In Reply to: Poor posted by hotone on Wednesday, 12. May 2010 at 17:13 Bali Time:
it's relative. We live in an average wage earning Balinese area and a lot of our neighbours are doing better than us. But then everyday we work in the mountains and our friends there are doing it tough, they don't own cars, or mobile phones and don't have running water and sometimes no food, on some days we can have up to 20 children come to our office just for food,they don't want toys or money, their families are quite proud so the kids sneak up for a free feed, when you see these kids suck the fish off the bones of your leftovers when you've already just given them a full meal you then realise what's important.
Then there are our neighbours that work in tourism as drivers and work in hotels who do own their cars and their blackberry's (we don't even own our car or a fancy phone) who love to "play the poor card", so just don't put them all in the same category, you'll know poor when you see it, when you visit a Balinese with dirt floors and the house smells so bad of dampness, it's dark from no window (glass is expensive) and no electricity you can tell the difference.
It's why we live here and do what we do. For example, today when we went to see a sick mother to see if she needed anything we have been feeding her 5 year old for 1 year now I asked her for the first time where are her other children, knowing that she had 6 as our little girl is no.6, she told me, 3 already died and thank you so much for helping her feed her youngest as she cannot afford to.