Worlds Apart

His smile is warm;
his mouth is laughing;
his eyes are full of spark.

He's twenty-five and he's telling me
about his school-leavers exams.

He's full of hope;
he's full of spunk.
He should have
a bright future.

But he's grown up here,
in a dying land,
and he's asking me
if my government employs
enough school-leavers.

I try to explain,
he nods me on,
about the role of business
where I come from.

His eyebrows crease,
his forehead puckers,
he doesn't understand.
And then a glimpse of hope –
are they like NGOs?

Here, NGOs are for the big bucks
not the bright-eyed idealists.
A project is a future;
a fund is a legacy.
The best and the brightest
work for the UN and drive
sparkling, high-slung
4x4s through the
dusty, mud-hut flanked streets.

No, NGOs are not like business –
and your city is not like mine.
Your one tarred road is
jagged and scarred.
Your city has no skyline.

We're sitting in the same room,
but no matter what I do,
no matter how I want the change,
we're living in different worlds.