A story of Bin Men

The BBC has an interesting series of Documentaries called the "Toughest Places." 

The series has "The Toughest Place to Drive a Cab," "The Toughest Place to be a Prostitute," etc.

The series focuses on the more basic professions in the world, and the "Toughest Place to be a Bin Man," is about scavengers. It's a job we rarely talk about, but without scavengers where would the shitters who live in fancy places be? I mean, as long as there are humans, there will be waste and there will be shit.

A London trash man spends 10 days in Jakarta, Indonesia to live the life, as it were, of an Indonesian trash man.

In essence, he encounters a different culture.

What's interesting about this film, is that the person who goes to the "other" place, the non-West, that is, isn't white and isn't from a privileged background in the west.

He is a black British, the son of West Indian immigrants to Britain. He makes a living by picking up trash in neighborhoods that range from the crutty council one's to the swanky. He has a truck with advanced technology and air conditioning; he has a regular pay and a pension to boot. In other words, he is secure, till the time he is sacked. 

In Jakarta all these conditions are absent for the Indonesian Bin Man, Imam, whose job the British Bin Man takes on for 10 days.

While the Documentary doesn't have the "the Western savior" attitude, it does have a bit of a glorification of the life of the British Bin Man. It's as though the British Bin Man suffers from zero insecurities and there are no challenges in his work just because it's in London. 

The Documentary does not interrogate the material conditions of the British Bin Man's life. Is he poor by London standards? 

The Indonesian Bin Man, is by contrast, poor and doomed to die as a trash collector with zero security.

The film ends on a note of pious egalitarianism, as the British bin Man, back in London, reflects on how he and his Indonesian counterpart are the "same", they are "brothers," even; it's that they are born in different places and that makes the big difference.

It's fate, as they say.