Alternate Vision

from someone who once took my breath away. she needs to get a blog.

In the afternoon Szymon and me were taken by our taxidriver from thos morning to some villages where nomads are living. Incredible, in the middle of this deserted, dry landscape there were a few tents. We went to sit down with the women and children (there were no man in this group of tents, they all went to work in the city) and talked to them through the taxidriver. Such beautiful people, with brown skin and different layers of coloured clothing. I got the chance to ask some questions about the way women live here, and it turns out its the same as in India and some other parts of Asia (and who knwos the rest of the underdeveloped world): The women have a double workload - they work like the men do (on the land etc) but also have to take care of the children and cook foos for the family, do laundry, etc. The axidriver told us that the women used to have damaged hands because of their hard work, while the man were just mostly sitting around using Opium, which is why there hands looked much better. But now the government is making it hard for them to live and the cash-economy has entered their lives. Nowthe women mostly stay in the tents (some pieces of wood and clothing) and the men go out to the cities to make some money in construction-work or other hard jobs. Its not hard to imagine this change must cause problems in the family-structure, with the men being away a lot. What was also interesting was that there was a woman with a 2 month old baby, so I asked how she gave labour. She did it in the tent because there wasnt enough money for the hospital. They explained the women used to have really strong bodies because of their hard labour, but nowadays because the man go out to make money and the wmen stay behing to just take care of the children, their bodies have become wekaer and giving labour this way has become more dangerous for them, Its better if they could go to the hospital now, but often its too expensive. For those of you who are not that into anthropology or sociology: These are just a few examples of how a change in life-sustainance (making a living) can change a whole culture of society and causes many problems for the people involved. 'Development' like the use of money instead of self-sustainance (completely providing in your own food and other basic needs) can actually increase poverty for people and/or make their life harder. (just some thoughts) I forgto to mention that we visited two groups of tents. In the second one (with the woman and the baby) we were offered tea and sat down for w while. people were really excited and were putting on nice clothes for us to take pictures (we took a LOT) We brought sweets for the children and just for everyone basically, including ourselves, which was a good way to brake the ice. Especially because they were so hard to open we had to help the little kids all the time. A smile really can go a long way... While the sun was going down we drove back to the city, and I just feel this was one of my most special experiences in Iran. Tomorrow we might contact a lady who gave me her phone-number to show us around. Her husband lived in Belgium for a while and after 5 minutes of talking to him it was all a bout politics, including the difficulties muslim-people face in Western-Europe at the moment. So there probably will be some heavy talking tomorrow. But its interesting. The day after we take a flight to tehran (the capital) and from there a bus to Istanbul: about 40 hours in a bus, woehoe!

# posted by Surya Swamy : 11:47 AM