Rolando Lopez Blog Post 5

1. Gordon Parks' Flavio's Home starts in Catacumba a favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Gordon Parks and Jose Gallo are looking to interview poverty stricken fathers for Life magazine. They meet a young boy who looks starved yet smiles at Parks. Parks decides to follow the boy to his home. The boy lives in a small shack and when Parks and Gallo enters the shack they meet the boy's (Flavio da Silva) brothers and sisters through the interpretation of Gallo. The children bicker and fight, and Flavio cooks and cleans. After it gets dark the parents arrive, Jose da Silva and Nair his pregnant wife. They ate what little they had and Flavio offers some to Parks and Gallo, they refuse knowing how little they have. Parks and Gallo ask Jose da Silva for permission to photograph his family, which he takes some time to agree to. As they were leaving, Parks notices Flavio's violent coughing. Gallo mentions to Parks as they head back to the hotel how dangerous it is to stay in the favelo at night. When they get to the hotel on the rich side of town, Parks exclaims how the da Silva's shack could fit in a corner of his hotel room and the steak dinner could feed the da Silva's for three days.
The next day they return to the favela where he notices the long lines for the sole water spigot and bathroom. He met Jose da Silva at his shop where he sells kerosene and bleach. They kept going until they saw Flavio and followed him. After Flavio finished his work Parks took him to the clinic to check on his cough. After two hours they are seen by the doctor who tells Parks, in english so Flavio wouldn't understand, that Flavio is dying and probably doesn't have much longer to live, maybe a year. Parks didn't tell Flavio about what the doctor had told him and repeats to Flavio that he'll be alright.
This story was very sad. Reading the details presented in the story was hard and really disheartens me to read about the decay of human life in some parts of the world while in others people are doing more than well enough.

2. Controversial proposal: Government should pay poor women financial incentives to use birth control. Reasons why this proposal could work is that having the choice to use birth control or learn about the contraceptive devices that are available are ways to decrease the number of unplanned pregnancies and therefore ways to decrease the death rates of kids that die by starvation and other painful deaths. This also saves the lives of the people practicing birth control methods from dangerous abortions and dying from giving birth which would leave the kids she already has and the child she had alone or just one person to care for them.

Poverty. Digital image. Youthnoise.com. Youth Noise. Web. 14 Apr. 2010. .
"AFP: Give Poor Women Birth Control, Education: World Bank." Google. AFP, 10 July 2008. Web. 14 Apr. 2010. .