The Somalian Child :: essays papers

The Somalian Child There is a child from Somalia, with an old mans face, sitting in the corner of the lounge room. He mustiness have come out of the television set at whatever time this evening. Its New Years Eve, and all the stations have been playing condensed highlights of the year -- so m some(prenominal) images of poverty and diseases and war from around the globe. Trying to cram so much human misery into a few short hours, its no wonder, really, that something overflowed. He sits there, huddled in a ball, like a tiny wizened dwarf, behind the corner lounge chair. I dont know when he came out. It could have been any time. The television has been on for a long time. His face is blank. An old man on a childs stick body. I pretend hes not there, of course, and go into the kitchen to pip a snack. I am about to bring it back into the lounge room, until I think better of it, and eat it in the kitchen. When I get back, hes electrostatic there. Its just as well that I had planned for a quiet New Years and hadnt invited anybody over, because he smells a bit too. You dont get that when theyre on the TV, but its a smell of old dried cow dung and other things Ive never smelled before. The television is still on, and its still showing news highlights. There argon scenes from some civil war in the former Soviet Union. Just to be on the safe side, I turn the channel to an American sit-com. There are some gorgeous looking ladies sitting around a dinner table making risque jokes. Not much chance of having one of them fall out in my lounge room, I ponder. Not in real life. Theyre only actresses. I steal a glance at the Somalian -- but he doesnt seem interested in the show. I stay there watching until the show ends, then the news comes on. Its another highlights of the year program. Naturally. A well-groomed news reader says, rather pompously, Hemingway sat in the Hotel Florida in Spain and wrote passionately about the blood being spilled in the stre ets below, trying to convey the idealism with which people were fighting and dying.