After watching Life
and Debt I walked away with a lot of mixed feelings. The entire film was
showing how screwed up life is in Jamaica, where one part of the
island is for tourists and their partying. It is for the upper class of other
societies to vacation there at their leisure. However, on the other side shows
a broken society where its people struggle to make money and also make a better
quality of life for it people. The complete opposites sides that were shown was
very hard to watch. It almost seemed like even though they have their freedom
now, they are in a different kind of enslavement with their money situation and
the fact that they have people from outside their country come and look
at them. Not just look, but take pictures from a bus while they are whisked
around the island. I personally felt a bit sick watching this because to watch
others struggle and not be able to do something about it is difficult. Jamaica
tried so many times to get help, but the only help they get is just more and
more debt, which makes their society spiral down into a broken shell of what it
used to be.
The hardest part for me watching this was my privilege I
have in America.
I was born here in this country with so many different privileges that I cant
even begin to understand their hardship. The fact that they do not have enough
money or food or shelter is not something I can understand. It is something I
can sympathize with. Its something that I can feel bad about, but the one thing
I keep asking is, what can I do? and Would I even do it? These questions have
been plaguing me these past couple days.
I agree that the issue of hardship is something you can sympathize with, not understand. I really like the second question you posed at the end, because typically I (and I'm sure many other people) see footage like Life and Debt and we think, "Oh wow, those poor people live in a third world country. Maybe I'll donate to a charity and hope my money goes to good use in a country like that. Or I could lead a missions trip and serve people food for a week." But I know I personally don't usually follow through with that because I get caught up in my own trivial issues and I forget, or I briefly search for a good charity and can't find a trustworthy one so I give up, or I can't take time off from work and university to travel there and try to help in some way. Everyone always thinks they should use their privilege to help the less privileged, but we never stop to consider if we would actually follow through with it if it meant doing something a little difficult or stepping outside of our comfort zones (literally and figuratively).
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