Most Valued Possession

Last February, I fell upon a book titled Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, in which photographer Peter Menzel and writer Faith D'Aluisio visited 30 families in 24 regions of the world and photographed them with all the food they would eat in a typical week. Some of the photos from that book are indelibly imprinted in my every day consciousness, especially when I read news stories about families in Africa who are eating mud pies just to survive right now (the clay in the pies has necessary trace minerals).

And so, I cleared off the kitchen table when I got a look at another book by the fabulous creative team of Menzel and D'Aluisio: Material World: A Global Family Portrait. In this truly remarkable book, Menzel and D'Aluisio "attempt to capture, through photos and statistics, both the common humanity of the peoples inhabiting our Earth and the great differences in material goods and circumstances that make rich and poor societies."

Choosing 30 countries from the U.N. member nations, the team selected a family in each that was considered statistically "average." In addition to a "Big Picture" that required photographing all the family's possessions outside, each family's section includes numerous daily-life photos and commentary, statistics about each country, and a selection of answers to the 66 qeustions asked of each family.

My favorite question asked is "What is your most valued possession?" Interestingly, the answers seem to fall into three distinct camps: (1) some sort of heirloom passed down from generation to generation, (2) nothing at all, or (3) the family's bicycle.

The bicycle really moved me, so to speak, not only because I'm riding my bike so much but because I know that almost every single garage in the United States holds at least one unused bicycle. If there is one thing you can donate to a family in need around the world, I'm guessing this is the one that will make the biggest impact. With a bicycle, a poor family has access to a wider range of work opportunities, a bigger market for any crafts they make create or crops they may grow for sale, a safer way to travel on lonely roads, and a higher chance of attending school. To find out more about donating your bicycle to a family whose life it can literally change, see Bikes for the World and Bicycles for Humanity. Especially now, as so many of us are getting new bikes to embrace the challenge of rising gas costs, why not do a double-dose of good?

The other thing that jumped out at me from this book is the presence of beds with mosquito nets in so many of the photos. As you know, I just donated to Nothing but Nets, but I had not actually seen what these nets look like. I called excitedly to my children when I saw the first photo that included one, and we just stood there, hunched over the book, feeling some sort of odd connection with families halfway around the world, with a ten-dollar net that was saving their lives each and every night as they slept.

Material World is an astronomical accomplishment, yet Menzel and D'Aluisio didn't stop there. They actually went back and revisited 19 of the 30 families featured in Material World and focused exclusively on one woman in each family to come up with a new book titled Women in the Material World. I have just started reading that one, and I can tell you that I'm about to be blown away yet again.

I know today as I ride my bike, I will be pondering that question, as perhaps you may want to as well. What is your most valued possession?

Most Valued Possession