Stories
Lost Angeles
From “The American Dream,” to the Inferno can be a very small step. In Los Angeles you just have to cross one street for it, Mainstreet. In the shadow of L.A.’s postmodern business-core it’s hard to believe your own eyes. Skid Row, an area that covers 10 square blocks, hides no less than 15000 homeless people. It is the largest concentration of homelesness in the country. The “lucky ones” can afford a cheap room in one of the dodgy hotels around Skid Row. Others stay in the missions. Here, lost souls get free food, medical aid and mental support in their struggle against drug or alcohol-addictions. At least ten missions try to swallow the enormous influx of homeless people. But it´s David fighting Goliath. Thousands of men, women and children are exposed to the dark reality of the street.
DRC – Our richness is our disgrace
The Democratic Republic of Congo is potentially one of the richest countries in the world. There is a huge variety of minerals underground: gold, diamonds, petrol, just to quote some, and finally coltan, a conductor used for hi-tech equipment. Nonetheless its population is one of the poorest in the entire world. Coltan mines, producing great richness and fundamental for technological development, are often controlled by foreign multinationals. The miners live in overpopulated villages without water nor electricity, hospitals or drains. Epidemics burst out regularly and can easily kill half of the population. Children, instead of going to school, work in the mines for a few dollars, risking their own life to slip into horizontal tunnels up to ten meters long without any safety measures. “Our richness is our disgrace”, words which are repeated over and over by the Congolese population. Because it is exactly this richness that denies stability to the country.
