The Hungry Haves and Have-Nots in Southeast Asia: Day 17

Day 17 of 21 Days for World Hunger, and I’m hanging in there.  With only four days remaining on this virtual tour of hunger in the world, I’m trying to stay focused. Today I take a look at Southeast Asia, which has had its share of issues from political unrest to corrupt governments to natural disasters.  Poverty.  Hunger.  In this post, I am going to share some interesting videos on Indonesia and Timor-Leste.

Stella and Saber's Healing Mud Bath

Today started out like all the others – I woke up.  That’s always a good thing.  While I wanted to spend my morning hitting the snooze button or turning off the alarm altogether, I decided to go for it and get out of bed.  We have a visitor this week – a six month old 60 pound Lab pup named Saber.  He’s laying here snoring as I write.  Things got wild around the house since his arrival.  Our 10 month old puppy and he became instantaneous friends spending their days rolling, slobbering and snorting all over each other.  Given the recent rains here in California, we made the mistake of letting them out in the yard unsupervised.  They returned swathed in mud – tail to toe.  Saber, previously a yellow Lab turned chocolate, and both dogs’ faces were masked in mud with eyes peering through and tails down because we wouldn’t let them back inside without a bath.  Things were muddled up to say the least.  The back wall of our house resembles a manic, alcohol-induced Jackson Pollock, an abstract expressionistic mural of mud if you will.  They had a good time.  Of course I snapped a couple of photos to send to his humans and let them know how we’re taking excellent care of their baby.

The only time so far that Stella (our pup – an SPCA variety supposedly a mix of Aussie, Lab, and Border Collie among other things) and Saber had a low-level conflict was during dinner.  It was nothing major, just a moment of tenseness.  You see, Stella is a grazer like her human mother and Saber is an inhaler.  Stella’s morning and evening kibble will sit in the bowl for two hours.  She eats a little, leaves, returns later.  Whereas Saber’s food sits in the bowl until we give him the okay upon which time he dives, grunts, chomps and the food is gone.  I’ve never seen anything like it!  Anyway, obviously given Saber’s voracious appetite, we’ve had to adjust the manner in which we feed Stella.  This evening as I was putting food in her bowl and as Saber was taking too much interest in it, Stella had to communicate Bark Off! I took her into another room, closed the door, and we hung out there together until she nearly finished the food.  She didn’t mind sharing those few remaining bites with Saber.  He was happy to receive – backwash n’all.

I witnessed that whole event in awe.  Two different beings and two different approaches to food.  Who knows what leads to one behavior or the other? Just like with humans, dogs may engage in desperate behavior when it comes to a primal need like hunger.

I, on the other hand felt no desperation today with regards to food.  I’m still craving sleep, but can’t say I’m desperate for it.  There was one point this evening while in my office that I couldn’t hold my head up, so I lay down for a few minutes. I might have even dozed off, because I don’t remember a 15-20 minute time period.  I must have been really tired, because taking naps is a rarity; a luxury I afford myself no more than half a dozen times a year at best.  And before today, only on the weekend. Stella was hanging with me, because she and Saber needed a time out.  We were getting worried that they would play themselves into a state of unrecoverable exhaustion.  So, there we were cuddling on the floor together.  Quality time.

I was doing some research this evening (just before I had the mini-pass out on the floor) on YouTube.  While listening to Noam Chomsky, I heard him say eat hummus. I was all, huh?  Why is Noam Chomsky telling me to eat hummus and what does that have to do with globalization?  I replayed the video and realized he said e-commerce.  Then I took a nap.

Today was a fairly good one – the energy was slightly above average.  I’d say on an energy scale of 1 – 10 with ten being woo-hoo feel great and one being blah blah blah; I was somewhere between a five and a six.  I felt slightly weak just about noon, and it passed.  It seems as if I’ve adapted to eating just one meal a day.  Granted, the chai I drink in the morning has a lot of calories.  It could, in retrospect be the equivalent to a small breakfast.

While driving back from a meeting, I came to a stop light.  I looked around as I often do (sometimes I memorize license plates for fun) and noticed a woman in the car beside me eating a peach.  A stream of light through her window created the perfect pathway to the juicy flesh of a ripe peach.  I could see the juice reflecting off the light.  I watched her take a bite.  It looked soooooo yummy.  I could almost taste the sweetness.  I caught myself smacking my lips.  Just as I was about to feel sorry for myself for not having a peach of my own, the light turned.  As I drove through the intersection, there was a man crossing the street.  He looked about 56 (okay, 55).  He had a rather large backpack and was carrying a cane.  It only took about a second to realize he was blind.  My previous peach perspective instantly switched to wondering what it was like to be blind and what kind of courage it must take to walk through a busy town without the ability to see.  If the universe was giving me a message, I got it.  Even if I’m not allowing myself to eat whenever or whatever I want, I have a lot going for me.  I am fortunate in many ways – including the ability to have mobility without the need for assistance.  I admire the courage of people who thrive in the face of disadvantage.

Tonight’s dinner was possibly our best yet.  It was nearly the same as yesterday (steamed potatoes, garlic simmered in coconut milk) except I used a little more Mae Ploy Yellow Curry Paste in the coconut sauce,  and I added asparagus instead of broccoli.  I made a big batch of rice with curry yesterday, so we’ll be eating that the next couple of days as well.  The husband commented several times long after dinner about how great it was. That compliment speaks volumes.

Today’s Nutritional Intake – holding fast at 113.5 pounds.  I’ve been consuming less than 900 calories for the last two days.

Noam Chomsky on World Hunger
I think Noam is cool, so here’s a video with a snippet of his thoughts on world hunger.

Globalization According to Noam Chomsky

There are various forms of international integration and one specific modality is globalization, meaning countries have to open up their borders for free imports.  They have to accept imports from highly subsidized U.S., European and Canadian agribusiness; which essentially wipes out domestic production for those countries.

Indonesia

Indonesia is ranked thirty-eight (serious) on the International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) Global Hunger Index (GHI).

According to the World Food Programme, out of a population of over 245 million people, 52 percent live on less than $2 per day with an estimated 35 million poor people who live on less than $0.65 per day. Staple crops include rice, cassava, maize, sweet potatoes, soybeans, peanuts, cocoa and coffee. 

Conducive Chronicle’s Editor-in-Chief, Natalie Cherot, brought the following series to my attention:

Globalization: New Rulers of the World by John Pilger

The video (below) is Part I of a painfully revealing seven-part series on the initiation of globalization by the Western world vultures in conjunction with General Suharto’s (pronounced Soeharto) greed and genocide of a million Indonesians.  If you click on the first video, it should continue on to each section.  It implicates the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund’s involvement along with Suharto’s regime in oppressing the people of Indonesia.  The World Bank diverted, or rather lost, up to 30 percent of their funds to Suharto. This is in a country where poor families may exist on less than $2.00 a day.  It is estimated Suharto stole billions of dollars from his people during the course of his 30-year regime – throwing Indonesia into insurmountable debt condemning its people to poverty, hunger and disease.  Pilger reveals how corporate and Western government actions of integrating Indonesia into the global economy have caused discrimination and human rights violations.

Timor-Leste

Timor-Leste, formerly East Timor, shares the island of Timor with West Timor, which is part of the cluster of Indonesian islands just 300 miles north of Australia.  Timor-Leste is ranked seventy (alarming) on the GHI.

Despite its wealth of natural resources, Timor-Leste is one of the poorest countries in the world with approximately 30 percent of its population suffering from hunger.  According to the World Food Programme, 40 percent of Timor-Leste’s population lives on less than 55 cents per capita per day and 43 percent of children under the age of five are severely malnourished (underweight).  Staple crops include rice, corn, maize, cassava, sweet potatoes, soybeans, mung beans, and kidney beans.

In John Pilger’s film Death of a Nation – East Timor, Pilger reveals how many Western governments provided military and financial support to Suharto’s regime in murdering the people of East Timor in a criminal effort to prevent them from establishing an independent state with a leftist government. The human rights violations – genocide – of the island people of East Timor go beyond reprehensible.  Indescribably so.  Watching this video brought up a load of anger.  While Death of a Nation – East Timor is long, I found it well done – painful but well done.

A Firsthand Account from a Friend:  Southeast Asian Laborers

I have a dear friend who resides in both the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Thailand.  Many of the laborers in Dubai come from Asia.  She shared her firsthand account and thoughts on hunger:

It seems so ironic when countries like the UAE and the U.S. are battling obesity that we can’t get the food distribution right.  In this part of the world, the disparity is in your face daily. Despite the economic downturn, there are still loads of workers from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc that basically build the infrastructure of Dubai.  They live in labour camps and on very little money – god knows what they eat.  But I’m willing to bet its basically rice and lentils – with little fresh fruit or vegetables.  I did find out that the average labourer in Dubai makes about 450 dirhams a month plus 150 dirhams for food.  Since the exchange rate is 3.7 dirhams to the dollar, that means that they make about (rounding) $125 a month in salary and about $35 a month for food – $1 a day give or take.  They are given accommodation, but it’s pretty brutal and with the decline in the economy – a lot of workers are either without work at the moment or haven’t been paid by their companies.

The workers in our house in Dubai are from Sri Lanka and the cost of food (and many other things) has risen so fast in their country (partly as a result of the recent civil war there) that their families (who subsist primarily from the wages they earn here) also find it so difficult to eat balanced meals.  Nothing ever goes to waste in this house, that’s for sure, but I am conscious that what we put on our table for one meal could surely feed entire families for a lot more than one meal.

I struggle with it – the haves and the have-nots.  The same is true in Thailand – where workers there pick stuff growing in our front yard, chop it up and eat it with rice for a meal.  In Thailand, they basically eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner – rice with maybe some canned fish and something green that they can pick from the side of the road (probably after the dogs pee on it) or out of someone’s yard.  They are sugar freaks, but it is easy to see why. They can load up their food with sugar (and MSG) and get more bang for the buck.

As for the Thai workers – without doing any real checking – I would imagine that the laborers (construction etc.) probably make about 200 baht a day – which is about five bucks. On Samui, the Burmese workers who run across the border will work for less than that.  Just like Dubai, employers usually provide some space for “living” – i.e., sleeping which isn’t much more than a space on the floor.  There is usually some electricity somewhere where they can plug in their rice cooker. Suffice to say there is so much NEED in other parts of the world!  Anyway, you can see your journey has touched me in many ways, and I fully support you.

Why do we have to pay the price of poverty?  We didn’t create poverty, adults did.
- Sultana, a twelve-year garment factory worker from Bangladesh

Economic growth without social progress lets the great majority of the people remain in poverty
while a privileged few reap the benefits of rising abundance.
- John F. Kennedy

To support the organizations I write about in the series, purchase a World Hunger: Be the Solution Tee.  Proceeds from the shirt will go to the Small Planet Institute Fund and the International Fund for Africa.  All tees are sweat free and available in organic cotton.  To see the selection of World Hunger tees at Conducive’s Humanitarian & Human Rights Tee store, click here

To follow this series from the beginning, you can click the links below:

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 1

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 2

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 3

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 4

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 5

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 6

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 7

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 8

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 9

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 10

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 11

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 13

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 14

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 15

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 16

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 18

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 19

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 20

21 Days for World Hunger: Day 21

Solutions for World Hunger: Part I

Solutions for World Hunger: Part II

Solutions for World Hunger: Part III