The poor will always be with you
Last week Holly mentioned that plastic recycling is in trouble in America too. I found out from an article in the Atlantic that cities across the country have ended their recycling programs. Why? Because China has stopped accepting our soiled trash due to health risks, environmental damage, and increased labor costs. Without tens of thousands of Chinese …
When my young friend Hamza built his electric cars, he procured the material from local recycling shops. This network of recyclers is a remarkable process quite unlike anything we see in the West. In America we took our recyclable material to large depots in industrial zones. Here in the majority world those depots tend to …
The mirror image of the "Things that bring me joy" post. A few things that make each day that much more difficult to get through. Slum demolitions Shadia being a long ways away People who tell me that I shouldn't live where I do because there are "bad people" there The ultra-prevalence of tiny …
I posted about my friends' loss of their fathers because I was thinking about Danish. He left the slum two weeks ago to work in Saudi Arabia. He will be gone two years. Away from his home, his family, his country. They saw it as the best option for Danish to begin to help the …
(I shared this somewhere else when it happened, but recent events have me thinking about it again.) Sultan’s ears perked up to hear the mosque's announcement. I usually ignore them because, in a slum of close to 10,000 people, the messages rarely concern my own circle. But I stopped and listened because Sultan wasn’t going …
Tough-looking teenage boys who reduce themselves to goofy noises to try to make Sakeenah smile and then melt to pieces when she does Seeing a new bird fluttering through the slum that I've never seen before Shadia making phone calls home to her 'mata ji' and 'papa' Every moment that one of my learners puts …
I'm quitting Facebook. I'm leaving because we've given up control of part of our lives to a corporation that doesn't work for our benefit. Leaving Facebook will come with a cost. But the cost Facebook extracts from our lives is greater than any benefit it provides. Remember, Facebook makes a lot of money. Yet you …
Pooja was a late addition to my literacy class, not asking to read until a month after her brother had started. As a 15-year-old who had never attended school, she wasn't accustomed to academic work and had a lot of home responsibilities which took her time away. But from her first lesson she was hooked, …
Peregrine is asleep. So is Sakeenah. There is yelling outside and then that distinct dull thwop of fists connecting with heads. So of course I get outside. I'm awkward in putting on my shorts and by the time I get out into the alleyway the combatants have already been separated. A skinny guy is projecting …
The funny aspect of the whole thing was when she came over and started beating my students, my initial response was to shrug and continue with the lesson. Let's back up. Two months ago I started a literacy class in a poor community next to the bridge. Makeshift huts climb the river's banks and line …
