The Level of Poverty

Here’s a good example. We’re flying to the other side of the Island. We’re quite high in the helicopters. I spot this hut on top of a hill. I start looking at it and studying it. It’s a mud hut and a grass roof, the whole nine yards. But then I see a circle beside the hut and I start observing that. There’s an ox or a cow tied to a stick, a pole and that cow’s going around in circles turning a big wheel, a big stone and that’s how they’re crushing their wheat and doing whatever they need to do what they’re doing. This is 1997, and they have a cow you know, turning a stone crushing wheat I mean it’s just amazing. Or we’re driving down the roads that were there and where there was good pavement, that’s where they dried out their rice because the sun beat down on the pavement and dried out their rice. That’s poverty, that’s poverty.Deep in the capital itself near the port, is about the worst place there is, and when a person suddenly loses urge to live, there was so many there, no clothes on their backs just waiting to die. We’re driving through the port with the windows rolled up, the airconditioning cranked, maxed out, tears going down our eyes because of the stench. That’s how strong it was. Naaah, that’s poverty. Yep, it’s just horrible, horrible.