Yesterday Oscar and me once again headed out to the countryside along with two employees of OSCUS, with the purpose of evaluating clients businesses to see whether they are worthy of acquiring more credit. The people we meet and see on these excursion are mostly very poor. Their houses are more or less falling apart, their clothes are dirty and worn (for many, it looks like they've been walking barefoot all their lives), their business are petty and ineffective and doesn't look like they can contribute with much income. However, in the midst of all this apparent poverty and lack of things that we take for granted as trivial and necessary to cary on a decent life, I have yet not seen any misery or despair. People seem happy and pretty content with their lives even though their low standard of living. I'm asking myself if this is really true, or if their daily struggle for sustaining their basic needs takes it's toll and actually decreases their living standard to the point of suffering and a life with lesser joy than people with more material benefits? The fundamental question being: what degree of material wealth must be sustained to live a "good life"? My answer: I reckon you won't know until you've tried both...
We asked these two kids for the whereabouts of the client we were looking, but they didn't know. So we drove on...
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One of the clients ran a kindergarden.
At this family run business they manufactured shoes. The smell of glue was intense and after a few minutes one was really intoxicated. I wouldn't want to sit in here 10 hours a day...
Production capacity: 4 shoes per day
Two sisters inside the "shoe factory"
The rest of the album can be seen here
