Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Boys of Baraka is a new film about some Baltimore at risk children being shipped to Afrika to start over from the sludge of drugs, lack of education and hopelessness that pervades inner city Baltimore. Its funny that it does indeed "take a Village", literally. I spend the weekend at my ghetto house in Baltimore with my brother, talking to 14 year old drug dealer neighbors, even hiring some of them to help with the cleanup. But they didn't like the hard work and quit after an hour and half, citing the fact that hustling drugs was easier and they made more money. An older one, the shy one of the group, a 21 year named Darren, actually is the Baltimore City chess champion. He has a one year old baby, of course the mom takes care of his child...we took him to Little Italy for dinner, his first Italian food. I'd love to watch this film (!)

posted by Frederick at Tuesday, November 29, 2005

1 Comments:

Blogger dolcevita said...

makes me think about these temporary group homes organized by DARC in Japan mainly for the purpose of drug rehab, but also for a very common problem called "hikikomori" (avoidance of connecting with any other being). They have structured schedule, and adolescents thru adults learn how to live independently by doing stuff like carpentry etc.

Also reminiscent of what Karl and I were talking about. It's easy to say 'hey it's not my problem'
and blame the parents, teachers, politicians, or the society.. Unless we start living life true to ourselves, where are the children ever going to see any role models?
build self-confidence? or be the parent that they never had?
Not in those adults who are pointing fingers or those who have become apathetic.. We all start somewhere. for inner city kids, it's hard enough. what you guys are and will be doing may be something many kids are longing for..

8:56 PM  

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