Living by the sea in a certain kind of paradise
I have enjoyed some wonderful times at the beach. Days and nights where the world shrunk to a small area of sand, surf and a campfire created out of recycled storm wrack. If I was given to superlatives, I might even refer to some of those places as a bit of paradise, within the limits imposed by my own experience and organized religions. But, what if that paradise was also a description of Hell?
One of my preferred documentaries is Thalassa, and this evening we spent some time on the beaches of Sierra Leone. An ocean away. Warmer than “my” beaches, where the people on the shore depend on fishing to get supper. Nothing extraordinary, until the war arrives on your doorstep. The poverty shown this evening was striking; in houses that once belonged to corporations like Club Med, the population wonders where the next meal will come from, if not from the ocean. A young woman, sitting on a pile of boulders about the size of a picnic table, breaking each stone into pebbles the size of walnuts, with a makeshift mallet. If she reduces enough of the boulders to the size required by a building contractor, and the truck comes, she’ll receive the equivalent of 2 Euros in local currency. Because, as any kid from rural PEI could have told you (two generations ago), you have to eat something other than fresh fish once in a while.
It strikes me that Thalassa is the only documentary that tries to educate me to the economic extremes of people who live by the sea.
