Peoples lifestyles have certainly taken a turn for the worse thanks to the economic crisis we find ourselves in. Husbands have cut back on extramarital affairs,mothers have resorted to feeding their children home cooked meals, and kids are forced to watch basic cable.
There is some good news that has come out of the financial meltdown, the experience of Stephen Dirby - a former New York City homeless person who now finds himself the major of a small village in Darfur.
When I talked to Stephen he explained that the life of a homeless person in NY City was not an easy lifestyle. He had spent several years on the streets of the Big Apple. Everyday you could find him picking up cigarette butts, or rummaging through the trash in the hopes of finding anything edible. As a career move, being a NY City homeless person was a dead end.
"It was after I drank a particular potent batch of potato wine that I got the idea on how I could better my life" Stephen explained to me. "I needed a fresh start, a new approach to life and better yet a new location to try to scrape out a living"
He talks about stowing away aboard a humanitarian relief flight to Darfur. He hid his shopping cart amongst the many bags of rice that where packed into the cargo hold of the military plane.
"When I finally got to Darfur - I was greeted like a hero. People there had never seen a shopping cart and assumed that I was an influential member of NY upper society. I only had a shopping cart, some cardboard boxes an old Sony Walkman circa 1984, but to these people I was now the richest person in the village."
Being the richest person in a village in Darfur certainly had some privileges for Stephen. The villagers gave him the best house in the city - complete with walls and most of the roof. He is first in line for his typhoid shot, and he tells me that the villagers have recently appointed him mayor.
"I never would have thought that all this would come from stowing away on a plane. Back in North America I was homeless, destitute and forced to rely on the wasteful habits of consumers just to survive. Here I have so much more than other members of the village."
A Shopping Cart, cardboard boxes and an old Sony Walkman circa 1984 - all that and you too can be the major of a small town in Darfur.
2 comments:
I've never had potato wine, but I've had a lot of bright ideas on how to better my life after drinking Mad Dog 20/20 . . . unfortunately, none of them worked out for me as well as Stephen's
I do hope the walkman had the Bowie version of 1984 - very Orwellian.
Somehow, this makes me happy - "Like a Virgin..."
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