Chrystal, I agree with you 100%.
Actually I share my life with 200 people at a very
rural community with extreme poverty conditions. Just
last Tuesday, a 16 years old girl give birth a
beatifull girl within this poor community, she
fortunatly have the assistance of a mattress very
experience.
But see, how come we can engage with the rest or the
majoritie or with this next Christmas hollidays if we
have weak life style, almost or so close to death that
as a catholic as I am, is hard to celebrate hollidays.
We will celebrate but praying, doing talk between we
all, doing rememberance of this Jesus coming to earth.
His mission and his misterys.
We will not have dances or huge meals, we only come
together as a community with similarities conditions
for life.
I was raise on the city, but faster than anything I
learned that living with this people and bringing some
hope to better days is a more significant way to give
health services. I do community development, at
Panama, centralamerica.
Ricardo.


--- Chrystal Ocean <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> I hate the holidays. So does anyone I know who lives
> in poverty, including
> the children, who are torn by the tension produced
> from the excitement of
> their peers, advertisers' unrelenting hype and
> trying to accept their
> circumstances and be supportive family members.
> 
> As a single woman living in poverty in a rural
> community, what I dislike the
> most are the assumptions:
> - that everyone celebrates something at this time of
> year,
> - that everyone wants to receive gifts, regardless
> of whether they celebrate
> something at this time of year,
> - that everyone should give gifts, regardless of
> whether they celebrate
> something at this time of year,
> - that everyone should 'do something' to celebrate,
> regardless of whether
> they celebrate something at this time of year,
> - that everyone can get around at this time of year
> regardless of the 
> transit system going on holiday.
> 
> What makes it really hard is the deadening. It's as
> though small communities
> like mine, over the course of the holiday frenzy,
> have sucked themselves dry
> and stopped breathing. All stores and offices close
> for at least three days
> and some for two weeks, the sounds of human industry
> fall silent. It's like
> everyone, the community itself (including Internet
> communities), dies or
> goes away. And so those left behind, the ones who
> don't or can't play the
> holiday game, feel the stamp of 'outsider' that much
> more starkly.
> 
> Ocean, WISE Coordinator
> http://www.wise-bc.org/
> 
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