Time does not stand still. It marches along and we humans are the foot soldiers of progress as technology carves out a new era for this planet.
Yet here in Cambodia, life often seems untouched by time. That boat now has a motor but there’s nothing here to say modernity has struck. The rural life, where living just above subsistence is considered good, must be gruelling. The fishermen are whippet thin with dark sinewy bodies that know no fat.
Today my path took me through places where progress has stopped at electricity and the combustion engine. A landscape where men work hard and women work harder to raise children who will leave school too early to follow in their parents footsteps.
There may be dignity in poverty but there is no glamour. I marvel at the simplicity of the life, and yet I am thankful I am not trapped in its net like a fish gasping for the possibility of the wide ocean.
I know that inequality will always exist and when progress ravages this landscape it will not free the fishing families from poverty. It will merely shackle them more efficiently to a newer form of injustice.
I am just passing through and will travel onwards with my privilege intact. For I am truly a twenty first century citizen. My unfiltered pictures are placed on social media, and my friends gasp at the wonders I capture. However I see this world through the bluest of eyes and this inequality is a filter on my reality.
the asperger path 