Fly on the wall

On our plane, a young woman shares a seat in our row with us. She is twentyish and clearly excited to return home. She tells us that she lived and worked for three months in the poorest of poor Kenyan villages. She slept on the floor of a hut without electricity. As the plane touched down at Heathrow, she was clearly overexcited to be safe at home after such a long time.

We disembark, together with masses of other people from many other planes from all over the world. We walk through the impressive terminal 5, the wide corridors, neat and shiny interior, to pass quickly through the burocracies of customs and baggage collection. Then we spill out into the parking areas, the stations, buses and taxi’s to return to the first world homes and offices. And all the while, even though you may look carefully, you will not see poor people around. It it the big world of the have’s, the privileged.

Later on during the day we do some shopping in a supermarktet. Everything is new, shiny, neat and, despite the recession, available in abundance. I see supermarket trolleys filled. The counters at the cash registers are loaded with the products bought by each and everyone.

In Kenya people sleep on the floor of their huts. They do not have electrcial lights in the small villages which they can switch on to read of live in their small places. There is no supermarket, no hospital, no t.v. Maybe, now and then, they would hear the soft droning of an aeroplane, high, high up in the African sky, on its way to London, Paris, Frankfurt.

I keep on thinking about the happy smile of the young woman on the plane. She was so excited, so exuberant. I wish I could be a fly on the wall to listen in as she tells her family and friends of her African experience tonight in the comfort of her first world home.