Sometimes in your life, you may experience a hard time that you can not find the way to get over it. You feel desperated, stress and even terrified somehow. For me, such a hard time called "Poverty" about which I wrote an essay for my English Writing course in my junior year. Most contents are my real life experiences, and the others belongs to my childhood fellows' story that I was honourable to witness...
"What is poverty?It is the state of people who are living under-common condition lifes,who have little money and few material possessions.Since human life nowadays becomes much more enough and better than it was in the past,most youngsters living under the safeguard of parents can hardly conceive such kind of impoverishment.Poverty is not a crime,but a lack-of-things status that motivate one endeavour the best for a better life and help one treasuring what he or she is having.
Poverty is living in an abandoned house with only about 16 square meters for three people-a woman and her two children.The tiling house-top has ventages somewhere that two kids can contemplate the beauty of stars and dream about the day they can earn money to reduce the agony of their mother.The dirty prive is far away from home that they are afraid of going to the loo at night or it must be their mother following.Water supply is mainly public hydrant in a near-by construction site.Poverty is living in a set of smell all the time.This is a smell of urine of many species including mice,cockroach and human who are drunken guys coming over at midnight.This is a smell of redudant foods,vegetables and olid meet after the adjacent bazar finishs everyday.It is the smell of sweat of children who have gone through most streets in the city all the day to sell tombola.It is also the smell of wood-some rotten boards to sleep and two small harshness boards being tables for us to study.It is also the smell of expired papers remaining spaces still to do homework,to write math formulas or to write ones’ dreams.
Poverty is lack of many things,but full of happiness,love and dreams.The patchy clothes have long since been given out by charity people or been taken up from dustbin.Their container is sack instead of wardrobe.Poverty is lack of friends.The best partner of the ten-year-old boy is a mossy wall which can feeding back the ball as a human.Poverty is wish to learn English to be able to shine shoes for international visitors, or far beyond this dream,to study abroad as films they saw in beer-shops.Poverty is enduring the pain of injection when going to hospital without extra money to foster nurses,but it was loving each other that such pains would not matter.Poverty is being chased by cops when you are doing jumble-sale on the pavement,but the happiness of earning enough money to buy new corset for your mother in her coming birthday.
Poverty means tears.My sister and I get up early at 4 o’clock every morning to help mother prepare for the new day of bread selling,then go to school at 7 o’clock.After finishing class,we start to go selling tombola or shoe-shine.I had cried when some guys paid me no money after I finished shining,or even some fucking men cheated me by replacing all my tombola by the outdated ones.We arrive home when those blessed children come back from extra classes in the evening.”It’s time to review notebooks”,my mother often says that.I saw her crying alone sometimes,but I didn’t know why at that time.Maybe she needed an embrace of someone,not me.
Poverty is dirty and morbid.It is a body without having bath for several weeks because of lack of soap and water.It is wearing shared-different-color bobby-socks which are full of grime after going on the streets all days.It is having a temperature without penicillin,but a bottle of gruel.It is being involved in helminthic or diarrhoeal.It is even a death of measles without proper treatments.
Poverty,it is the past that I’ve experienced most of difficult and painful contexts in life.It made me be strong and be spiritual that I can come across any obstacles, do the best any opportunities coming and treasuring all the things I have."
You may see that we passed such a hard time in an optimistic way. Why? Because we still have a Mother who is always willing to be by our side, to encourage us when we get lost, to give us strength or simply to keep us safe in her arms. So do you. I just wanna tell you that even you feel you have lost everything, at least you still have a Mother.
"Ai còn Mẹ xin đừng làm Mẹ khóc
Đừng để buồn lên mắt Mẹ nghe không? "
Happy belated Mother's Day!!!
0h21 May 9th 2011,
Berlin
TK
Copied from Tung Kelvin's note on Facebook.
Posted here to re-read and deeply thing again one day.
