Mckenzee Blog Post 5

1. The essay by Gordon Parks entitled Flavio's Home was a very heartfelt piece. A young reporter sent to interview a poor father and his family in the deep slums of Brazil. She ended in Catacumba where she found a young boy named Flavio de Silva. Catacumba was an extremely poor town with tiny shacks that were held together by old planks of crumbling wood and a tin roof that was almost entirely rusted. The shack, like all the others were leaning down the side of a mountainside. Flavio looked just like the shack he lived in. he was frail with sticks leg and sunken eyes from starvation and jaundiced coloring. Gordon had a connection with him at first sight. The boy was carrying a tine of water on his head and had stopped to take a breather. The boy as exhausted as he was still managed to give a smile to Gordon.
Gordon follows to the boy home to interview his father and family for her piece. When she got there she encountered many disturbing things. There were seven more children at home that were left to watch over themselves. Flavio was the care taker of his family at only age twelve! Gordon also witnessed how they reused water. They used the same water they cooked with to bath everyone in, and then used the same water to scrub the nasty dirt floors. As they spent the rest of the evening their Gordon would watch as Flavio almost choked to death coughing. She knew something was wrong and when the parents finally arrived home she asked why they do not take him to the doctor. Flavio father told Gordon that the doctors do not do anything for his children because he built his store in front of them. After leaving the shack and arriving to the nice hotel Gordon decided she would take Flavio to the doctor. The next day she took him to the doctors and found out Flavio was dying and would probably only live another year. There was nothing the doctors could do for the boy. When Flavio asked how it went Gordon didn’t have the heart to tell him and only said, “You’ll be alright Flavio”. The shocking thing was Flavio didn’t care about himself. His powerful words at the end said “I’m not scared of death. It’s my brothers and sisters I worry about.”
My outlook on this story was, “ I didn’t realize how lucky I am.” Here I am complaining because I didn’t want chicken for supper, and children like Flavio would be grateful to even have meat for a meal. Stories like these are either hidden from the public or denied by the public. They are hidden because countries don’t want to show their week communities that cannot provide for themselves and are seen as weak. Stories such as these are also denied by the public such as American because it inhumane to even think people live like that. It makes people that are well off look greedy and Americans don’t like to be looked at that way, so they ignore the problem thinking it never exists; so they don’t have to feel bad or feel greedy. As sad as that sounds it’s true in a lot of cases. What really got to my heart in this story was the fact the Flavio didn’t care he was dying, he only thought of his family and how he feared for them if he did die. This story showed true devotion to family which I think should be looked at as an example of how you should respect your family today.



2. Although I think the government is going down the right track I don’t think it’s a good idea to pay women to take birth control. I don’t think paying women to take birth control will really make women stop, if they can already get money on welfare. Americans are greedy if you say you’ll pay them to do something, they’ll make another claim to say they need more. I think paying for birth control would only lead Americans further into welfare support. Even if you pay a women to take birth control that doesn’t mean that she will do it. So what happens when she has the money and gets pregnant? Wouldn’t that be a waste of tax payer’s money? The bigger problem is a lot of women can’t afford birth control and that what gets them in the situations they are in. I think birth control should be free, hand them to anyone to encourage them to use it. This gives the choice to the women and if a woman makes the choice they are more likely to stick to it. Even women with jobs have trouble paying for contraceptives simply because insurance won’t cover it. If women didn’t have to worry about paying for birth control I think women would take every advantage of it. Going through high school most of my friends that ended up pregnant said they couldn’t afford birth control when I asked if they were on anything. Even I have had trouble paying for birth control some months and had to have my parents chip in. Do you know how embarrassing that is? I was almost to the point where I said; okay well I’m just going to not get it this month. I don’t understand why the government can’t just have pills for free. They give out free condoms but if a boy refuses to wear one, what is a woman to do? Providing free birth control for women gives them the power to control their situation. It there was free birth control I think you would see a huge drop in teen pregnancies and since teen pregnancies unusually lead to welfare and poor families I think it would only benefit the communities.

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=51391
http://www.womenshealthchannel.com/teenpregnancy/index.shtml