cheap food

Food is cheap here in Asia.

Medicine and education are expensive. Favorite sports are: 

1) driving huge 4x4s. gas costs $2.40 a gallon. sitting in endless long traffic jams. paying parking fees to para-military type uniformed men blowing stainless steel whistles.

2) wandering around enormous prosperous numerous say it fast three times shopping centers. a huge playground for brats. where out-of-control rascals expend spoiled energy. where families enjoy A/C and stuff behind glass. museum quality of life. diversionary influences.

3) whining. students know and understand this behavior is boring and useless. some know without understanding.

4) producing more babies.

Bye-bye said the orphan.

Future

Namaste,

Once upon a time there was a rural village. One hour from town.

There was a primary school. The kids were antsy, it was hot, they waited for vacation. Their families needed them to plant rice.

There was a teacher in the school. She graduated from a university. She graduated from a government pedagogic school. She found a job teaching 6th grade.

This is how it works, said the boss of the teachers.

You are new. Your salary is $40 a month. You teach for eight months with no salary. After completing eight months you receive 70% of your salary until you complete one year. After five years you get a raise. 

I'm going to have a find a part-time job to feed my family. 

Vacation arrived singing, No more school! Go to the fields and plant rice. 

60 students finished grade 6. We are free. Let's run, play and sing. 

Of the 60, only ten would attend 7th grade in the fall. Rural opportunity cost.

The other 50 played, planted, harvested rice and worked at local brick factories for $1.25 a day.

Metta.

Chase

Namaste,

There was a man in a poor village.

Everyday he went into the mountains searching for gold.

Everyone said he was crazy.

After 40 years he found gold, returned to the village, exchanged the gold for cash, bought a rope, tied the money to one end and tied the other around his waist.

He ran through the village dragging it behind him and everyone said he was crazy. 

 “What are you doing?” they yelled at him. 

 “For 40 years I’ve been chasing money and now money is chasing me.”

Metta.

small village life

Namaste,

The incomplete yet fulfilled specific concrete hard red brick hammering echoed across a green Nepal valley.

It wasn't a hammer. It was a machete. A man chopped trees. His son trimmed branches. He severed sections into four-foot long pieces. His mother stacked them, wrapping them in bundles.

They collected wood all day. They rested at noon. They ate rice mixed with vegetables and potatoes. They shared expensive bananas. They drank water from a stream. They napped in shade. They carried the wood up mountains on their backs and home before dark.

Yellow eagles circled overhead. An infant cried in a brick home. Children in blue school uniforms wearing ties walked home along a red dirt road. Laughing.

They passed a small wooden tea shop overlooking a valley. A 20-year old girl worked at her sewing machine. She sewed large hearts into a white bed spread. The lace pillow cases with hearts were finished. Marriage bed dreams. 

Her parents had an arranged marriage. Her father is an electrician. Her younger sister ran away. She married a boy from another caste. He is a cook in a tourist town. They had a baby. Her older brother studies hotel management in the city. Another brother is in high school. 

I have a 1% chance of meeting a guy with a good heart, she said. 

Metta.

Give her a sewing machine and she'll change the world.

free egypt

Greetings,

I ruled for 30 years. The military said, It's time to go, Everyone from Cairo to Greenland has had enough of your senile stalling.

I said, Wait, I need another 30 years. No they said, You have 30 seconds, The Egyptian people have spoken with one voice, You have 30 seconds.

I cried, stamping my feet like a spoiled child. I don't want to go. I don't want to go.

Someone handed me a microphone and a scrap of parchment from the Dead See. They said, Take the paper. Look into the camera and read the script. I trembled with fear and anxiety. I took the parchment. I looked into a blinking red eye. I read the script.

My finally free fantastic fellow citizens. I would like to thank the Academy for this opportunity and all the rich memories. It's been a long strange trip. I wish you all the best realizing your freedom from tyranny, repression and idiots like me. My family and I will now take our immense wealth and retire to our resort villa. We will remember you when we eat caviar off gold plates. Farewell my love.

The red light went off. The paper fluttered from my arthritic fingers. Fireworks and ectoblastic jubilated pandemonium erupted throughout Egypt. Slaves loaded our camels. I led my family across the burning desert toward sand castles in the harsh light of reality.

What a glorious day papa, said my child, one of 80 million, I feel free. 

Metta.