world fashion part III

(guys can be real jerks some times)
(life in new york can be _so_ hard)

from the bbc...
Meskerem lives with her mother, her uncle and four siblings in a one-roomed mud shack in the city centre. It’s in a sprawling shanty area just behind the five-star Sheraton Hotel. She charges 1 birr (11 US cents) to clean a pair of shoes. On a good day at the weekend she can earn between 5 to 7 birr.

"When I first started the boys came up to me and told me to go away," she says.

"They told me they would earn less because I was a girl and men would prefer to come to me. The boys threatened me. Sometimes customers and passers-by insult me and make me cry."

"I wake up just before 0700 and go to a food centre. If they have food I have breakfast, if not I just go home. My mother leaves home for work at 0600 and gets back at 0800. I sweep the floor and do other chores until she returns. Then I go to school until 12.30 and come home for lunch. If there’s lunch I eat, if not I go back to school for the afternoon session, which lasts until 1530. Then I go home to collect my shoe shine boxes and work until 1800. Then I sleep."


i wish i could give this girl the three dollars i spend on coffee every day so that those assholes wouldn't make her cry. that would be 6 times as much as she makes now. if i had six times how much i made now i don't even know what i would do.