the favor forward" by doing favors for three other people, and so on. It sounds much like a fiction so I was surprised to find out that The Pay It Forward Movement does actually exist as well as its Foundation.
If you ask the professionals, they will tell you that helping people works in two ways - by helping others, you help yourself. When a renowned psychiatrist Dr Karl Menninger was asked what a person should do if he or she felt a “nervous breakdown” coming on, he said “Lock up your house, go across the railroad tracks, find someone in need, and do something for them.”
I would just like to add another aspect to it by returning to the unconscious man in the road. After a while, one of the cars that were circling around us finally stopped and a guy jumped out of it to help. He quickly moved the man to the pavement, put him in the right position, rubbed his temples with some water and continued stroking his head even after the man had regained consciousness. I think the guy wasn’t aware of it, but his stroking silenced more than the man’s pain and fear. I could as well feel my shivers subside with every gentle move of his hand and the world suddenly appeared to be a friendlier place to live.
A little further, if you turn left around the corner, a long street will get you right to the city center. However, after only a couple of days of walking up and down the local main street, you might start approaching it as if it were a ski path and adopt a zigzagging technique trying to evade “the money collectors” bumping into people, getting into their way or dragging them by the sleeve to sell some cards or badges to help the abandoned kids, animals or refugees. Always the same plastic smiles on the same faces, never early in the morning though. If they hadn’t been smiling so much they might have persuaded me that all the money was really going to end up in the right hands and not just some symbolic percentage of it.
Obviously, so many phonies in the streets account for some of human disregard for those who really need help, yet not for all of it. Many studies have confirmed that a person could easily die in the middle of the street full of people if they suddenly collapsed. The scientists explain this social and psychological phenomenon as the Bystander Effect. I witnessed one such unfortunate event and was horrified feeling all the cruelness of the humanity in those very long minutes of trying to call for help as I realised that I couldn’t move a collapsed man on my own. He was lying in the middle of the street and the cars just kept circling around us. The man was unconscious and in some sort of physical agony his body shaking and twitching, whereas I trembled for quite a while later from the emotional agony of this shameful incident.
Anyhow, such human reaction, or rather lack of it, in a situation in which somebody is spread on the street and another person cries out loud for help gives you a clue of what happens to those who are not as loud.
 |
| @ UNHCR/Florian/Transparency/Photovoice |
The society is indeed full of controversies. On the one hand you have a whole new spectrum of volunteering agencies making money on the increasing number of people who want to cross oceans to help and, on the other, you have people dying before the eyes of passers-by. Sometimes people don’t realise that you don’t have to go far away if you want to help somebody. Why not start with your closest members of the family, friends and neighbours, fellow citizens? Perhaps volunteering agencies would then go bankrupt.
An interesting idea has been launched through a book called Pay It Forward by Catherine Ryan Hyde and later a film made by it in which a little boy Trevor does a favor for three people, asking each of them to "pay the favor forward" by doing favors for three other people, and so on. It sounds much like a fiction so I was surprised to find out that The Pay It Forward Movement does actually exist as well as its Foundation.
If you ask the professionals, they will tell you that helping people works in two ways - by helping others, you help yourself. When a renowned psychiatrist Dr Karl Menninger was asked what a person should do if he or she felt a “nervous breakdown” coming on, he said “Lock up your house, go across the railroad tracks, find someone in need, and do something for them.”
I would just like to add another aspect to it by returning to the unconscious man in the road. After a while, one of the cars that were circling around us finally stopped and a guy jumped out of it to help. He quickly moved the man to the pavement, put him in the right position, rubbed his temples with some water and continued stroking his head even after the man had regained consciousness. I think the guy wasn’t aware of it, but his stroking silenced more than the man’s pain and fear. I could as well feel my shivers subside with every gentle move of his hand and the world suddenly appeared to be a friendlier place to live.
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