Most people on the African continent live in inhumane conditions without access to familiar household items. Many cannot afford food and clean water, let alone other conveniences.
The extreme level of poverty makes it impossible to break the vicious circle on one’s own. Volunteer organizations are trying to solve this problem. They help in any way they can: collecting humanitarian missions with food, water, clothing and medicine.
The photographer who dreamed of travelingAmerican John Carey didn’t plan to volunteer or become part of one of these missions. John had dreamed of travel, adventure, and far away countries since he was a child. He was not a public figure, a celebrity or a millionaire. John Cary was an average American who was only able to save up for his childhood dream as an adult.
When John’s job allowed him to spend money on travel, he armed himself with a camera and went on a long-awaited tour of Africa. The first place John visited was South Africa. He drove all over it, enjoying the colorful African culture. The megacities of Johannesburg and Cape Town surprised and captivated the American tourist with their mixture of identity and modern technology.
The craving for adventure ended in a fateful encounter
But calm and well-fed South Africa did not satisfy John’s childish craving for adventure, and he decided to go to some country with an extremely low standard of living to see the flip side of well-being. Somalia was his choice. John had no idea that visiting this country would turn his life upside down forever.
It was on a Somali street that the American bumped into a little girl – and he didn’t pass by.The scruffy little girl was sitting in the dust and looking at the world with wide-open eyes. The picture caught his eye, so John took a picture of the child and then tried to find her parents to give them the picture..
He thought he could make her parents happy. But it turned out that the girl was a total orphan. Her parents are long dead, and the little girl lives on the street and eats leftovers from the garbage dump.
An American-style happy endingNeighbors eagerly told John that the girl has been alone for almost six months, and has been trying to survive on her own all this time. Whenever possible, her neighbors feed her, but they themselves live little better and can’t take the baby for themselves.
They are struggling to provide food for their own children, and they don’t need an extra mouthful. The story so struck John that he decided to adopt the child. The decision came instantly. It wasn’t easy – becoming a father to a child from a country with a completely different culture and language, getting the paperwork done, moving the baby to the United States.
But John says he has no regrets. Since that fateful meeting 22 years had passed, the baby girl had grown into a stunningly beautiful girl. She is now a university student and hardly remembers the horrors of a hungry childhood.
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