JAPAN: A fragile country at the mercy of nature

By Marson Mesa

The world was shocked to hear the news of the huge earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan, but people there have learnt to expect natural disasters. Hundreds of beer glasses on wooden shelves, shook from side to side, then knocked into each other. The conversation suddenly dimmed, then stopped completely. The faces looked from one to another across the plates of tempura and sushi. It is no coincidence that tsunami is a Japanese word. The native religion, Shinto, is animist - it tells of the divine nature of trees and mountains, of goddesses who emerged from deep clefts in the rocks. The very earth can seem to be alive.

For images visit this page: Japan's Tsunami Images

Josep Pla school on fire

By Silvia Muela

On April 20th 2011, early in the morning, a neighbor called the firemen because the Josep Pla School, at 24-34 Valle de Ordesa street was on fire. The fire burnt a third of the school (600 square meters). The rest of the building was damaged by water and dust. Since Tuesday the school’s 400 students have been going to another school, and will do so until the next academic year. According to Irene Rigau, the Education Minister, the fire came from the outside. The fire service is investigating the causes. The firemen put out the fire in three hours. The building was empty and nobody was injured.

Photos and cancer

By Joana Roig Borrell

In the Vanguardia I found an interesting article about teenagers who had cancer or had suffered this from illness and took photos about their world. A group of experienced monitors, aged over eighteen, helped these teenagers in photography workshops, where they shared a lot of experiences and interacted with them. The teenagers talked about their experiences in hospital or the beginning of their current life after the illness. These photographs are collected in the book called "A través de mi cámara", presented a day before the International Children’s Cancer Day. The photos are accompanied by short texts about the sick teenagers’ thoughts, questions and hopes, and those of their parents and the professionals who treated them. The book shows real pictures of the pain, but also of the joy and hope, with the objective of communicating emotions, as the workshop co-ordinator Mario Rodríguez said. We think that these initiatives are useful in order for society to become aware of this illness, and they also they show that a lot of teenager and childhood cancers can be cured.