Once again we see young kids employed to make trinkets for tourists. Instead of being in school they are carving figurines and punching holes in leather.
Poetry – Give us your Fat and Elderly.
Give us your Fat and Elderly.
Give us your fat and elderly
And we’ll extract every penny
They possess
For the service we provide.
Gives us your pampered, naïve and inexperienced
And we will confuse their eyes
And lighten their load.
Give us your trusting, wealthy and gullible
And we will convince them
We are their friends.
The game is real.
Opher – 20.3.2019
It is called making a living out of the gullible.
Yet who is using who?
Poetry – It’s all a game.
It’s all a game.
It’s all a game;
As the utilities of the past
Are deployed
To attract the punters.
Stalls are laid out
With tourist tat
And ethnic garb;
With fossils, mineral,
Sustenance and experience.
For a fee
You can ride a camel,
Hold a monkey,
Charm a snake,
Hold an ostrich,
Take a carriage
And have your photo taken
With a Tourag in blue.
Behind the charade
Real life occasionally intrudes.
Opher – 20.3.2019
It feels to me that nothing is real. There is a circus going on and we’re all in the ring. There is a big game in which the pretence rules.
It’s a money-making game.
Do we go with the flow?
Do we glimpse the reality that works behind it all?
Poetry – Resentment
Resentment
Busloads of fat rich tourists
Unload and unload
In an endless stream,
In the land of
Poverty and dust,
Where each penny
Is precious.
In the land of minarets
And prayers
Where faith
Is the only hope,
They have to believe.
But these tourists
Have no faith
And little hope
But plenty of pennies.
So they are catered for
And their every whim
Is addressed –
At a price.
Perhaps the price
Is resentment.
Opher 20.3.2019
While tourism is greatly needed as a source of income for people who have so little, it is not a something that is always an easy relationship.
Bringing rich foreigners, with all their hedonistic values, in contact with a poor populace who have a prescribed religious lifestyle is bound to create friction.
Sometimes the resentment is obvious.
Poetry – Charades for Tourists
Charades for Tourists
Caricature and charade
For the tourist trade.
Goats in trees,
Sun loungers in the breeze,
Camel rides
And French Fries.
Aragon oil
From peasants’ toil?
All with its attendant fees.
Opher 20.3.2019
The whole economy of the country seems to be aimed at tourists. Is everywhere the same now? Is the whole world one big Disneyland? Does everyone put on a show for the tourist cash?
The world has become a theme park exploiting every cultural peculiarity and natural phenomenon.
