I had never imagined anything like this. Such profound deprivation. In my mind, I had always pictured dark-skinned, sunburnt children, dry brown earth, and houses made of branches. But they were only images in my imagination. The reality was something entirely different. These concrete images I had pictured actually carried countless emotions within them. The feeling of deprivation, for example. Could someone who had never known abundance truly understand deprivation? Perhaps what made life easier for them was that they had never known what it was like to have abundance.
Sometimes hungry, sometimes thirsty, sometimes without clothes, these people lived in a corner of the world. Unlike those of us who swim in abundance, they were surrounded by deprivation. After all, human beings adapt to every circumstance and somehow carry on with life. Yet everyone has the right to live with dignity. For people to live humanely, the feeling of kindness needed to be instilled in the hearts of those who possessed great wealth. Only then could everyone have the chance to live a life of dignity.
And now, I am among these people who deserve to live with dignity but have been confronted with the cruelty of the world. I was there to do good, to touch their hearts. We had made this journey from thousands of kilometers away, without ever seeing or feeling them before, simply to deliver the entrusted gifts given to us in the spirit of kindness to the people they belonged to. What remained with me were beautiful moments I will never forget, and these photographs.
The sun was directly above us, my eyes slightly moist, as I watched the dark-skinned, sunburnt children from afar. These children, though dark-skinned, had faces that were radiant, contrary to what their appearance might suggest. Looking at them filled you with the joy of life. Yes, right at this very moment, realizing once again just how important the act of kindness is, I simply want to surrender myself to the feeling of being here. As the poet once said: those who do good will find good!
Ekrem Kubilay Karadeniz - Somalia, 2024