perspective

when i returned to woodstock i moved out of king’s chambers into mount hermon. i hurriedly packed my things, shoving still-on-hangers clothes into my suitcase with household goods and books. when i moved to the bottom of my closet, i found some pants that i have never worn. i brought the pants and some unused body wash down to my ayah (maid/ housekeeper) who was working at my neighbor’s house. she hugged me and told me, “thank you my baby, thank you” and followed me back up the stairs to my apartment. her attention turned to the mostly-used shampoo and conditioner bottles in my garbage can. chondra gently burrowed in my trash to find honey, peanut butter and some other food that i had deemed past its prime. i tried to explain that the peanut butter was past its expiration date, partially trying to redeem myself for throwing it away and also trying to tell her that i didn’t want her to eat it. she opened it, smelled it, and said “tikka, tikka” (okay, okay). the half-used food and minimal amounts of shampoo and conditioner almost moved chondra to tears as she kissed my face and put her hands to my cheeks. “thank you my baby, thank you.”

i used this global village handout in class on the first day of the semester to give students a sense of how fortunate they are. we went on to discuss the responsibilities deriving from our position and educational status in the world community. i wanted to give them a sense of perspective concerning the world around us.

the global village

according to phillip harter, from stanford university school of medicine, if the earth’s population at the end of the twentieth century could have been shrunk to a village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would have looked something like this:

57 asians; 21 europeans; 14 from the western hemisphere, both north and south; 8 africans
52 would be femaile; 48 would be male
70 would be non-white; 30 would be white
70 would be non-christian; 30 would be christian
89 would be heterosexual; 11 would be homosexual
6 people would possess 89 percent of the entire world’s wealth and all 6 would be from the US
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer
(harter, 2000)

there have been times throughout my time in india when the poverty and injustice have overwhelmed me, awakening my inner parts to a sense of indescribable, almost gut-wrenching, underlying humanness. however, i have never experienced the sensation of a woman examining my trash to use what i had hastily discarded.