Living in America or Life In Africa?

If you were forced to evacuate your home without even having enough time to put on your shoes, do you think it would really be unethical for you to loot salvage a pair of water-soaked shoes from a store where all of the merchandise will have to be thrown out after the storm anyway? What if it were your son or father or grandfather that was forced to wade through the floodwaters in order to get to safety and then tolerate the blazing hot concrete while y'all waited to be rescued? Would you tell him to just rough it or make due until the city re-opens and someone is willing to sell him a pair of shoes?

This picture was taken on the highway as New Orleanians waited for several days in order to be rescued. There was no food, no water, not even anything to cover themselves from the alternating rains and burning summer sun. The unidentified male in the photo used cartons and rubber bands just to keep his feet from having to touch the bare concrete.

I wish I knew who photographed it so that I could ask for their permission to post this here. I found it on a local site where people were downloading the pictures they were taking of the city so that those who evacuated could see how the different areas fared during the storm. I hadn't planned on using this picture because it seemed too tragic, too frustrating for me to look at, let alone post it on My Private Casbah. However, today I was surfing the web and I came across a site with this photo that was taken in Africa:


Really, how different are the two? Why is it in a nation that is supposedly the most affluent in the world, people were forced to endure a situation that rivals conditions in most "Third World" countries?