Can Blockchain Change the World? (part 2)
A personal journey into the world’s largest refugee camp
I have a confession to make. I am 46-years old, and I just got a tattoo. This is my first one, but deep down I knew I had to do it.
The mark I got (and why I did it) will be revealed at the end of this story, but for now I need to continue on with Part 2 of a blog post that I started writing in September of last year, and published in November of 2018: “Can Blockchain Change the World (part 1).” As this is a continuation of that post, I would encourage you to read that one first, or refresh yourself if you’ve read it before. After all, this was almost 5 months ago that I left the audience hanging. For a one-line refresher of where we were physically:
We were staying at a 5-star resort in beautiful Cox’s Bazar on the edge of the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, awaiting two vans to take myself, my colleagues, and the Refugium Foundation’s documentary crew of three into the heart of the Kutapalong-Balukhali refugee camp (the world’s largest with ~660,000 Rohingya refugees).
As we set off, the roadsides were typical of most parts of Bangladesh. Yes, there was visible poverty, but there were also scenes of every day life. As we passed through rice paddy fields, into small villages, then back again…we saw life march along. Within the villages, while they didn’t have the larger buildings of urban life, it still had the traffic and a density of people that is a matter of course here across the country. We passed by market stalls, schools, mobile phone repair shops, and tradesmen hawking their wares.
I laughed inwardly then somewhat ashamedly as I whispered to Joe, my colleague with me in the backseat, I felt like I was on a safari as all of us were taking pictures through the comfortably air-conditioned van’s windows of the scenes unfolding next to us — sometimes just a few meters away on the other side of the tinted glass. As this was a Friday, chosen specifically as security in the camps would be lessened on this day of prayer, the markets were very active and many flanks of meat were hung in open air preparing to be sold off in pieces to those who needed to prepare feasts for family gatherings.
I knew we were getting close as I started to see young children carrying bundles of sticks walking along the road’s edge. We were told refugee children were being sent further and further to the outer edges of the camp (and beyond) in search of sticks and pieces of wood for both firewood and building materials. The sheer magnitude of inhabitants in the camp means a complete deforestation of the surrounding hills, leading to significant problems during heavy rains.
We were fortunate to have had incredible support from our team to secure all the necessary permissions to enter the camp. It is not something that one, especially an outsider such as myself, can simply just show up and knock at the metaphorical front door and expect to help, observe, or talk with the Rohingya or humanitarians in the camp.
As we approached the security check point, two things stood out to me: the massive structures set up to house the rations being provided by the World Food Program, and the security guard who didn’t even lift his head to take his eyes off of his smart phone.
And we were in.
At first, it didn’t look that much different than a lot of the dense villages we just traveled through to get here. The one big difference was the lack of bicycles and rickshaws on the road. Everyone was walking, and the quality of the dirt road was excellent. Oddly so, in fact. The farm roads of Bangladesh are known more for their potholes than their workmanship. Perhaps this was due to the lack of vehicles, or more likely this was all part of the massive infrastructure investment from global humanitarians who had to quickly build out the camp to accommodate the massive influx of people who arrived over the previous 12 months.
As we drove up to the top of the first hill, we started to see the size and scope of the crisis. For miles upon miles, there were small “houses”. We never could really see the full scope from any vantage point, and it wasn’t until after when the Refugium team shared with us some drone footage that the scale was truly understood.
We stopped the vans and decided to walk around. The plan established ahead of time was to assess the technology infrastructure in the camp. We were to seek out those who had smartphones and through a daisy-chain of translators, ask a series of product-related questions. This was a work trip after all. One thing that we are firm believers in at the company, is that you cannot build product in isolation. You need to speak with users, you need to understand their pain, their motivations, and you need to see how the technology you create back in an air-conditioned office is fit for purpose.
Stepping out of the van slathered in bug spray, I prepared for… I actually don’t know what. I think I was prepared for bad smells, begging children tugging at my sleeves, and swarms of curious onlookers. I expected to hear pleas for help, money, and assistance. But I didn’t get that.
Yes, there were a few children who started to gather and wave, but they were smiling. We stood there collectively with mouths agape, overlooking the hills in front of us. That’s when we saw a scene that transformed me, and yes… is the reason why Part 2 to this story has been 5 months in the making:
Did you see it? I didn’t at first. When life is busy and overwhelming, it is human nature to sometimes have trouble seeing the details that are important. And just like life, sometimes the little things blend into the background. So let me zoom in a little and show you what we saw:
Just two days before, I had bared my soul and my story to Marek and the world for their documentary. A kite had played a central part in the story I told. It was the symbol that we had adopted as the company’s mark. Kites decorate our offices back home, and they have since our first office back in 2011. In fact, at the resort overlooking the beaches and the Bay of Bengal just one hour’s drive away, we had a bagful of golden kite pins to honour members of our Bangladeshi team who had toiled with us for at least 1,000 days.
As we like to say to all new hires during onboarding:
A kite is playful, yet if you don’t tend to it, it will fall back down to the ground. A kite soars in the blue sky, and you must hold your head up to look at it, which is way better than looking down and missing out on life that is happening around you.
For the next 2 to 3 hours, we walked through the camp. We quickly threw aside our notepads and questions. This wasn’t a place for market research. This was simply a time to connect. To listen to the stories of those who may have just arrived a few weeks before with young infants, or to those who arrived 25 years previously, themselves only a child when they arrived, having lived their entire lives as a refugee.
I must admit, I was ignorant that the situation and the crisis for the Rohingya had been going on as long as it had been. This is something that we, as humanity, should not have tolerated.
As we walked through the camp, more children arrived and Joe started to entertain them with an augmented reality app he had on his phone. It was a simple thing, but it brought them (and us) joy. They wanted selfies with us, and yes, they were smiling.
There is one scene that sticks out in my memory, however. We were speaking with a few young men, and they started to show us a video that one of them had stored on his phone. It was a collection of photos and stills of the horrors occurring in Myanmar: the murdered, the raped, and the wounded. It was accompanied by a haunting piece of music that still echos deep inside me to this day. As he played the video for us, the smiles of the children faded away.
I will not share the video here, but the reason he shared it with us is that he wanted to get their story — his story — out to the rest of the world. They were not asking us for food. They were not asking us for help. They simply wanted the world to know the situation of the Rohingya still being persecuted, less than 50 kilometers away.
When the refugees fled Myanmar, often in the dark of night, or as their homes lay smoldering around them, they took very little — only that which they could carry. Sometimes this was jewelry (which could be converted in the black market to currency/rations); sometimes it was a solar panel as power creates possibilities; and if they had one previously, they brought their phones. However, even while many had phones and power, the ability for the Rohingya to communicate with family, friends, and the outside world remains limited. You see, SIM cards are prohibited. A SIM card requires a Bangladeshi identity, and the Rohingya cannot obtain this status. They are stateless.
Curiosity did get the better of me, and I did perform a quick SpeedTest as, surprisingly, I did have connectivity. And you know what? Here in the heart of Kutapalong, was some of the fastest connection I had in the entire country.
As we left, we sat quietly in the van retracing our steps back to the hotel, back to reality. I took to Twitter to fill in the silence and distract myself from my own thoughts, but that’s when I saw the news:
“Canada Declares Genocide in Myanmar,” blared the tweet.
I closed my phone, and I started to cry while staring out the window.
That night and the next few days were a bit of a blur. We went out to another camp the next day, this time much closer to the border. In fact, we stood on the banks of what would otherwise have been a picturesque bay in glorious sunshine, and we started to get a translation from our local guide about the scene in front of us.
“From here you could see the fires burning the villages on the far shore,” he said. “The bodies would be chopped up and thrown in the river, and they would wash up here,” he said.
“When?” I asked.
“A few months ago,” he said.
And we moved on.
That night, Marek asked our team to join the Refugium crew in their room as we needed to watch some footage (and drink some Polish vodka they had brought). He said, they had some footage we needed to see.
There, on the other side of the world, word had spread that Canada had stood up for what is right. They had stood up for the Rohingya. They had stood up for those who couldn’t stand up for themselves. Canada had declared a genocide and for the first time in a generation, the Rohingya had felt heard.
Never had I felt so proud of being Canadian, yet so ashamed for humanity.
We watched that footage together. Drank together. And cried together. Then we went our separate ways, back to the isolation of our respective hotel rooms. I reached out to whomever I could and managed to get the story out onto the CBC thanks to great work by our communications team back in Canada and support from the Prime Minister’s Office back in Ottawa. Canada had stood up, and it was noticed. It was not much that I could do, but it was something.
I didn’t eat much dinner that night, but I did sleep a fair bit. In fact, for the rest of our trip, we kept on trying to distract ourselves with the team and duties we had in front of us. Yes, we saw amazing things. We danced. We laughed. But I also left part of my soul on the banks of that river that day, and I was not the same.
When I got back home to Canada, I kept on trying to understand and explain what I had seen and what I had experienced: I didn’t see horrors. I didn’t see atrocities. I didn’t see sadness, nor suffering. Yet what did I see? I saw humanity, in both its purest form and in its worst.
Over the coming weeks and months, I started to process what I had witnessed. I said to family, friends, and colleagues (and really, to anyone that would listen) that the Rohingya only had four things:
- They were alive (though many family and friends were not)
- Thanks to the WFP, they had enough food to eat (every 3 days), so they were not starving to death.
- They could practice their religion.
- They had a sense of community.
And that is it. This is the low bar that made them content. Though as of that day we were there, they also had a tiny sliver of hope.
Over the past 5 months I have been battling this dichotomy. How could those who have so little be ‘happier’ than those who have so much? And what could I — someone half way around the world — do to help?
We are building a platform, along with our partner/team in Bangladesh (W3 Engineers) to connect refugees using RightMesh. Once complete, they will be able to use any smartphone to connect with each other, leveraging the connectivity of humanitarians as a gateway to the outside world. They will have a momentary way to break free from their prison they are in, a prison in which they find themselves despite not committing any crime. And it is our hope, that this will eventually help them access healthcare, educational content, and perhaps even do digital work for clients half way around the world. It may not be enough, but it is something.
Over the past few months, our global team (above) has been working hard on this awe-inspiring project, I still felt like I was not doing enough personally. I have been struggling knowing that I could give of myself fully, but then I too would be left wanting and lose out on that which is also important to me. I would miss out on my family, I would miss those little things in life… the laughter, the stories, the community, and the camaraderie. I would miss out on the journey that is life.
This past week, I spent a week at SXSW learning, listening, eating, and living. This was in advance of a panel presentation I was part of as the festival wound to a close, with the grandiose topic of “Combating Poverty on the Blockchain”
As the week progressed, I listened to others share inspiring stories of tears and triumph. I had many conversations with artists, filmmakers, musicians, entrepreneurs, volunteers, and other attendees filled with hope.
During one of my serendipitous conversations, I was talking with one woman about my experience in the refugee camps, and I told her what I wrote above, that the refugees only had those four items, and with those four items, they were happy…. they were content.
But in telling her this story, it dawned on my that the refugees had two additional items that I had neglected previously, and with these two items, they had the ability to transform the world.
5. They had the ability to tell a story. And through these stories, their voices and humanity was felt.
6. They had kites. And with these child-like playthings, anything was possible.
As you probably guessed, I got a small kite tattoo on the inside of my Left wrist, on my pulse. I needed it there so that I was always reminded to pay attention to those little-but-oh-so important things. I needed it there to remind myself to hold my head high, to battle through strong winds, and to keep telling stories — either mine or others.
The tattoo is still healing, but then so must we all. Today, the world is filled with such hate and misunderstanding, yet it is also filled with so many stories of survival and optimism. You just need to take a moment, catch your breath, check your pulse, and have gratitude for those little things in life that mean so much.
The story for what we are creating with Left and RightMesh, it is still being written. Can blockchain change the world? Yes, we believe that it can.
