activitiesapril2010

Author: Roya R. Rad
:

There are a number of clips of our recent activities which will be posted on the website with the intention
of bringing awareness through inspirational stories from all around the world. The clip below is about an
interview with a gentleman from Iran who wanted to sell his kidney for what he reported as his family’s
survival expense. In Iran, sale of kidney is legal and selling one’s kidney is more like a market which is
standardized and regulated by the government with not much room for negotiation. There are two sides
to whether this is ethical or unethical and my interview’s intention is not to go either way creating
another one of the debating cycles. My interview’s goal is to listen to this gentleman’s story and share it
with those interested to bring awareness to some of what is going on around globe.

Being human, we all have an innate need to understand ourselves and a part of that can be comprehended
and evenhanded by understanding and being aware of what is going on around us. Living in a state of
avoidance, denial, and ignorance will limit our true potential from reaching to its fullest state.

To go back to the clip, for those of you who are interested to know more about how the kidney selling
process works, you can read this paragraph, otherwise move on to the next for the clip of what was
shared. (This video along with new ones will soon be posted on the website).   There are vendors in the
kidney selling market that are paid in two ways. First, the government pays a fixed compensation to the
vendor which is about $1,200 plus some limited health insurance coverage which covers conditions
related to the surgery. Second, the vendor receives separate fee from the recipient or, if the recipient is
poor, from one of a series of designated charitable organizations; this amount is about $2,300 and $4,500.

Now about how this clip was created. I decided to go back to Iran for a number of projects I had
including child abuse awareness work and a number of presentations I had. The one week I was there
was very eye opening since I got a chance to take a look at the depth of some of the people’s lives. I
was attracted to subjects that were not in my list of to-do things. I took my camera, my tape recorder,
my laptop and my notebook wherever I went. At night, when I went back to my hotel which had a
really nice park view and garden, I would just sit there, release any emotional baggage I had carried
during the day and would start writing.   With this one particular case, I heard about this gentleman
through a friend of mine who helped me find and locate him and ask for a talk. He eagerly responded as
if he really wanted his story to be told.

The gentleman talks about his life and the non stop challenges he had to go through and how, at this
point in life, his low income and having too many kids is continuously bringing him problems up to a
point that sometimes he does not even have enough food on the table and it is a day to day survival. His
daughter got married to a man who turned out to be a drug addict and got a divorce. Now she is back in
his house with her two children. When asked why with all these difficulties that he has been
encountering throughout life he has let himself have 6 children, he said “foolishness” “I just didn’t know
any better, I thought things will get better. I thought having kids will bring blessings…”

The state of helplessness this gentleman was in was overwhelming. It was as if he was numb to the
experience shutting down to all reality of what it would be like to feel. While some people go out of their
ways to take in the victim role and expect others to give them services all the time without giving
anything in return, some people are truly victims at some point in their life.   As a researcher and a
writer, I have tried to separate my emotions from the situation since if I get engulfed into it, I won’t be
able to do a good job. But no matter how hard one tries, one still gets some of it carried. While we as
modern humans are understanding more and more of the concepts of personal responsibility and
accountability for the direction one’s life takes him/her, once we are involved in the experience, we
cannot be blind to the fact that environmental and societal factors play a part to it as well. So much so in
third world countries than the more progressive ones.

I guess one of my poems is relative here titled compassion:

I feel your pain, I see that cane
I sense your wound, I hear your mourn

I suffer from your sorrow
I carry on your horror

I believe your story
I gaze at your glory

I touch your soul
Your deepest core

I gaze into your eyes
I take a deep sigh

I see your heart
I feel your warmth

I wish I could turn into a thousand pieces
I wish I could save you and bring many ceases

I wish there was no more suffering
I wish I could be your source of buffering

Another clip is an interview with a is called “street child” in Iran which could be touching, motivating and
awakening depending on which way one wants to look at it. I also have to share that the situation is
getting mildly better for children with new laws coming into live. What gets this child apart from all the
other ones was that this child had this build in motivating factor that kept him moving forward. Despite
his harsh circumstances, he had this lifelines about him and was not about to give up.   Maybe that is
why he found a way out of it, he caught attention and found a sponsor soon after that. Even at age 11,
he refused to take the role of the victim even though he was more so than anyone else I have seen.