When opportunity arise, I should really invite you to Western Papua. It is the most beautiful and the richest (oil, timber, radium, iron, mangan, bauxite, rubber, copper, you name it) province in Indonesia. It is also the poorest region. I am sure you implicitly understand the reason behind this poverty. I am lauding Dr Thapa and you for not taking pictures of the couple. Unknown to most people, individuals in this position often feel “robbed” because their stories are taken from them and they are paraded for something that they are not proud of.

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In this entry you imply that beauty can mask poverty by becoming a part of it, because people project the surrounding beauty onto the poor. In conversation you mentioned that you’d rather people be motivated to action by poverty than by beauty. I can also see how you might not even see the area as beautiful anymore, because the poverty is so ugly.

Ideally, I’d want people (for me too) to appreciate each fully and clearly, without diluting the other. In such a way that beauty and poverty both drive the desire for change and make that desire doubly strong. In some ways, you recognize poverty/ugliness by knowing what wealth/beauty you want to replace it with. So it might not be so bad to have a high quality of surrounding beauty to strengthen your goal, to aim for achieving that same beauty within the community itself. So long as you see it as something that’s lacking and should be achieved instead of something that covers up what’s lacking, and I think your warning of that danger is important.

Thank you for sharing, as always.