What really divides north from south:

Having enough of the fake Equator, I went to the real one. Armed with a GPS a camera, and bright smiles, I let the GPS lead. It lead me into a goddamn slum. One of the worst I’ve been to yet. Soccer fields without grass, cars without wheels, and dogs without life. I followed the soccer fields hoping to find the Equator barrelling right through them. But they were too far south. I went through a ravine strewn with garbage, chickens and pigs. Up the other side and through a guy’s corn field. Bone dry. More weeds and dust than corn. Ambling through a barb wire fence I make it to a street with hungry dogs, and hungry guys drinking away life at 11:00am. Finally, turning down possibly the sketchiest alley in Ecuador, I find the Equator. N/S 00,00,00.0.

They say that you weigh less on the true Equator, being so far from the earth’s centre. Most people around me do weigh less. You don’t need a scale to prove that a 10-year old kid at the Equator weighs less than a kid in Texas. Because all of them here are under-fed. This kid over here needs to put on another 15 killos. They say that being underweight in your youth robs years from your old age.

What really divides north from south? This dried up river. It’s on the Equator indeed, but it’s still in the south. You don’t get this kind of poverty in the north, sure. But you also don’t get the recognition that it exists in the south. We pay minor charity to it, we know that it might be there, but like the fake Equator monument, people really don’t want to see, feel, touch and smell the real Equator. Our society knows it’s there, and probably doesn’t have to guess that the true monument of the Equator is stifling poverty. That’s what really divides north from south.