I learned something very beautiful from Ariel over the years with regards to food and everything-- he showed me to notice the different components that make up everything we touch and have contact with. From the farmers planting the vegetables to those working in the rice paddies and the transportation of it all eventually to our plates. This thought process has helped me better grasp that everything around me is really made somewhere, somehow, by someone.
This understanding could not possibly have been better brought about than the other day when we visited the brick factory. We came across what first seemed like a grassy area with one tall tower emitting smoke from it. As we came close, little orange faces kept emerging and carrying 20 some freshly baked clay bricks on their heads with seeming ease. We had come to observe life at its basic survival stage, and to distribute apples and oranges, of course (This act provoked weird feelings beyond words and comprehension for me). Whole families live on the grounds of the seasonal factory, which gets converted to rice paddies during the monsoons. The families construct little huts out of the bricks they make (the same bricks that will then be used to make big fancy houses for someone elsewhere)and live in cramped conditions with no toilets and the smoke of the baking tower and excrement of the lifeless slaving donkeys all around them.
It felt incredibly unnatural to come in and just start handing out the fruit, but it was interesting to note how even there, in this orange soot excuse of a world, children still retain their innocence and were the first to come up to us. There are children as young as three walking around there, 2 year olds carried on the backs of their 5 year old siblings, and probably even smaller ones who were born there and for them it is all they know. We started peeling some oranges and giving segments to the younger ones, the real color of their faces coming through as the sweet juice of the fruit dribbled down the side of their mouths. Some looked as if they didn't really know what to do with the round balls we handed, as if this would be their first time tasting the sweet nectar of nature. The mothers were a bit apprehensive and would take some and hot it for later to give to their children. The men were not as approachable, and it was difficult to figure out the right way to go to them.
I felt bad, almost as it we were interrupting their work and they would lost money for our attempt to bring joy, as they get paid for he amount they make a day. That if, if you can even call 300 NRS per family a day payment.
I also tried to give an apple to the overworked donkey, his backside red from being whipped too many time and his legs still wobbling under the weight of years of carrying bricks. They looked so awful, and i thought that people in desperate situation will either get very close to their animals, or disregard their well being altogether. Really, only the wealthy can afford to actually chose their emotions, in many respects of the word.
And so I learned from Ariel to look a bit closer at all the buildings. As we got on the bus to go back to the house, there was silence. IT was the only noise to juxtapose the sound of survival and acceptance felt by all those around us. Silence was the only sound as we drove off and saw big bricks houses barely off the grounds of the factory. I wonder what noise the people in those house hear or make when they look our of their nice windows at the community around them...
