Children in the well

I get and look at me. They observe me circulating around the wow well that, despite the time elapsed (25 years) still provides them with water. They, children are, together with women, who deal with the supply of their families. A priority task against the rest of the tasks that, as children, should have the right to fulfill. But they don't always have. I take some photographs, I talk to adults. Women take water by pushing the lever that enables the extractor pump. Men show me the state in which the installation is located and request support to find solutions. Unable to demand, they only ask for understanding. Late what is late to reach his destination, the distant place from which I undoubtedly come and that they can't even imagine. There you must find a solution to your problem and ask me to find it. Meanwhile, the children are grouped at one end of the well and, in silence, they look at me to observe, talk, photograph ... at some point in my stay, I spend on them. I approach and greet you. They feel shame, the little ones feel fear. I am a foreigner, I am white and I come from some distant place. I am a novelty that costs them to locate among the normality of the things of their day. If I want to reassure you, I only have one way, the game. Laughter and approach. Show me as the friend I want to be and avoid any other purpose. I am passionate about children. All the children. And I feel a very special respect for the most disadvantaged. Respect and affection. And, after many years already lived in our approaches, I can affirm that thanks to them, magic still has a home in me. They are poor children - that can be easily observed in my photographs -. But what cannot be observed with that same ease is that, despite their huge poverty, these children are possessing an immense desire to live. In the way they learned and know. Using what they have at hand, without expecting more, without asking for more. And that's why I feel great respect for them. I admire you. I love you from the most intimate of my truth, with all my being. When I leave the place, I always have the feeling that I get enriched. Sad many times, it's true, but enriched. Revitalized by his spontaneous laugh, for his ease to make me feel welcome, one more among them, during the time that our encounter lasts. I go happy and sad at a while. And my sadness is anchored in the monstrous and enormous form that adopt the injustice and oblivion of a world that refuses to share and prefer to ignore. If I could ... if I knew ... if I had the ability to send my life message to those who can turn it into a better place ... I would tell them that it is enough, not more forgetting, that no more greed, that no more lie, than no more ambition. I would tell them that it has been the time to open and not close. To offer and not to snatch. To hug and not expel. The time of thinking in plural and not singular. And if I got any of them to open a door of hope, I would enter for it and, without looking back, would advance and advance ... with the sole idea of ​​getting to the place of true treasure: the life matrix where everything can start over . Because there the world is still a child and in him everything good for living is still possible. – Pepe Navarro Photograph taken in Gamsé, Burkina Faso, Africa.