Yesterday as I was shopping for groceries at C….. I came upon a very nice plastic/metal shed selling for $999. The thing was quite beautiful, fairly large, well built with double lockable doors, little shatterproof windows and a skylight system that allowed available light in. I was looking at this tool-lawn mower shed when it occurred to me that that it was far superior in construction to many places I saw in Asia in November that housed human beings. This backyard garden ahead was much better than some shacks in Klong Toey slum, better than the places the home less lived under the freeway in Bangkok, it is better than anything at the Dump in Mae Sot and it was surely better than the tin lean twos of the migrant workers in Nepal. The kids on the street in Kathmandu slept on the cold ground in the open, the new arrivals in the dump in Mae Sot slept under partial or no mosquito netting with the flies, rats, snakes and garbage.
The more I thought about it the more f-cked up it was, we in the West store our rakes and shovels better than the people I visited lived. Babies, old people, the disabled, families sleeping in terrible conditions with garbage or in the open there, and here our yard-garden tools live protected and comfortable. This world needs to change.
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| Shed to store tools, Canada 2013 |
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| Home of migrant farmer, his wife and his young child, Nepal 2013 |
