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Published: August 25th 2010
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One day, a Lao friend worked up the nerve to ask, "Who sends you money to live on each month?'' She knew I hadn’t had a job for months, yet she’d seen me continue to spend money. She was nervous to ask this question, but finally did, through another Lao friend that speaks English. Was it my father, working at home, who was sending me money to live on? I felt embarrassed that she thought someone else was supporting me.
I told her that I’d worked a lot and saved money before I came here, and that money I’d saved lasted me a long time here, because things cost less in Laos. She was shocked. I no longer felt embarrassed. I felt sad.
If this sweet, hardworking woman saved money her entire life, she’d never save enough to go fly somewhere and live there on her savings. So naturally she couldn’t fathom that some one could have enough money to fly across the world and not have to work for six months. All the tourists she’d seen on a daily basis, she must have assumed someone from their home was working and sending them money each day. Or perhaps
she assumed they were just really rich. But I know she thought I was really rich too, since I didn’t work, and still bought food and stayed in guest houses every day.
Then she said, “Oh, it’s because we spend all our money on beer here. If we didn’t like to have fun so much, we could save money too”. That is your Lao positive perspective, right there.
This woman makes about $60 a month working everyday, ten hours a day, cooking. That’s about $2 a day. Her husband also works, and so they can combine their salaries. They have one son, 21, who doesn’t work but is a doting kid, cooking and cleaning and picking his mom up from work each day on their family motorbike. Even if this woman could save her entire yearly salary, and the family could live on her husband’s, they’d save $720, not even enough for one plane ticket to the United States. If she could save her beer money for ten years, then she’d have enough for a trip to another country. But saving $2 a day, when your husband makes $2 a day, and your combined household income is $4
a day, isn’t easy. Things cost money, things break, people get sick, get married, die. Those spare $2 get spent on something everyday, if not beer money.
It’s not fair. I did the exact same work as her in Australia, two years ago, and made more than $720 a week. One week. That’s what she makes in a year! For the same work!
I told her all of this, that salaries are much, much higher in some parts of the world, so people make enough that they can feed themselves plus save money to go live elsewhere, and that it‘s really, really not fair. She was shocked, but not resentful or angry or jealous.
The other day I read something in the paper about Phillip Morris using child labor on tobacco farms in Kazakhstan. After living in Laos and seeing how things work in an undeveloped country, I feel a sad insight towards this sort of thing. Phillip Morris acts shocked and says, woah, we had no idea this is going on, we will take immediate action to change and stop this. But when it boils down to it, an American working for Phillip Morris won’t be
in the Kazakhstan fields everyday, checking that children aren’t working. Therefore, children will continue to work picking tobacco for Phillip Morris, helping to create the cigarettes people smoke in America. It’s likely Phillip Morris execs are aware of working conditions in these countries, and who is working. But it’s easy enough for them to pretend they don’t know, because then their profits are higher. I wouldn’t even blame Phillip Morris in particular, most big companies we know probably do the same.
These laborers are undoubtedly poor, and they need their children to work, that’s part of why they have them. The field owners need as much labor as they can get for as low a price as possible, that’s why the overlook children working alongside their parents. The people working for Phillip Morris in the US will set new rules, will tell the American public these new rules, and inform the field owners they buy tobacco from in Kazakhstan of these new rules. But will they send people from America to check the Kazak fields everyday? No, they won’t do that. And so things aren’t run in developing countries like they are in America. Truth is a different thing
than we know it. What we read in the paper is just one story, as we know, but especially when it comes to developing countries. People are desperate to feed their families. They are poor. They have no options. People higher up get paid off easily to turn a blind eye. They also need money.
The chain of command goes through so many people that it gets diluted by the time it gets to the bottom. Rules are ignored or reinterpreted to fit the needs of those involved. In a lot of places there is no such thing as child labor. It’s just families working together to survive. There is no such thing as safety regulations. It’s just families working together to survive. Those kids will likely still be working in Phillip Morris fields next year, despite what any American reports might say. If Phillip Morris or any company really cared about child labor, they’d change their whole system to fair trade, ensuring all their workers got paid a liveable wage, so children wouldn't need to work. Instead they just look at how to make more profit for the big people, ignoring the costs to the little people.
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fred appel
non-member comment
The world is a tough place.
Indeed it is a tough place,yes in our great nation America we have so much.And the posibilities are endless.Maybe the Lao people appreciate the little they have as opposed to many people here that feel that nothing is enough.Or that they are owed something from the labors of others.Fred.