sacred canopy

There's been something very clean for me to speak about how things are in Haiti or Palestine. In this place, things are this way. There, things are like this or that. In Haiti, children eat dirt cookies. In Palestine children have no plumbing.

In Bangladesh, it is bamboo being labored over and hauled around - - not sugar cane. In Bangladesh, children are not running from bulldozers, rather, they suffer a no-win battle with the rainy season. In Bangladesh I now know that poverty is not specified and particular. Extreme poverty looks almost the same everywhere. And it is heartbreaking. That sweet smell of pollution and human waste crosses political boundaries. The rickshaw, however, is special. Today, while traveling two hours away to interview micro-loan borrowers in villages, I watched hundreds of them on the streets. I likened them to sacred canopies, life-giving and vibrant with color, perhaps serving as shields.