No education, no chance

Greetings,

Editor’s note: this entry contains material which may not be suitable for children under 100.

It is 6:00 a.m. It is raining. Rain is not part of this short tale. It’s only purpose is to clean the air, turn dusty red rutted ragged roads into quagmires and provide essential moisture to roots.

It is important, gentle reader to understand the context. I have written extensively about the reality here on the ground the last eight months. Unpleasant facts are more plentiful than health care, education or clean drinking water. See Travel Tales for material.

Some Cambodian people, like other people on planet Earth are cunning, devious and scheming. They, like others, have little or no formal education for various reasons. 

For many impoverished adults on Earth educating their children 

wastes time and m-o-n-e-y.

Food is their daily priority.

This means many mill around, stare, interrupt others, are rude, do not LISTEN and demonstrate behavior and attitudes similar to simians with a very limited vocabulary.

Their daily existence involves searching, finding, preparing and eating food. It involves searching, finding and having sex. It involves sleeping. Sleeping is popular before, during and after food. 

Sex is popular whenever the male, the ALPHA animal in the tribe demands it. This is Natural Selection. People live on Earth for two main reasons: to breed and to work. Read and write? No, breed and work. 

Female members are Passive. They are conditioned through DNA genetics and environment and family education and expectations to be Passive. 

If they refuse to submit to the male they are beaten. If they talk about it they are beaten. If they enjoy it they are beaten. If they run away they are captured and beaten. If they suffer humiliation they are beaten. If they are beaten they are beaten. If they live to tell the tale they are beaten. If they die while being beaten their corpse is beaten. They are beat.

In Afghanistan they are stoned to death by members of their Taliban community. 

She was 19. He was 25.

However, females display acts of aggression when they perceive their offspring (and they have 100’s) are in danger. The longer she breeds the longer she lives, the longer she works the longer she lives. In theory.

Their main task in life is to breed and work. Then they are slaughtered. Life is a bitch.

Across the rural street from my little space behind a green garden I am a witness. I extrapolate, illuminate, illustrate, and desiccate. A family has moved into a long shack across the street where they live. They set up a food joint. They sell steamed corn and fast fried foods.

There is a mother, two older boys 17 & 20 and two girls, the youngest is about 13. The girls may belong to the mother or, as is common, they're from poor areas needing domestic work. They are highly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.

No papa. He is history in the tragic family tale, one of millions throughout the Magic Kingdom. Long gone in the long now. 

Incest Is Best, a boy about 17, touches one girl’s rear while mom is at the market. He’s wearing his towel-sarong. She’s setting up a glass display case on a wooden counter with her back toward him. He slides up behind her and presses his crotch against her. 

She freezes. He imitates sexual movement. He whispers to her, Little ‘sister,’ this is what happens to you. I have a little red rooster. Do you like it? 

She is powerless. She has to stand there and take it. She is silent. She feels like crying.

Rule #1. Boys and men run the show. They pay lip service to girls and women. It’s the old breed and work paradigm. 

Sexual harassment by immature boys and older men (with money, power and control) and a high level of testosterone, IS a game. Simple sex. No education. No responsibility. No morals. No ethics. No education. 

This explains why millions of girls have babies and the guy runs away. Zero responsibility. 

Girls and women tolerate it because:

it’s an unpleasant hard, cold cruel fact of life

they are told to submit to males
they live in Fear 
they are considered stupid and second class citizens
they have no human rights
it’s an unpleasant reality here
it’s the LAW of the jungle
it’s expected
they have no Voice, no way out
they don’t have the power to say or do anything to stop it
mother is not sympathetic. it happened to her. that’s life

(Translated by Rain)

Metta.

Red Power Dust

Greetings,

Once upon a time there was a little river town. Zak was recharging his laptop and noticed the wires from the power unit attached to the unit attached to the plug processing energy from the Nebula galaxy was exposed, open and subject to disintegration. Like humanoids. It needed replacing if he was to maintain warp speed through the universe in his space ship.

He went to a taxi stand. It wasn't a taxi stand. It was a place to practice patience as drivers ran around flagging down cycles with passengers yelling "Pen, Going to Pen!"

When the car was full they left. To make more profit the driver, a dark thin man in a frayed t-shirt gave Zak shotgun. The driver arranged yellow pillows in the middle to sit while driving, operating the gas, brake and steering. A woman slept in the driver's seat.

They escaped river city and discovered the one single road under construction. 

They bounced, shuddered and sped along red dust roads in waves of tropical heat. The road was holding a convention of road graders, dump trucks, steam rollers, gravel, crushed silver rocks, ruts, canyons, pot holes, detours and red dust. Earthmoving equipment dusted red pressure.

Impatient black glass tinted 4-wheel drivers blasted impatient horns to alleviate boredom and abundance of red dust. Drivers remembered swallowing dust when they were poor, hustling any and all possible economic resources to improve their quality of life.

Red dust obscured Earth. Zak imagined traversing central Africa following herds of zebras and gazelles across the savanna. It was thrilling, this sensation of movement through billowing red dust.

The city was Pen and filled with ink. It's famous for a massive killing field, a museum with photographs of 2.5 million murdered humans and lonely bar hostesses filing their nails waiting for a rich hammer. A miniature Saigon. Groups of cycle men hustled taxi passengers. "Yeah, yeah," they yelled. 

He found iOne, a derivation of a fruit called Apple. The young sky shy lady helped him select a new 60W power adapter. It came in a hermetically sealed black box. "This is perfect for my space ship and universal explorations. Thanks."

He paid her in Leaves, a well known and universally accepted form of currency. He went to a used bookstore. The owner was asleep. His son played a virtual reality computer game behind stacks of dusty leaves.

He found three tomes, Lolita, The Orient Express and an unofficial autobiography of Bruce Chatwin, a travel writer. Pen had gleaming pagodas, parks, wide open plazas and historical triumphs in the form of cement people conquering land, sea, and hunger.

He tried to visualize Pen being empty of life. Humans were not allowed to stay in 1975 when a military group invaded. They forced the entire population, maybe a million, to vacate the city. To become peasants. To practice the art of socialism. Nine years before 1984.

War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery.
Ignorance is Strength.

Everyone ran away from the city into the countryside to escape terror, famine, death and execution. He tried to wrap his mind around this historical reality and comprehend the totality. The entire city was deserted and very quiet leaving ghosts and memories. Year Zero!

He saw a very expensive white U.N. jeep on a Pen street. It had a secured flag on its front bumper. The driver wore a bush hat and clean pressed khaki clothing. On the rear of the jeep it said, "World Food Program." Zak didn't see any food. Where's all the food, he wondered.

He went to the fancy Lucky Market supplying the massive N.G.O. population.

"We Have Everything You Need, Want or Desire," sang advertising. Endless aisles of food products waited for foreigner customers. Zak left after 30 seconds and returned to the taxi stand.

The driver hustled passengers. It was a challenge because the cheaper mini-van taxi business was nearby.

The driver sat on his yellow pillows blasting south through red dust, creating a fake orange sunset near wild mountain waterfalls and dense jungles passing emaciated pure white oxen dragging primitive wooden wheeled carts filled with lumber, bamboo, watermelons, red bricks made of red dust, and human cargo wearing colorful red, green, blue, purple Kroma scarves filtering dust from their respiratory system.

Inside the river galaxy he recharged his space craft.

Metta.

220 Volts of Stupidity

Hi. My name is Mr. Electric. I am the energy driving your machines, tools, lights, music systems and biology. I am the current flowing from here to there, in and out, up and down, before and after, left and right, top to bottom, and circular momentum of gravitational forces.

I am the current surging through your left ring finger when you try to reconnect the broken adapter to the floor strip of plug outlets. I am the immediate surging supply of 220V electricity blasting, tingling up your arm through muscles, tissue, veins, tendons and flesh before petering out near your left shoulder blade.

I am the after effect of a numbing sensation near the tip of said finger and various meridian points along your left arm. This will eventually fade away into a blur like some almost forgotten face, heartbeat, musical note, dust particle or breath of air.

Yet, it will always remain with you, this charge, this bolt of flying electric buzz. The light is steady. You are now fully charged and you may disconnect from the energy source. Congratulations.

Metta.