Our southeast asian adventures are over, but the adventure itself still continues in Dusseldorf, Germany! Seems at first like a pretty inconvenient, out of the blue destination after so much time in southeast asia but we chose to come to Dusseldorf because we actually have an Uncle who lives here. We had to fly over that part of the world anyways so we thought it was a perfect opportunity to stop in! So here we are.When I stepped out of the plane in Germany, it felt like the apocalypse. I could feel the space around me sucking the life out of me and I was surrounded by dead plants and barren fields, strange colourless debris was all over the place. The memory of cold weather came back to me and in an instant I had so much sympathy for immigrants from the tropics who come to cold countries for the first time. Compared to the rainforest this seems like cursed earth. But there was some twisted part of me that missed the cold and somehow felt comfortable in it. Other stand-out welcomed comforts included milk and cereal, dogs that people actually like, and toilets that have a switch you can press to make them flush.
We couldn't have chosen a more dramatic place to face the culture shock though. Dusseldorf is a particularly wealthy city of investors, insurance companies, and law firms. Big business. There are so many people walking around in leathers and furs, shops are all decked out and expensive, and there are christmas lights and decorations absolutely everywhere. After immersing ourselves in poverty and low budget circumstances for so long, it felt really uncomfortable to be surrounded by so much wealth. And when you're surrounded by wealth, you inevitably live a wealthier lifestyle to adapt to it. My weekly budget in southeast asia was $220 per week for everything: 3 meals a day, cheap accommodation, public transportation, and the occasional recreational whatever. Thats $30 for everything I needed in an entire day, yet I spent $30 dollars alone on my first dinner in Germany and over $200 to get new warm clothing (I had no coat or sweat shirts or anything). I could list a million of these mind boggling comparisons, but the most ridiculous one comes from the $7,700 suit we saw downtown Dusseldorf. The experiences that I've had here have been lifelong, absolutely incredible experiences for $220 x 12 weeks = $2,640. If you include flights to and from that number climbs higher, but still nowhere near the price of that suit. That suit was the nicest piece of fabric I've ever seen, but I cannot imagine that it would ever be worth as much to someone as this travel experience has been to me.. not to mention the distance $7,700 could go in the hands of community development leaders like Dr. Dave Mar Naw in the Akha Hill Tribe villages and Sareth Brak in rural Cambodia. Some take it further than others, but relative to most of the world our entire culture is really rich. Material wealth is deeply engrained in our lifestyles. The rest of the world doesn't get to live like we do, we are the strange ones. I'm not saying we're all money lusting fiends, but its true that a lot of the material wealth that we consider to be bare necessities are viewed as luxuries by most of the world. Things like an abundance of clothing, hot water showers, our own doctors and dentists, a mattress to sleep on, plenty of food, a washer and drier. I don't think having these things makes us bad people, but I think it means we especially have to be careful not to overindulge in material wealth. I think we have to make a mental effort to be aware of our overindulgent habits and then to wean ourselves off of them, to live more modestly.
It's important to wean ourselves off of overindulgent habits because they tend to have greater negative impacts on the world around us, often in ways we don't fully understand or consider. In rural Cambodia, I met a lot of really fantastic men and women. In order to provide for their families, several women in the village get jobs in the nearest city where they work in big factories sewing clothing. They crowd insane amounts of people into the back of a pickup truck every morning at 5am to get trucked off to the factory, then return in the evening after the sun has gone down, 6 days a week. These are working conditions that we wouldn't force on anyone in Canada. The clothes they make pass through a series of middle men until they reach our stores. Theres a huge system at work here and there are lots of people along the way you could point your finger at, but the whole system is fueled by consumer demand, by our desire to have clothes. Knowing this makes me want to be careful not to feed a system like this. Easier said than done, but choosing not to overindulge is a good start.
Clothing is one example, but I think there are a lot of these kinds of systems that we inadvertently feed without really knowing the humanitarian and environmental consequences at the other end. The reality is that none of us have the time and energy to understand all the consequences of all our actions. There will always be things that we "should" be thinking about that we will instead be ignorant to. Thats why I think its a good rule of thumb to try to not to overindulge in whatever you're doing. And when we inevitably discover that we've accidentally made a negative contribution to the world, we shouldn't hate ourselves for it. Be grateful that identifying the mistake at the very least reveals a new understanding and presents an opportunity to make a positive change in the way we live. This, of course, requires motivation to be a good person, which I like to think most people have. But maniacs who murder little children in their schools unfortunately prove that this isn't always the case.
I want to be careful not to sound preachy or to sound like I'm trying to call anyone to action. I'm simply sharing the thoughts that come to mind after seeing both the rich and poor perspectives more clearly.Home soon, cant wait!
