Meru - "Beasts of Burden"

CAPTION:
This image portrays the immense burden that women, regardless of tribe, manage each and every day for their families survival and for some it provides a very humble means of income. In Meru, women have to deal with full sized trees instead of the lighter, high desert scrub which is found in the more Northern regions of the country. We guessed this load to have weighed over 90lbs considering that Scott, our resident Marine, couldn't lift the wood off the ground.

She had just walked over 2 miles and was nearing her home just up the road a ways where out of breath, sweating profusely, covered in tree clippings, wearing hand me down shoes and suffering from full blown Aids...she quietly smiled while dropping the burden to the ground and without stopping, without complaint she prepared for another journey to the forest and agreed to let us walk with her a ways.

It is simply inconceivable that human beings have to work so hard for so little, anywhere be it in Meru, Kenya or in the Appalachian Hills of West Virginia right here in the USA. Yet this load of wood, her second of the day, would be for sale at the market this night and she would be paid a king's ransom of one dollar and twenty five cents for her effort. Think this through for a minute. There isn't a market anywhere on this earth where $2.00 a day in your pocket is enough money to feed your family, and keep in mind that the two dollars in your hand just wasn't given to you...you still had to earn it the hard way and at times with back breaking physical work. This problem is at the heart of one of the MDG goals, striving to end critical poverty for those trying to live on less than $2.00 a day. This is what it looks like.

For this woman, the load of wood you see her carrying on her back in this image, albeit willingly each and every day, is just the burden you can see. Maybe it's not having enough money to buy a piece of goat meat this week or not being able to buy fresh fruit and vegetables or having enough education to realize where to seek social services let alone enjoying a new blouse or a fresh dress straight from the store, a vacation anywhere than here...medical care for the asking or a home with a clean bed and the money to send her children to school.

Or maybe she'd like to have something just for herself like a few of those Aids drugs she hears everyone talking about...but to be clear, I never saw this woman complain, cry under the load she was carrying nor ask me for one thin dime. Yet in simple terms the camera I made this image with would be the equivalent of her hauling wood at $2 bucks a day for 6 days a week...for the next 11 years of her life.

How did things get so out of balance. How did some of us get so much...wanting so much more while others, painfully so...have received so little.