Deathhouse
I went and saw a film tonight about execution in Texas. It was a harrowing film to me, but perhaps it was the trailers to the film before that hit me harder. A film about Triage, a guy working with MSF deciding whom should leave or die. It didn’t really hit me until the two people I saw the film with needed to go off and debrief. Walking away it hit me, the memories. The things I rarely talk about.
Living in India and spending some time in Uganda, death was never far away. I managed to keep myself a safe distance at all times, but I could hear the echoes of it. There is one thankfully only one cry I can remember. It was the cry of the mother, an unmistakable cry, more a wail then a cry, a lament, piercing I can still conjure it up to this day.
I don’t know why her child is dead, but I can imagine. It’s called poverty, and the poor always pay. I can conjure up the face of many people who are probably now dead, because they were short a few dollars. They pay in Africa, they pay in India, they pay in the rest of Asia, they pay in the States, and they pay in Australia.
I can’t abide by it, and I can at the same time. Never get too close, or you might get in trouble. At least one step removed. That’s the safe way. It works a bit, but as any regular reader would know I have been impacted. I have changed my life, my location and my vocation as a result of what I’ve seen.
I can’t imagine how messy it would get if I had let myself get closer. Perhaps my intellect, and skills in ICT are the best thing I can offer, from an distance, because that’s where they are most important. Perhaps though I need to role up my sleeves get dirty, and get lost in the joy and suffering of poverty.
I wonder here in Melbourne if with Urban Seed, and Seeds that’s something I should be doing..
To follow soon, what I can do from a distance to help the poor, and what I could do in proximity.