Joel McKerrow

The dust billowed out of the small grave, stinging my eyes, as we scooped the dirt back onto the coffin we had just placed in the shallow hole. My legs buckled underneath me and I almost fell down as the reality of the situation struck me. It was our second day in Thailand and we had just arrived at a small orphanage (The Bamboo School) on the border of Thailand and Burma.

Searing heat beats down relentlessly upon the frailness of this broken body. My brow, empty of sweat, it smoulders instead. This lifeless place seeking to swallow me in its despair, it’s death, it’s stench. Desert in its most ferocious.

Looking through all the stores at what I could buy I was suddenly struck with the thought of how much money is being wasted in these shops when there could be someone out on the street who desperately needs it.

The girl stares at the ground. To afraid to raise her eyes. To broken. To violated To ashamed to even try.

For too long we in the west have stood aloof from each other in our middle class, sterile, holier-than-thou, unconcerned, unsympathetic, ignorant bliss. Ignorant both to our own gaping wounds (complete with band-aids) and the gaping wounds of others.