Advertisement
Published: August 7th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Due to Travelblog.org's memory failure, this article had to be re-published. I rose from my evening’s indulgence. Pushing pause, I passed through the dark room, glowing with a crystal glare, and entered the kitchen. Flicking on the lights, white recessed cans struck their yellow casts onto shadows with a soft incandescence, like a candle on a corner bookshelf.
I reached the pantry, opened its wooden doors and pulled down two contents. One was a can of
Equal Exchange Organic Hot Cocoa. The other was a plastic bag of
Western Family Marshmallows—jumbo.
Outside, a layer of clouds blocked the night sky. A sheet of rain fell and piddled on the patio. As the teakettle came to a boil, whistling a harmonizing melody of the Swiss Alps as if a yodeler in search of his Lassie, I turned down the gas flame and filled my mug. I stirred in the powdered chocolate and white puffs of sugar, wondering if true sustainability would ever be possible? Needless to say, my hot cocoa was sweetened to perfection as the marshmallows dissolved into a creamy concoction.
America’s Omnipresent Morale Back in the television room, the movie proceeded. It was a documentary
entitled
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. Directed by Robert Greenwald, the film captures the stories of employees and those affected across the country. It is about the reality in the American morale of capitalism when the Goliath of unwarrior-like business, the Monopoly board of the family, slams into a community with uncombed hair of Philistine respect, and plays families with its cheap plastic blocks of homes and hotels (all paid with false money). From an employed mother forced to seek government-assisted healthcare to raise her children to a family-owned hardware store pushed out of business by the neighboring Wal-Mart superstructure.
The movie recalled my recent journey to Mazatlan, Mexico and the newly razed soil to accommodate the acres of asphalt and the high ceilings of cheap Wal-Mart goods. Not only has the corporation captured the minds and bodies of Americans, but now it extended not just to Europe, but also to Mexico.
Wal-Mart imports an outrageous amount of products from overseas. On November 29, 2004,
China Daily reported the company’s imports in an article by Jiang Jingjing: "The world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., says its inventory of stock produced in China is expected to hit US$18 billion this year, keeping the
annual growth rate of over 20 per cent consistent over two years." That’s an estimated $18 billion pumped out not by moral means, but from sweatshop factories employing young, naïve women, men and children living in poor provinces. According to
Global Exchange, Wal-Mart employs 400,000 workers overseas.
Ah, yes. It’s everywhere. Mexico to home. Just 15.59 miles from my doorstep, at the beginning of this year a Wal-Mart Supercenter opened its doors on January 27 in Poulsbo, WA, with the official Grand Opening on January 31. It is a 203,000 sq. ft. store providing 525 new jobs in 36 departments that remains open to customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. What’s most amazing, apart from the $35,000 donated to local organizations through its Good Works community involvement program, is the fact that twelve miles down the road there is another Wal-Mart Supercenter located in Silverdale, Washington. Ah, yes. It’s everywhere.
A Better Need For More My cocoa was most delicious, as always, and have it be known to others unfamiliar in such undertakings, hot cocoa without marshmallows is not the same. Plainly, it sucks. But as I continued to indulge my conscious senses in the
film, I felt a pang of guilt. Here I was, drinking organic hot cocoa fairly traded through the worldwide networks of small farmers and co-ops with gigantic, jumbo-puffed, white-oozing, falsified sugar marshmallows.
No, they were not organic, fairly trade, or manufactured with conscious decisions. Most likely, they were not fresh, having been packed, shipped, stacked and stored for months, and more, they were not sustainable, the plastic bag unsalvageable—America’s weak recycling programs would not help this time, once again.
The movie ended. I went to the kitchen sink and washed my brown, sugar-stained mug. I opened the pantry and perused its contents. As I observed, I took note of the products: most were organic, purchased in bulk. They were stored in containers able for reuse or recycling. They were fresh, and most of all, they were limited. The pantry had only the necessities and a few luxuries, not piled with the excesses of your soccer-crazed Mom with an over-zealous fear of Judgment Day. But then…the mallows of marsh (and indeed, the memories of birthday parties playing Chubby Bunny).
Despite my reassurance over the impact I was making on the world, I felt a need to do more (or less). This yearning carries me into each and every experience. It is one of caring for the world, caring for our family of brothers and sisters. It is a desire to look forward into the future and make sure we have preserved the beauty of the land and its resources for the generations to come.
Okay, maybe a few marshmallows isn’t bad, and maybe a few other things, but what more can I do? What more can we do to better our minds and lifestyles. And what more can we do to make a difference in the way the world operates and the way the economies run so economic tyrants like Wal-Mart return to their original basis of foundation. Wal-Mart’s founder Sam Walton once said, “You can’t create a team spirit when the situation is so one-sided, when management gets so much and workers get so little of the pie.” I wonder if today’s CEO Lee Scott remembers his company’s grandfather?
Your Individual Co-operation In Mexico, I overheard a woman who had been traveling to Mazatlan for twenty-five years. She said she was grateful for the new Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club. Now just a mere five-minute
pulmonia ride, she gets all her groceries as if she were back home. “We arrive. We shop at Sam’s Club.”
That night, I found myself in the heart of Old Mazatlan wandering the
Centro Historic in
Mercado Pino Suarez. Now this was Mexico. The large market houses vendors from traditional foods of homebrewed recipes to clothing and appliances. It is real, sustainable, and it is Mexico. It is a culture of a culture supporting a singular culture of people. It is their livelihoods within their tradition of agriculture, textiles and cooking.
Purchases made, a small-town local supported. Sustainability supported.
Back home, the America continues to pervade as it attempts to expand and dominate other regions from the Latin world, to Asia’s China, India and Bangladesh, to Europe and beyond. Though, there are those among us who care, and we believe in a higher standard, not of income or consumption, but in something far surpassing the physical world. We’ve come to incorporate this into Mother Earth’s life. If some don’t take notice, it’s bound to fall in the other hands far more omniscient.
On March 15, the Wal-Mart of Poulsbo saw a glimpse of its fate. By The Associated Press, The Seattle P-I reported a fire that broke out in the women’s undergarment department causing one million dollars of damage. Nobody was injured and officials are looking into suspected arson.
This article is written for and posted on
Brave New Traveler. And for more travel articles, photography, travel films, poetry and more please visit my website
www.cam2yogi.com
Advertisement
Tot: 0.422s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 37; qc: 170; dbt: 0.1628s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.6mb
Marcoelitaliano
Marco Daprile
Marshmallows and others...
Interesting and informative as usual. It's nice to read something from the "other" America. Don't worry, the rest of the world doesn't eat marshmallows but, still, there are these other two or three hundred thousands items little (or nothing) environmental friendly produced, packed and commercialized in our everyday life. I try to consume as little as I can but I often feel like fighting a hopeless fight. Marco