Burning Bridges

Last week in my site, the motorcycle drivers went on strike in attempt to draw the government’s attention to the poor road conditions in our community. When marginalized groups decide to go on strike in the developed countries, they are more often than not empowered enough to make the strike mean something: they target a group or individual that needs their services, a group that has the power to give them what they want and need, and they deny services until those wants and needs are met. In the developing world, however, strikes often affect most negatively the very people they would be designed to serve.

So when the motorcycle drivers went on strike, no one in our community could go anywhere. My 60+ year old neighbor told me she walked several miles out to the highway in order to get to a doctor’s appointment that she couldn’t miss. The lack of transportation services, so far, had affected no one but the usual customers of the motorcycle drivers.

In an angry mob, the drivers took to the streets. They cut down trees to block access to the roads (preventing the authorities from making any repairs even if they had planned to, which they surely had not), burned tires every 100 yards or so, cut all the power lines, and finally, in a dramatic flourish, burned down the community clinic. Although it was an inadequate rural clinic with leaky roofs and no electricity, basic services are clearly better than nothing, and now all community members are forced to go far from their homes for even the most primitive of treatment.



The anger and frustrations that they feel due to inactive, inattentive local and national governments is entirely founded, but their irrational actions have not inconvenienced those that have the power to make a change, but rather themselves, their families, and their neighbors. It’s not fair that they are so disempowered regarding basic necessary repairs to the infrastructure of their community, and their desire to protest is warranted, but unfortunately the target audience is relatively unaffected. Perhaps the mayor of the region will be embarrassed enough to make some small, temporary changes, but ultimately, their outcry will have hit the hardest at home, where their children can no longer get antibiotics and vaccinations within walking distance.