by Nomad
This award-winning documentary was directed American writer-director, Travis Hanour. It reveals the struggles of an impoverished family at the edge of the Great Rift Valley. We meet a brave, 14-year-old boy named Henry as he goes about his daily routine.Hanour explains:
We found a village in Kijabe with a wealth of compelling stories. The children and families here require superhuman bravery and perseverance in order to survive. But at the same time, they exude an infectious amount of joy. This is a truly humbling dynamic to witness.
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Ultimately, I felt like it was important to depict the simple reality by which this village exists. Not so we could look upon it with pity and empathy – but so that we might better understand the courage and envy the modesty.
This 16-minute film gives us a rough idea of what life is like for a child in one of the poorest regions of the world.
As one source points out, when people lose the possibility of a better standard of living for their nation, they will search for opportunity on their own, no matter how perilous or speculative that search might be.
"When people lose hope, they risk crossing the Sahara and the Mediterranean because it is worse to stay at home, where they run enormous risks."
In March of this year, the UK Independent reported that up to 146 migrants died in a refugee boat sinking in the Mediterranean Sea. It was hardly reported at all in the US press.
The sole survivor of the disaster off the coast of Libya, a 16-year-old boy from Gambia, said that at least five children and several pregnant women were among those who drowned.
The teenager...left Libya alone after six months in the war-torn country, where migrants are killed, imprisoned, tortured, extorted and forced into labour or prostitution for profit.
Two months later, the New York Times reported that the Mediterranean had already claimed more than 2,100 migrant and refugee lives this year.
Ninety-five percent of those deaths have occurred on the so-called central route between Libya and Italy, a passage used chiefly by sub-Saharan Africans that the International Organization for Migration calls “the deadliest route migrants ply anywhere on Earth.”
