Kacie Reese - 2021

Artist's Statement

I chose to write the story of a village for my project, because I wanted to show how everything is more connected than people realize. Even though there are many different changes that happen within the village, they don’t happen independently. Each change affects the entire village and everything that follows. A lot of people throughout the world don’t realize just how much everything is interconnected. They see every change and event that happens as solitary. However, isolation is not natural in the world. Everything that happens affects all the people and things around it, even if those effects aren’t noticeable at first. I wanted to show just how much even the smallest change can affect how things work, and lead to other changes. These interconnected changes can work for the good or detriment of mankind. Whatever small steps we take now, will take us down a path that will either benefit or destroy the world, even though it may not seem like it will affect much. Everything is interconnected, so even one small piece can change how the world will end up.

The Tale of a Village

By: Kacie Reese

Our village is beautiful. It sits next to a pretty little river that is full of healthy fish and brings fresh water from the mountains every day. A big forest surrounds our village, where we can go hunting. We have a few small fields with a lot of different foods to help feed and take care of the village. Everyone here works hard and we love our life in our little village.

We had visitors come today. And not just ordinary visitors. They came from a land very far away, and they look very different from us. We welcomed them with a big feast and they said they were very impressed with all the food that we grow here. Hopefully they come to visit us again. I’d love to hear more stories about their homeland.

The visitors came back. We’ve started calling them our Strange Friends. Our Strange Friends said that they could help us make a lot of money on the food from our fields. And with that money we’d be able to pay for electricity and watch television and even buy fancy clothes and cars like what they have. I’ve heard of a village a couple weeks away from here that have all those things and are supposed to be one of the happiest villages around. How nice would that be?

Our Strange Friends bought our fields and now they take half of what we grow and sell it for us. Then they give us all the money that they make. Since they take so much of our food, we’ve made our fields even bigger so that we can keep growing enough to feed the whole village.

We’re getting a factory in our village. Well, upriver from our village. Our Strange Friends said that they would hire us to work in the factory. They also need our trees. Because the factory is going to take our trees and turn them into books and houses and things. A lot of the men are going to work in the factory while the others are going to be chopping down trees. The women do most of the work in the fields now.

The Strange Friends have big news for us. They only want us to grow corn in our fields, because there’s a lot of use for corn right now and it can make us a lot of money. Some of the factory will be converted to processing the corn, so the corn will be taken there with the wood from the trees. I’m so excited. With the corn making us more money we’ll be able to get the electricity and stuff soon! What a day that will be!

The nearest village used to be a day’s walk away. But our Strange Friends let us rent trucks and now it’s only four hours to get there and back! A group of women and children go to the village once a week to get other kinds of food beyond just the corn, fish, and the animals we hunt here.

Something’s wrong with the river. The water looks brown and lumpy. All the fish are dying, and when we eat them they make us sick for many days. We can’t fish in our river anymore. And our Strange Friends have asked that we stop eating the corn, since we need to sell all of it in order to make more money.

A lot of our trees have been cut down. The men are starting to have to rent trucks to drive to where the trees are and drive the wood back for the factory. With no trees and the sick water, all our animals have either gotten sick and died or have left for other parts of the land. Soon there won’t be any trees left for the men to cut down. But that means we can grow more corn to sell.

The group of women and children have to travel every day to the other village. They bring back food, supplies, and fresh water. Some of the water goes to the corn. We drink the rest. It costs so much money to buy all our stuff now, and we have to pay a lot of money to rent the trucks as well. But our Strange Friends said that if we keep working hard we’ll soon have enough money to bring in electricity. What a day that will be.

Most of the trees are gone and all the rest are too far away to bring back. So all the men are now working the corn fields or have gone to work in the factory. They go to the factory and work from sunup to sundown and come home dirty and sweaty and exhausted. Then they go to sleep and wake up to do it all over again. They don’t have much time to sit and relax like they used to. But with the river sick and the trees gone, there’s not much to do to relax around here anymore. Once we get electricity and tv that will all change. I know it.

I’m very sad to say that some of the men have died while working in the factory. I haven’t been there myself. But the other workers say that it’s tough work and very dangerous. They have to be constantly aware of what’s happening so that they don’t get pulled into the machinery.

A dozen or so young men left this morning on the truck. They said they’re going to the city to find jobs and send money back home. Even though we’re making more money, we have to buy a lot more stuff now, and sometimes we don’t have enough. It’s scary. On days like that we take turns skipping a meal or two. On the days where we do have extra money we put away in our savings so that we can get electricity. That’s the goal. For the village to have electricity. Then when the men come from the fields and the factory late at night we can have proper lights and buy the cheaper food that we can make in microwaves and things.

We finally did it! Our Strange Friends helped us. They helped pay for the wires and things to be put in to make electricity available to us. All we have to do is pay them every month to keep the electricity running. Yay! We bought a microwave and a television for the village. Now when the men come home the whole village can watch tv together. And we can buy the cheaper microwave food and make it quicker too.

Our village is different now. It still sits next to the river from the mountains, but the river is sick, so we have to get our water and fish from another village. There are no more trees in our forest. No more animals. Just decaying stumps. But our fields have grown. And even though they don’t grow all different kinds of food anymore, the corn that we grow we take to the factory and our Strange Friends sell it for us and give us the money. We rent trucks to drive two hours to the next town for food, water, and supplies. It’s only four hours there and back now, rather than a full day’s walk just to get there. We have lights and television and microwaves in the village now. While some of the young men send us small envelopes of money every month from the city, with letters telling us they miss us. Some of the men in the factory get caught in the machinery and end up dying. We aren’t the same village anymore. Everything has changed. I thought we’d be happier.