Homebodies - A reminder of the world
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- Published on Sunday, July 10, 2016
By Rita Friesen
Neepawa Banner
Summer is off to a great start. Spent a week in Winnipeg with my sister from Australia and her grandson, a fine young man of 16. Side trips out to Steinbach Mennonite Museum, the Pembina Hills and Lower Fort Gary. (Special event there- I presided at the wedding of my oldest niece and her beloved, am now an accredited marriage commissioner, just in case I have too much free time!) Once again toured the Museum of Human Rights, the Forks and bookstores. All in all, it was a well rounded holiday.
Time in the Museum of Human Rights caused me to reflect on one afternoon in Amsterdam. Marie and I had disembarked from the Elodie, the lovely barge that had been our home for a week. We had a free afternoon and went walking. In the heart of the city, New Church Square was alive with activity and people of all ages. The fair was set up, including a ninety-meter-high swinging chair ride, a Ferris wheel, an awful bungie contraption that bounced a circle of brave or insane folks back and forth and up and down, games of chance and food booths. The air was filled with loud screams of terror and laughter. Life and laughter, gaiety and jocularity. And then we stepped through the doors of the New Church. On display was “World Press 16. The Nieuwe Kerk invites you to take a journey with World Press 16. The exhibition presents the best visual journalism from the previous year, with 154 photographs in eight categories.” The photos covered everything from the shrinking ice caps, the Chernobyl fallout, the aftereffects of the Ebola outbreak and the Syrian refugee crisis- Hope for a New Life by Warren Richardson captured the image of a father passing his young child through a barbed wire fence and won first prize. Second prize in the People Category, entitled Digging the Future by Matjaz Krivic, depicts a tired and blackened miner taking a smoke break. Moving pictures that made one pause. A section of the display was dedicated to a pictorial account of women in the military and their stories of rape and discrimination.
For me, that day, the juxtaposition of the life and laughter in the open square and the horrors in everyday living for so many citizens of this world set me back. I acknowledge life is just that, the light and the dark, the joy and the sorrow. Seeing it in living colour made the moment all the more memorable. That is what time spent in the Museum of Human Rights does for me as well. I go about the routine of my life, safe, secure and mostly content. I need reminders that I have it good. No, I have it great. Seeing and hearing the stories of the injustices in my world stir me to action. And thus it must be. Always.
