Friday, January 05, 2007

Trafficked

Yesterday, while I was out and about I was offered bootleg DVDs by a middle aged Chinese man. One of them was Apocalypto, which tempted me as I'm curious about the film but don't want to give that Mel Gibson any of my money.

But I couldn't be sure the DVD would be of any quality or indeed would even have Apocalypto content on the disk. And to be honest, I didn't want to encourage the vile trade. And it wasn't a vile trade in intelllectual property that concerned me, but the trafficking of humans.

The man selling the DVDs - he looked so sad and tired and weighed down. He had a look in his eyes that one rarely sees in the west these days (some of those 1930s photos of sharecroppers had it). He was almost certainly a slave, working to pay off passage to the first world.

I declined the DVDs. I looked him in the eyes as I did it. I hope I did it in a nice enough way.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's the kind of person you might consider making a donation to in the future. My current theme in reading is immigrant/immigaration for the poor and desparate. It is terribly depressing. VolMom

Vol Abroad said...

See I wasn't sure - if you give him money does he just have to hand it over...

I did make a donation at Christmas to the Salvation Army - one of the few leading charities doing work with trafficked people.

Onlinefocus Team said...

Hi - I'm a stranger here, stumbled on your blog via Bob Krumm. But your encounter is so poignant, I hope you don't mind me quoting you on my little blog...