Two of British Columbia’s little discussed ‘accomplishments’ include the highest child poverty rate in the country and the country’s poorest urban neighbourhood. Despite those two facts, the majority of the people in this Province, and country for that matter, don’t really know what true poverty is.
Having lived in poverty, I can somewhat attest to what it’s like. But the truth is that the poverty I endured was absolutely nothing compared to what those that live in seriously disparaged parts of the world endure, not to mention what those who live on our own streets must. The images of foreign poverty are so beyond our comprehension as to almost seem the construct of some Hollywood special effects company.
For example, the following is a photograph of a slum in Manila. At first glance it looks as if a small street is winding between its shanties. But upon further examination it becomes clear that it’s actually a small river completely covered with refuse. The local inhabitants often subside off of sifting through the debris for items to sell or reuse, and sometimes even food to eat.
That said, do you ever wonder where your old keyboard and computer tower ends up? Well, the majority of them don’t end up in local landfills. Thousands of discarded computers are shipped to African countries every day, where locals scour toxic refuse dumps looking for metal components that can be exchanged for money. If you close your eyes and imagine green fields filled with old computers, some utopian recycling landscape might appear, but the truth of the matter is that in Lagos alone more than 500,000 discarded computers arrive every month. Sometimes, one in four of those computers still works, but the majority of them are pulled apart for the metal or simply burned.
We live in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. We have the ocean, glacier fed lakes and rivers, and a plethora of recreational areas to enjoy. Granted, when you visit Spanish Banks and walk out on the ‘mud flats’ when the tide’s out you’re actually wading through broken down sewage, but even that doesn’t compare to what the child in the photograph below is happily floating in. But that is the reality in Cilincing, a destitute area of Jakarta. Of course, none of us would ever allow our children to even get within 100 feet of that water, let alone swim in it.
While justifying the forcible delivering of ‘freedom’ to various parts of the world as our sacred duty has increased in popularity, addressing global economic inequality hasn’t. The reason? One is lucrative and one isn’t. I’ll leave you to figure out which is which.