Blog Post #8: Photo Inferences

When searching for a picture to write about our first project I wanted to find one that I could connect with and a topic that I knew something about. After going through dozens of pictures I finally stumbled across this one when I wasn’t even really looking. This picture comes from the Invisible Children website. Invisible Children is an advocacy organization supporting and promoting change for the people of Africa, specifically those living in Uganda, Sudan, Darfur, and Rwanda.

This particular photograph was taken at a displacement camp in Uganda. It shows three boys looking over the displacement camp. The three boys could be brothers, or best friends. They are standing close together and seem to have some sort of connection, suggesting that they are not simply strangers at the same place at the same time. Though we cannot see their faces, we can gain a great deal of knowledge about what they are thinking or feeling by the way they are standing. They are somewhat slouched and their gazes are focused downward, not up and out as you might see with pride or excitement. But then again, they are looking over the homes that they, and people like them, have been forced into, not a childhood home, or tight-knit village, so there isn’t much I could imagine much they would have to be happy or excited about.

The boys in the photo probably live in the displacement camp they are looking over as area rebel groups and government agencies forced “more than 1.8 million people – or 80 percent of the population in northern Uganda – to flee their homes and instead live in squalid displacement camps in which an estimated 1,000 individuals die each week.” (Northern Uganda Crisis) They probably live very difficult lives. Aside from the miserable conditions that they have been forced to live in, they most likely live in fear of being recruited or kidnapped to become child soldiers for the LRA, (Lord’s Resistance Army) a rebel force in Uganda and Sudan lead by Joseph Kony, who often train young boys to become killing machines for their cause.

Aside from the fear that they could possibly at any time be taken from their family and forced to kill, the boys’ lives in the displacement camps, like the one they are looking over, is dismal and very difficult to say the very least. The homes are made of straw, sticks, dirt or cloth and are all very close together, causing conditions to be unsanitary and the spread of disease to be rapid. There are never enough resources. Even basic human needs, such as food and water, are scarce. The activities that occur in the displacement camps are ones that promote survival. There aren’t extra resources or space for other entertainment or fun. All of their energies are typically spent trying to get through to the next day. The boys have probably already seen and understand things far beyond their years and taken on great responsibility to help their family and community survive.