Passport Picture in Street

Everywhere in SL you see the big NGO 4x4s. I call them unicorns because they’re white and have an enormous antennae like a horn sticking up from the trunk.

On the street they were selling little shirts for children… one of them was a singlet with a picture of violent thug rapper 50 Cent on it—with a picture of a bullet hole over the spot where the child’s heart would be. Need any more proof of the devastating effect of modern rap on African youths all over the world?

The streets are unbelievably loud—not just because of the shouting and incessant honking but because there is no electricity so everyone is running a generator. You can’t escape the noise. It’s as if someone were following you around day and night with a lawn mower. When it rains, it sounds as if you’re standing next to a waterfall.

Even though we have cockroaches and only have electricity a couple of hours a day and no hot water, it’s sometimes easy to forget that we’re living in the 2nd poorest country in the world. And sometimes it isn’t. Today, eating at a restaurant outside, an old woman wandered into the courtyard and started begging for money. Usually I tune them out, especially the young people who could at least try to find work or do something useful. But it’s impossible for people with disabilities and the elderly. And this woman—I don’t know if it was something in her face or her mannerisms or her voice, but it was like I was looking at Granny (who passed away around this time last year). As if she had come back to remind me that this could have been her. That it could have been us. But I was born in Canada and this woman was born here and now she will finish off her life poor and alone, begging rich people like me for scraps. The waitress shooed the old woman away and it broke my heart. I know that you can’t help everyone, I know that teaching journalists to stop parroting press releases and start pressing the government for solutions will help in the long run. But it won’t help her. That’s what I tell myself so I can sleep at night. But tonight I can’t sleep… because one African patron at the restaurant sitting next to me did reach into his pocket and throw the old woman a few coins. And I didn’t.