Living in the riel world

Our friend Becky's parents, who live and work with the poor in Calcutta, describe it as learning to live in parallel universes when they talk about the two worlds they slide in and out of.One minute in a slum, next minute in Pizza Hut.

We talk about living in the riel world and the dollar world. The riel being Cambodia's official currency and the working currency for the majority of Cambodians, the dollar being the working currency of tourists and the rich.

To us, increasingly the riel world helps us to understand how the real world works - that it is what is normal for the vast majority of people worldwide and throughout history. Yet it is a world we only partially enter. The dollar world is what we know yet it seems ever more sur-real and something we will never leave.

It seems that finding peace in living where worlds collide is to accept that both worlds are sur-real or sub-real, that indeed reality is where there contradictions and tensions meet.

We don't all live in a global economy or a global village that is ridiculous from where we are renting and unimaginable to someone immersed in the riel world. The dollar world (which is what the global economy refers to) is another world. People immersed in one world or another rarely meet and even less like to be know each other at a personal level and there are only a few people who live the ghostly realm imbetween the two worlds.

We are deeply grateful for the opportunity we have to slide between worlds and get a different perspective on reality courtesy of the friendliness of our neighbours in the riel world and the generosity of our supporters in the dollar world.

We can say is that it is a wonderful thing when the two worlds can meet, get to know each other and kiss in familia love. We can also see that this is not the norm and that both worlds are impoverished when the interaction is expolitative or without insight into how the Others really live. Neither option is without cost, yet the price to paid is very different.

I am reminded as I write this of Gandhi's quote that it costs a lot of people a lot of money to keep him in poverty. I am no longer sure what he meant by this......