Did You Ask?
Did you ask us if we wanted cement where our roots run deep, if we needed roads where our feet sink into the earth, soft as the breath of the ocean?
Did you ask if we want your sterile developments, your glass walls that block the horizon? For our horizon is where the jungle meets the volcano, kissed by the morning mist. Where coconut trees sway and Frangipani flowers bloom, their scent a reminder of the land we’ve belonged to far longer than your blueprints could ever imagine.
Did you ask if we need your resorts or high-end restaurants, where you charge us for a connection we already have? Our meals are shared beneath the open sky, with the crash of waves as our constant soundtrack. We gather by the shore, our feet in the sand, watching the ocean shift with the tides.
You speak of progress, but progress for whom? We do not want this progress that dulls our connection to the sea, that carves through the jungle we call home. The jungle is alive, the ocean is breathing—can you not hear it?
Let us sit by the water and watch the waves shape the land, watch the rice paddies grow and the coconut trees stand tall. When we return to our homes, it is not to cement and steel, but to the simple beauty of the land as it has always been.
So take your blueprints and your plans, but do not lay them here. For we are not the city you wish to build—we are the forest, the river, the wind. We are what was, and what will always be.