Roughest Bounds

Before I get into any trouble, I want to make sure that everyone reading this blog understands that the amazing photo has been taken by Olivia Acland for BBC. 

Now that the legal issue is out of the way, let me talk about Roughest Bounds. What! Don’t know what it is? How come! I bet they don’t have a website and hence Google did’t find them yet. Today I bumped into an article in BBC about Roughest Bounds.

They are a struggling group of street dancers in Sierra Leone. Olivia Acland captured the dancers in action with her amazing photography that allowed the world to know about them. Being a movement enthusiast myself I got super inspired by what they do, their dedication, commitment and the struggle they go through. I’m 99.99% sure that no one taught them those cool moves. They purely came out of passion and the realisation of “true free movement” without any rules to bound them by. I guess that’s pure creativity. You don’t learn from others but you discover every bit of your way as you traverse it as if it was done the first time ever. It’s a lengthy path, but nevertheless ten folds more rewarding. Some might argue that its backward for civilisation / progress / technology where you don’t learn from others’ experiences. I would say “So what! What are you trying to achieve in the first place? What’s your ultimate goal? To live a happy life, isn’t it? Or are you living to make sure that the civilisation progresses?”

In the developed world we are super programmed to learn as many things as possible and as quickly as possible. We read books, we browse internet, we talk to intelligent people and in doing so, learn new things. We do not truly discover. And I am not out of this equation either. But I realise how far we have come and how difficult it is to reprogram ourselves. Its a separate question altogether if we at all want to do that as it very likely will throw us way out of our comfort zones.

Going back to Roughest Bounds, after reading that article, I did what most of the folks in the developed countries would do to get more information about them. I googled. But with no luck. I genuinely wanted to help them somehow and in return, possibly “learn (not discover)” something from them. Not that I have a ton of money, especially not when I am planning to be self-employed in a couple of months. But, I bet that the value of a dollar is far more for them than what it is for most in the developed countries. I could certainly not buy my next PS4 game for thirty odd dollars and send that money to them. It will be a lot more for them than what the PS4 game would be for me. In any case, I eventually ended up writing to BBC and tweeting to Olivia (the photographer), hoping I could get hold of some contact details. I will re-post again, when / if I hear back from BBC.

If you have reached this far, thanks for listening to my rant :)!