We had another power outage this afternoon. Started around 3:15 pm. It was just after a thunder and lightning storm, and Fahim has told me in the past that rainstorms seem to result in power outages here.
As a side note, only something like 63% of the country even has electricity. I don’t know the statistics on clean running water.
While it’s true that I live in a fairly decent neighborhood – it’s the influence of OSC – Overseas School of Colombo – and all the foreigners who work there. There are, as I’ve mentioned before, a lot of expats living in the neighborhood.
There are the standard decent sized houses, complete with tiled floors, air conditioning, and all sorts of modern conveniences. Yards are still small, even for those houses, by North American standards, but some houses have large yards – not very many, mind you, but some.
I have, on occasion, seen among these "normal" houses shacks. No kidding. And people still living in them.
One shack in particular I’ll describe for you. First off, no electricity, no plumbing. How could I possibly know, you ask yourself? Why, because there were four poles marking the corners of the shack, but no walls. A ceiling made of leaves or grasses or something like that. A wood stove, I think. No furniture to speak of either. Let me rephrase, no furniture such as I am used to. That was pretty much all there was to that shack. And yes, people were living there. A couple of people were home when I went past.
You know there are people in the world living like this. You know it. In North American cities, there are homeless people. You know that, too. You may choose to ignore it, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
In North America, I’ve seen families on welfare struggle to get by, and we could argue about welfare abuses, but I don’t care to – we know it exists, but it’s not being addressed here, today – but most of those families managed still to have electricity, running water, enough food to feed the children and parent(s), clothes, blankets, furniture, a house/apartment/home of some kind to live in. Some of them managed to have a television, stereo, and other things that North American society calls necessities. They aren’t, but it’s become that way.
Poverty exists in North America. I don’t doubt that.
But on a poverty scale, this is much further to the bottom.
Well, I am, after all, in a Third World country, aren’t I? What do I expect?
And the power came back on sometime around 6:30 pm. Good. Just in time to make another batch of Hot and Sour Soup for poor poor Fahim.
Honestly, I’m glad he likes it, I’m glad it makes him feel better, and I’m relieved that he can eat it without any major problems.
