Take bus #11

Greetings,

I'm walking across a screaming motorcycle street in Saigon. Bus #11 is bearing down fast and furious. I escape. Another person in another country in another life along another path said.

'Poor people walk. They take bus #11. It means use your legs.'

The gap between rich and poor - such is the reality in developing countries - is becoming more apparent.

Recent figures speak. Average city wages - $1,054 a year. Rural wages - $540 a year.

The central party hopes their economic stimulus will encourage rural people to buy appliances and cars. I need a 4x wheel drive washing machine so I can I take my family on weekend excursions to the beach, the Himalayas and deep tropical jungles where life is simple. Yeah!

The process evolved like this. I walked. I saved and eventually bought a bike. A Flying Pigeon. Black. One speed. It got me from home to the village rice paddies.  

We had a radio in the work unit. The local propaganda machine blasted revolutionary worker party anthems day and night. We got one for the home. My wife was happy. Then we had the required one child. We wanted another one but the forced abortion committee and local officials said, NO! You do not qualify for two children.

Then my wife wanted a TV. Ok I said, let's get a 24" flat screen with a remote.

What about a new rice cooker? Ok I said.

How about a used refrigerator? What's wrong with the box of ice? You shop for fresh vegetables at the market every morning. Why do we need a refrigerator? Because the neighbors have one.

Oh, I see. I scrounged around and traded rice for some chickens and traded the birds for some used teak wood smuggled in from Burma. I developed some connections. One trade led to another and I eventually found a well used fridge. My wife was happy. Then we filled it up with baby formula.

The formula was tainted with a chemical to increase the protein. We didn't know this small fact.

Our little girl became sick. The Worker's Hospital #8 said I had to pay them a lot of money for medicine or she would die.

I sold my bike to buy medicine. Now I walk to the hospital to see my daughter. It takes forever and a day.

I want to move to a big city filled with neon and food smells and construction projects and appliances hoping against hope to find a job but party leaders say millions of unemployed workers are returning to their villages in the new year.

I have a feeling the new year is going to be a lot like the old year.

The radio and flat screen scream stream tells us to stay home. Be quiet. Don't worry. Practice social stability and harmony. My future opportunities look precarious.

I have to go now because they will cut off the electricity soon and I need to buy some candles.

"Life is found in a desperate situation." - Chinese proverb.

Metta.

 

Labor to eat

Cash For Trash

Greetings,

Saigon, wandering and sitting in markets, pagodas, mosques, enjoying Indian and mutton curries, Italian lasagna, clean green salads after simple street food up north.

Images and serenity inside places of repose and spirit. 

At night across the street is live music and carnivals as Saigon hosts the Asian Games. I made images of Iraqi and Chinese kick boxers practicing at night, in the dark, shielded by the moon. Gaping residents pause and watch men and women punch and kick their training partners. Images will follow after editing.

Saigon (young, vibrant) is a complete delight after the hush of conservative Ha Noi (old, dull). Up north I lived in a normal neighborhood away from backpackers and neon for five months. I had a table, palm tree and balcony.

I'd sat in the Old Quarter for two weeks after Indonesia, more like Amnesia, then moved into a room in a house in a family compound. Dogs, yelling crying babies, construction workers, a "service" girl working the construction laborers under the cover of night, taking care of their desire, relieving them of cash. 

Here it's a different reality. Or, as the popular t-shirt says, "Same-same. But different."

I am in the heart of darkness. After sunset all the predators are out. Many are wearing stiletto high heels.

Are you the hunter or the prey?

On the street of dreams. Cheap digs, variety of food joints ranging from street eats to places with tablecloths. Plenty of foreign tourists moving through on a quick three day visit before taking the boat or bus to Cambodia. They move in tribes carrying worn guide books, wearing out thin soled flip flops. They are having an adventure.

They are gathering memories of weight and language and humid heat. Some of them look distraught, lost, angry, hungry and confused, just like people they know and love. Some older ones are long time residents. Their faces and posture are one step from the morgue. They struggle forward searching for who knows what.

Only The Shadow Knows!

Two visions in Ha Noi along the road to the airport. A confidant looking man walking near a lake tripped on cracked broken tile, didn't break his stride, eyes straight ahead - don't lose face - stoic, passive, marching.

A young girl, maybe 10, sat slumped against a blue stone crevice. She held a small box with something to sell. Her eyes held all the secrets of the world. Where is her family? Will a neighbor woman or a kind person extend their hand, open their heart? Is this suffering her destiny?

One child among millions in the world. 

Metta.

Mud

Young men and women haul mud from an excavation site where the owner will build an extension to his home.

One man chops it with a shovel, a girl grips a severed block and dumps it into a bucket. Another girl carries the bucket through mud, handing it to a boy who dumps it into a cart.

Women do the heavy work. Lifting and carrying and pushing.

He pulls and she pushes the cart down a narrow alley, turns right and maneuvers along a narrow potholed road jammed with motorcycles. Beep-beep. They get it to a central dumping zone filled with discarded bricks, debris, plywood and used mud. They dump it. Their return trip to the excavation site is light. They repeat the process.

Metta.

Accelerate Production!

The title is from an automated voice in a factory in Juarez, Mexico. Where thousands of women work for $5 an hour assembling televisions and appliances under NAFTA "free trade" agreements. No insurance, no benefits.

Cheap labor. Hundreds perhaps thousands of women brutally murdered. Powerful Mexican and American economic and political interests. Bordertown.

"You are falling behind in meeting your quota. Accelerate production! Accelerate production!"

More...

Metta.