Everyday I’m in Timor-Leste, the more I appreciate the work that technology has saved us from. In the village of Passabe, where I’m during the week, we have gravel makers next to my house. In the U.S. this would mean a large noisy machine where big rocks are dropped in and come out gravel. Tons of gravel can be made in a short time and only one or two laborers run the operation.
As you might have guessed, the gravel makers next to my house are quite different. Everyday ten or fifteen men, women and children haul rocks from the river and then proceed to hit them with a hammer from 9:00 until 6:00. They produce knowing that our project will buy it from them to make concrete. They community does have a job and some money flow, that is something to be happy about, but I can’t help but feel a little sad knowing that any respectable gravel operation could make all the gravel they make in a day in about ten minutes.
Often we lament how technology has caused us to specialize to the point where many of us sit in offices all day doing tedious tasks on a computer. We glorify the feeling of producing meaningful physical labor. However, there are representations like the gravel makers where our tedious easy office jobs sound a whole lot better than the tedium of breaking rocks into gravel all day.
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