This post will be a quick one, just to share an impactful event that happened to me this week. Many times I think we know truths about the world or our environment, but we don't dedicate the time to actually utter them, then when someone actually does and we hear it, it comes as a little bit of a shock or surprise. Not in the way that it doesn't make sense or that we don't believe it, but in the way that we until that moment didn't quite realize exactly HOW much sense it made or didn't pinpoint the countless experiential evidences that lead us to know it is true. This happened to me this past Tuesday.
I've been waiting for about two weeks now to get electricity in my house and I am now beginning to actively call one of the people responsible for the area operations a couple times a day in an effort to annoy him into motion. However, when one of the nurses at the hospital overheard my conversation with an individual from the energy company she asked after I was done, "Was that about getting energy?" I responded, "Yes, I've been waiting two weeks so far." "Epá, energy, that can take months...just for them to show up." "But..." I started, before she cut me off, "Sabe, Zachy, o dineiro... (You know, Zach, money...)" She didn't have to finish her sentence. We all know how it ends. Money makes the world go around. Money speaks. Money is power. And a hundred other phrases to let you know that if you don't have the green, you won't be seen.
But I realized we don't know. We have no idea. Until you live in a country where money effectively doesn't exist for the majority of the population (and, if I'm honest with myself, until you are one of these individuals), you can't truly appreciate what any of these sayings mean. The nurse was right, money runs Mozambique. Rural citizens don't have it. Foreign companies take advantage of the nation to make it. International aid organizations and governments pump it into the country in order to try to advance their agendas. Individuals leave the country to find it. Children ask for it before they even know how to count it. Parents work their entire lives and never have enough of it to save up. People kill for it and people pray for it. Money.
This is not meant to be a discouraging post, only meant to make us think a bit. We talk about money all the time in the U.S., for example, and how those with the money have the power. This is just as true there as it is here, but here that reality manifests itself in a much more extreme and raw way. It's all a spectrum and it's easy to gape at those above us, but let's not forget those below us either.
The night after this happened, I was able to go on a gorgeous moonlit jog, the incredible beauty and freshness of the night reminding me that money is certainly not the only thing that matters in this world. Neither is electricity. I can wait. It can wait.
But I realized we don't know. We have no idea. Until you live in a country where money effectively doesn't exist for the majority of the population (and, if I'm honest with myself, until you are one of these individuals), you can't truly appreciate what any of these sayings mean. The nurse was right, money runs Mozambique. Rural citizens don't have it. Foreign companies take advantage of the nation to make it. International aid organizations and governments pump it into the country in order to try to advance their agendas. Individuals leave the country to find it. Children ask for it before they even know how to count it. Parents work their entire lives and never have enough of it to save up. People kill for it and people pray for it. Money.
This is not meant to be a discouraging post, only meant to make us think a bit. We talk about money all the time in the U.S., for example, and how those with the money have the power. This is just as true there as it is here, but here that reality manifests itself in a much more extreme and raw way. It's all a spectrum and it's easy to gape at those above us, but let's not forget those below us either.
The night after this happened, I was able to go on a gorgeous moonlit jog, the incredible beauty and freshness of the night reminding me that money is certainly not the only thing that matters in this world. Neither is electricity. I can wait. It can wait.
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| Late afternoon sun from the highway south of Metoro |
