Being former Navy I traveled extensively around the Mediterranean and Northern Africa. I thought I saw a lot. Then I left the service and went to work for several big companies that were all exploding with sales in Asia. It is a different level of third-world there, for sure. Some of my visits left me with fond memories, way out in the country in Malaysia or China, those were okay. Way out in the country in India, completely different.
I loved India, it is amazingly beautiful in places, there are so many great people and great foods. But if you take a wrong turn for a couple of hours, you’re in areas with zero infrastructure. Barely dirt roads, no running water, no public anything, no place for trash, it’s just … sobering. I found the hardest part was telling people who had not been to India what those places were like. The average American cannot comprehend living on those levels, and can’t understand how things could be that way. I almost wish i could force everyone to go there to those places just to see what life COULD be like if we just continue to not care about anyone or anything.
What also rubbed off on me is hearing the stories. I’m in IT, I work with a lot of people from India and the rest of Asia. I try to make it a point to ask about where their family is from, if they have been there, what it’s like, etc. American diversity is nothing if we cannot understand the uniqueness of what makes us great, the people who come here and their histories.
@rei I hope your trip goes okay. My condolences to your and your family.
It is highly variable in India, and there is probably a notable difference between when you went and today. I’ve only been recently, but can say with some certainty that things have become much more developed/ better over the last decade. Part is from seeing what they are I say this, pet from talking to coworkers.
Granted roads in Kerala, the highest HDI state, were utterly shit. They made Chicago roads look good, which I didn’t know was possible. But getting out away from urban centers by bus and train was enlightening. Just watching houses go by by rail, I saw it all. The worst was the villages just outside Delhi, that’s where the real poverty seemed most acute. It wasn’t that infrastructure wasn’t existing, but thatbsome people seemed forced into clusters where they lived apart from it. Huts built with, essentially, garbage. Using signage as roofs, the vinyl banners and coverings that normally adorned food and phone stalls being repurposed as siding. All under the shadow of high rises and power lines.
But never did I come across any places completely lacking in infrastructure and services, merely people who were denied access to them.
I recall this mountainside on the way into Guatemala City’s downtown. Giant mountain along which you drive on a big highway, looking out over the valley.
The whole sloped surface is covered in what amounts to a gigantic lean-to-shack “suburb.” Just hundreds upon hundreds of tiny, packed houses and hovels. The best of them were slanted structures made of plaster and wood, traced by lines of rust from metal roofs and jumbled on top of each other in a confounding pattern that made your eyes ache. The rest. . . made of tarps, plywood, and, for the really lucky, corrugated metal cascading down the side of the valley as far as the eye could see, rippling with unending human motion. Thousands of lives lived out in a pollution-choked haze on the side of a filthy mountain, forever staring across the void into a world of modernity and concrete and steel and cellphones and McDonalds.
Definitely 8+ years ago, so I would expect a lot has changed. We were building a plant as well so it was specifically outside urban areas. Seeing people carrying water was very common around the area, I’m assuming it may even be built up. Trash was everywhere though. And it looked like most around there were getting by farming. India is growing at a fast rate into developed as a whole, so I’m guessing sites like that are harder to come by.
Still, beautiful country. Of the trips I made, Mysore was my favorite. Such cool history and temples there.
Many (probably most) favelas in Brazil are exactly like that. And every big city in the country has at least several of those. My city must have more than dozen or two, some even bigger than satellite cities in the greater metropolitan area.
It’s weird seeing all the advertising campaigns basically teaching the populace ‘how to consume’ more along the lines of the shit you used to see in the 50-70s in the West.
Also weird: Aquafina and Dasani (distilled water) being offered as bottled “nước suối” spring water. It used to mean the French brands Evian and Volvic but weird to seem the higher name brand cachet being given to …tap water.
