A midnight epiphany...

So I had a thought in the dark of night...

I've been troubled in the last few weeks trying to figure out what I think about the trip and what I saw and what my response is supposed to be and why I'm still so uneasy.

And a new thought came to me at last to redirect the churn.

When I look at (some of) the people of Dhaka and Kolkata i saw tremendous poverty and suffering. And I feel strongly that something should change for them. It's not right that they should live in thatched huts that get washed away every time it rains.

It's not right that those flood waters bring cholera and that the alluvial land poisons them with arsenic. That young girls get no education - or worse - enslaved as prostitutes. That corrupt officals rip farmers off for crop prices. That when the money runs out they borrow a rickshaw and leave their families for days to go to town to try to eek out a living giving people rides.

But here's the rub...

I need them to keep living that way.

If I want to have the life I have in NZ then someone has to go without.

Clever people have done the math. The way we live in the West is not sustainable. We can't all live on a quarter acre patch surrounded by timber and concrete and aluminium. There isn't enough resource in the world for all of us to live that way. Not enough resource and not enough fuel for energy to process the resource

So I want more for the people of Dhaka - but I'm a hypocrite - because I don't want less for myself.

My 90sqm house is a mansion in the grand scheme of things. Our two 12 year old cars testament to my avarice. My 5 year old telly and $500 surround sound setup and the Toffee Pop bar I just ate from the vending machine is proof positive that I am in the top 10% of wealthy people in the world.

And still I want more.

It's not wicked stuff. I want to take my daughter to the USA to spend time with her grandparents. I bought K a camera for Mother's Day because she's talented with photography and I want her to explore that talent.

I want an education for my daughter. And opportunity. I want to live life to the full - it should be exciting and worthwhile because it's a gift from God.

And to be honest I think hot water coming out of the wall is like the coolest thing ever.

Not all this stuff is bad of course. Most isn't. But in order to get good education and healthcare and hot water in our homes in the west we've somehow had to help ourselves to most of the earth. When did that happen?

If I were to go to Dhaka to "help" to be honest I wouldn't want to give up what I have. And that makes me a hypocrite. Tell people about the good news - and rescue them from their poverty - but to what point?

So, yeah. A new thought.

I am still alive... and thinking

It's been a while since I posted because I haven't moved terribly far beyond my last lot of thoughts

I've identified more of what I am thinking about - kind of seeing more of what I am looking at.

Starting with the obvious... life in Bangladesh and Kolkata is different to NZ. Things that strike you when you are there: The people in rags, the smell of human waste (at times), the life that happens on the pavement, the fact that the pavement looks like it was built in the 17th century, the vehicles passing the pavement that look like they should be scrapped, the scrap and rubbish between the pavement and the vehicles that piles up, the rats that go thru the piles of scrap at night

But then I get to the less obvious (until now) That a large number of people CHOOSE to dress that way, that the relieving yourself in the street is as cultural as picking your nose and kissing (or not) in public, and so are the street vendors who are actually working, and the collision of old and new is actually quite exciting, and that Auckland streets are only clean because the infrastructure here is better and corruption is lower, and not even the Bengali people like the corruption, but people in NZ litter just as much it's just that we have people we pay to hide that from ourselves...

But there were some things that were not just different...

Young teenage girls 'standing in line', refugees raising families far from homes they can't go back to, a caste system, a pervading mentality of superiority and inferiority, a house for the dying destitutes...

There are others I could comment on but I have already shown myself to be a bigot and an ignoramus probably even in this post...

So this is where I have been and still am...

peace