sean
Joined: 23 Dec 2015
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 Posted: 29 Jan 2016 04:56 Post subject: Pandora Valentine's Day Collection |
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Somalia famine makes a mockery of the world I have come from
The most poignant sight, in the vast sea of humanity that surrounds me, in among all the rags that flap, in the unrelenting sandstorm, against thighs that are mere bones, is one little boy who is wearing a pair of pink flip flops.
These are girls' shoes, with little rosebuds and one remaining sequin dangling by a thread. They are far too small for him, so end halfway along the sole of his foot, making it painful and awkward to walk.
But he thinks he's the bee's knees. He's attempting to swagger on his tiny girly shoes Pandora Valentine's Day Rings the sort of apparel that would make him the subject of ridicule anywhere else in the world. But here, in a place I would safely describe as Hell on Earth, he is king of his world.
Shocked: Liz Jones with Dahiro and her sick daughter at the Dadaab Refugee Camp
I have come to Dadaab to see for myself pandora clips-sterling silver clearance the vast refugee camp on the border between Kenya and Somalia which has become the magnet for victims fleeing the drought and famine in the Horn of Africa. Millions are facing starvation, and more than 29,000 children under five have died in the past 90 days alone.
It's early morning, but already 40 degrees and the wind makes it feel as though I'm inside a giant hairdryer. I am surrounded by children there are 300,000 of them here, none of pandora bracelets kays jewelry for sale whom has even the basic means to wash themselves or owns a pair of underpants. These children, when they have the strength, use twigs to clean their teeth.
One tiny, filthy tot, like something out of a Dickens novel, is scraping at her teeth in front of me. I ask how old she is, thinking she pandora 14k gold charms valentine sale is maybe four or five. She tells me she's 13.
Liz Jones with a young refugee called Hassan, three, who with his mother Jamilla fled the the civil war and worst drought in Somalia for 60 years
As she scrapes, making herself pretty for me, she dislodges a tooth and calmly takes it out of her mouth. The poor girl is disintegrating before my eyes; at once impossibly young and improbably old.
Her very existence mocks the world that I have come from.
Oh, I know what some of you may be thinking. What on earth is a woman like me who has spent a lifetime working in the fashion world, and who has long written about her own battles with her weight, Pandora Valentine's Day Bracelet her image, her debts doing in a place like this, where the cost of my recent facelift would feed, what, a thousand children for a year?
That is precisely why I had wanted to come here: to stare true starvation in the face. To put not only my own problems in bitter perspective, but the whole pampered world we inhabit. To show how obcene are our worries in comparison to the parents who must watch their children wither to dust before their eyes.
Pose: Liz Jones with another young Somailan refugee
Last year, the average British woman spent 2,055 a year on her face, hair and body. Men spent 1,154. Still feeling comfortable?
The chasm between our world and the one I am visiting is brought starkly home to me when, shortly after arrival, I feel tiny fingers probing my pocket. Immediately my hand shoots there. I'm worried about my Blackberry, my electronic umbilical cord to the world I normally inhabit.
I look down, and a little boy aged three, called Hassan, is looking up at me with a great big snotty grimace. He's not about to steal my phone: he's just trying to put his tiny fist in mine.
In any case, I realise, my fears are ridiculous. Who would he call? What would he look up on the internet? The fact the worst drought in 60 years has hit his home, and he has had to walk for 28 days without food to get here? That Hillary Clinton is arguing with Islamist militia group Al Shabaab, who are refusing to allow aid into Somalia?
Learning: Liz Jones with children at a school in the refugee camp on the border with Somalia and Kenya
He wouldn't understand, because I don't understand, how it can be that this morning I left my hotel in Nairobi, with its all you can eat buffet, and eight hours later I've arrived in a place that is pre historic?
If I had found pterodactyls flying above my head, I'd have been less bewildered.
I find myself staring at these children's feet not because I'm wondering what they wear, but because I'm too ashamed to meet their huge eyes.
I go in search of Hassan's mum. I have a crowd of children with me now. One little boy wears a football shirt as a dress, with the word 'Fabregas' across his narrow back. I wonder what he'd think if he knew how much footballers earn.
Invitation: Liz in the home of a Somalian family Kadija with her four children Momuhubi, Mardada, Kuresha, Ibrahim, Hadiji Ali, and Abdi
A little girl with tawny highlights, which in the West are the height of chic but here denote severe malnutrition, keeps doing an impression of me, hands on jutting hips, giving me a toothy grin. I wonder how she can smile in such a place, when her home is a makeshift teepee covered in plastic rubbish bags.
When I find her, Hassan's mum, 40 year old Jamilla, is sweeping her 'front door' with twigs, a pathetic attempt at pride. She invites me, with my combat trousers and bottle of antiseptic handwash, inside.
Jamilla tells me she walked with her five children for four weeks to get here. She demonstrates how she would bind her stomach with rope to quell the hunger pains.
She didn't have the strength to carry little Hassan, so he had to walk, too. Some days, he just wanted to lie there and she would have to pull his matchstick arm so narrow it might snap and he'd make a trail in the sand.
I think of the baby in the seat in front of me on the flight out from London to Nairobi, with his papoose and brightly coloured changing mat and Wet Ones, and a mum about to go on an eco safari.
I hatch a plan to steal Hassan, put him in the back of my 4x4, and drive him somewhere safe. But why him, when there are horror stories wherever I turn? |
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