Idle People

There are many idle people in my village; people with no jobs and nothing to do. They sit in the same place everyday. Some sit on one side of the street in the morning and when the afternoon sun shines in their face, they move to the other side of the street. They just sit on the pavement. Idle people.

This was once a thriving village. Fishing and banana farming were main sources of income. Before the two lane highway was constructed, people came from neighboring villages to shop. Today, the retail stores open occasionally and many do not open at all. The buses pass this village in favor of Vieux Fort, twenty minutes further down the road, but with more modern shops.

Natural disasters and export laws have depressed the banana industry. Fishermen use the same techniques that their fathers and grandfathers used. They manage to catch just enough to feed the village.

When times were good, many young adults aspired to build a living on the rich Saint Lucian soil. They called bananas "green gold". There was little connection between a formal education and farming.

My ten year old neighbor will be a fisherman like his father. He cannot understand why he needs to learn math and literacy. Today, many see farming as hard work with little reward.

There are no programs, that I'm aware of, to help farmers become businessmen. Many are illiterate and made vast fortunes when the industry was booming. No one helped them invest their money. No one explained the value of saving. There was little thought that an end would come to the banana growing boom.

I wonder what it’s like to be without a job and to be illiterate, to live in poverty and scrape by each day. I wonder what it's like when your child cannot attend school because there is no money to buy a uniform. Why do they accept this life rather than change it? Is it hopelessness or acceptance? Does it feel normal and right?

There are so many things that can be done, why not volunteer, if for no other reason than to find purpose? I wonder how it feels to survive; to be at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. What is the world losing by allowing people to remain at the bottom of this theoretical pyramid?

I wonder what the world would look like if everyone had a purpose. What would it look like if resources were evenly spread; if everyone had enough and no one had too much. I wonder if we would have solved the unemployment problem, environmental issues, and endless wars if everyone had enough but not too much. I wonder how I would feel if I had no purpose.

"What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated?" Ghandi