I can see the crisis in the emptiness of streets at night. I can smell the crisis in my bathroom as we have no water to pull the flush. I can hear the crisis when a car comes to a halt and the brakes are screaming that they need to be replaced. I can taste the crisis in the plainness of the rice I’m eating. I can touch the crisis on the smooth rubber tires of buses whose owners can’t afford new ones.
It’s everywhere around me, in everything I do. The country has been hit hard, and its population is paying an extremely high price. But somehow, from somewhere, people are fighting back, organising themselves, re-thinking their neighbourhoods and just not giving up. After working in so many crisis-hit areas, I see resilience as a weapon used by humans all over the world in extreme situations.
For the first time since I started this project in 2013, someone has asked me to paint the word ”resilience”.
Seb Toussaint 