Damn the Man

I chose these songs, not necessarily due to their direct connection with my Millennium Goal (Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger), but due to their connection with the feelings and affects of extreme poverty and hunger. For example, Bobby James, a song by N.E.R.D. is a song about a boy and his recent addiction to drugs, while Eleanor Rigby (The Beatles) is a song about the neglect and disregard of certain members of a community. While neither of these directly apply to my goal, the mood of these songs (as well as, for the most part, the rest of the playlist) convey a feeling of "down and out"-ness, chaos, and disregard, all of which I would assume are in close connection with extreme poverty and hunger. The songs that don’t follow this theme would be "With a Little Help From My Friends" (The Beatles), "Stayin' Alive" (The Bee Gees), and "Pass the Dutchie" (Musical Youth). I felt that these songs, while they still focus on the theme of my goal, were more upbeat, and had a more positive message. They don't necessarily make poverty and hunger out to be a burden, they seem to distort the usual perception by focusing on survival through positive thinking, and I feel that this attitude is extremely important if we really want to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger from our planet.

Quotes:
"Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime" - Aristotle
"Anyone who has struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor." - James Baldwin
"No man can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach." - Woodrow T. Wilson
"The greatest man in history was the poorest.� - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread." - Mother Teresa

For the most part I've never heard any of these quotes prior to writing this blog, but the ones I did hear of (Aristotle and Mother Teresa) carried a powerful message towards not only my Millennium goal, but me as well. During the course of my senior year in high school, I went on a mission trip to the country of Honduras for two weeks, to help work in a mission clinic. While there my eyes were opened up to a whole new world I'd never experienced before; poverty ran rampant in the streets, the people I met (while extremely generous and kind) were incredibly thin, usually had multiple ailments, and were often seen wearing what appeared to be second or third generation hand-me-downs. Coming from America, this came as quite a shock to me, but it only fueled my passion to help people less fortunate than me live a better life. When I returned to America my ideals had been skewed; I was no longer your typical American, ignorant to the situations of third world countries. No, when I returned, I returned with a great deal of knowledge that has since affected how I live each day. I no longer desire the luxuries I once felt I "needed", because I now know firsthand what it's like to live in a place where luxuries are few and far between, if existent at all. The following pictures are just a handful of the images I obtained while in Honduras that I feel shows the level of poverty, as well as the level of contentment felt throughout the nation despite their lack of clean and up to date facilities: