Namaste,
65 million people in Asia
live in a village called Poverty
surging oil prices, production shortfall from bad weather, export restrictions
by food producing countries
food is a weapon
poor Asian families spend 60% of their income on food
600 million
2/3 of the world's poor
live on less than $1.25 a day
wealthy countries spend 15% of their income on manufactured food
Metta.
Namaste,
Lasta buys a street papaya. A Nepalese bird shits on your hat.
She laughs. Good luck!
Once, in Ismit, a wild Turkish bird shit on your hat.
Birds practice.
Tibetan traders finger prayer beads. It's belief and proof.
1,000 street children live in Kathmandu. They are between 6-20.
They need food, shelter, clothing, training, jobs.
Glue sniffing is a growing problem.
35,000 NGO's fight each other. Who can get the most donor money?
Competition or cooperation?
Metta.
Kids find good shit.
Namaste,
A man waits with a weight scale. A bag of potatoes. Cool shade. Dawn the down against red bricks.
He shines his black dress shoes with a newspaper.
A woman in a turquoise shawl decorates stone with her whisk broom.
A woman unfolds green stalk onions on a white plastic bag.
Boys slap Tantric wooden masks removing yesterday.
A light rain falls.
Sparrow wings flutter in your face. Directly.
Their air currents support six prop jets as curious enthralled tourists press their faces against plastic glimpsing Himalayan mystery and beauty.
Metta.
Namaste,
In the street life of Bhaktapur is Pottery Square. 250 people from immediate families make clay, create pots, piggy banks, animals, bowls, living art, dolls, bells, oil lamp bases, and cooking containers. They dry them in the sun. They slow fire them using straw fuel in large kilns.
"We live here as a family," said a girl, 12 with her twin sister. "My father makes piggy banks. My mother moves them into the sunlight." A potter uses a heavy staff to get his wheel turning, rotating faster and faster until it is a blur. He shapes a pot.
Finished products are sold locally, throughout the Kathmandu valley and exported faster than light.
Metta.
Namaste,
Said the young Nepalese girl carrying the world on her back.
Her world is a large plastic sack for collecting valuable garbage. She uses a piece of thin hooked metal to probe piles of refuse. She has children scavenger friends in Vietnam (bundled logs and firewood), Laos (twigs and firewood), Cambodia (trash, charcoal, plastic bottles) all singing and dancing under the weight. Down all the days of their youth.
The weight of childhood is heavy. Children are not fooled. No joke.
The girl led a traveler to the national zoo. A huge magnificent orange and white striped Bengal tiger roared near the bars. Feed Me! He dragged raw red buffalo meat into the shade expanding canines, grinding flesh.
Two sad brown eyed crying Black Himalayan bears in a cramped cold cement cage with scraggly tree trunks pressed their noses through rusty bars whispering, Please open the cage and take us back to the mountains.
A Griffon's brown elegant wing span blocked the sun flying beneath wire limitations. Oh, it said, If only I could soar again on thermals. If only I could regain my dignity and freedom.
I have seen many people in cages, said the girl.
Metta.
Draw water. Draw your dream.
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