informed.

i posted the boys of baraka website on my blog a couple weeks before i actually saw the movie. i have been interested in seeing the movie for a while now, especially after watching the movie trailer and i finally got the chance to watch it earlier this week. i was not expecting it to be as emotional as it was, but given the context, it cannot be anything but emotional. or maybe the word is moving. it was definitely a moving movie.

watching this movie really made me think about the luxuries many of us are afforded and usually take for granted and while i think that is the general message of the movie (your future is so dependent on how you grow up and to which socio-economic class you associate), there is much more to it than that. the 20 boys in this movie have very few options, growing up in inner-city baltimore. they can either sell drugs on the street and end up in prison or if that doesn't happen, they're likely to get killed and will never see a future; so they're recruited by the baraka school in kenya, a place where they didn't even think it rained, to get another chance. some of the boys take advantage of this opportunity to change their lives while others have a change of heart.

these boys know nothing aside from the streets of baltimore, they've never been on airplanes and most of their families have never even seen a passport. this sounds like a story from the developing world, but instead this takes place on the very same ground that i walk.

in a developing nation, latin america, for example, there are 40 million street kids who haven't been given another chance, who survive each and every day by rummaging through dumpsters and begging for scraps of food and who will never in their lifetimes see a passport or an airplane or live in a home with a solid roof.

it breaks my heart that many of us can just live our lives wanting more while there are kids in other countries, other states, or even just down the street who could never imagine being able to want the things that we think we need. we can carry on our days thinking that there's nothing we can do about it, but we can't be so ignorant to think that it doesn't exist.

i admit that i'm guilty of wanting, but i'm trying to be more aware. you should try it, too.