"The Other Hundred" is a unique photo book project aimed as a counterpoint to the Forbes 100 and other media rich lists by telling the stories of people around the world who are not rich but whose lives, struggles and achievements deserve to be celebrated. Its 100 photo stories move beyond the stereotypes and clichés that fill so much of the world's media to explore the lives of people whose aspirations and achievements are at least as noteworthy as any member of the world's richest 1 percent.
Mongar, Bhutan
Photographer: Aidan Dockery
Karma Choden, 28, from Drepong village in east Bhutan’s Mongar district, is a member of the Puengu Detshen farmers’ group, one of the district’s leading growers of vegetables.
Puengu Detshen, which means nine brothers, takes its name from its nine member households.
Karma and the group’s other members work seven days a week growing a host of different vegetables, among them cabbages, broccoli, peas, radishes, carrots and mustard greens.
The group sells vegetables to the local community. Its biggest customer is a nearby secondary school which buys around 100 kilograms of vegetables daily. Every year, each household in the group earns around 100,000 ngultrum -- about U.S. $2,000 -- from sales of the vegetables.
Karma’s husband, Cheten Norbu, 30, is the group’s leader. His main responsibility is coordinating work to maintain a smooth supply of vegetables to the school. The couple, who are from the same village, have a 5-year-old son and a 3-year-old daughter.
As well as growing vegetables as a cash crop, Karma and the other farmers in her group also grow maize and rice.
Chijchipa, Bolivia
Photographer: Celeste Rojas Mugica
Coca harvesters Anita and Alejandro belong to one of Bolivia’s few Afro-Bolivian communities. Their home is at Chijchipa in the northern part of the Yungas, a mountainous forest region that combines extreme altitude and tropical weather. Coroico is the closest town, only 30 kilometers away, but a one to two hour journey.
Some 300 people live in the village, in 50 households. Since Bolivia’s agrarian reforms of 1952, each of these families has had their own piece of land to work. Most households cultivate coca, supplemented by a little coffee and fruit.
Afro-Bolivians have lived in the district for as long as anyone can remember, maintaining their traditions, especially their music, saya, whose origins can be traced back to when Africans worked as slaves in mines and other industries.
Choche, Ethiopia
Photographer: Ami Vitale
Ethiopians drink around half of the all coffee they grow, preparing it with a set of traditional rituals in a ceremony handed down over centuries.
Usually brewed by women, the process begins with the lighting of a fire on which is placed a jabena -- a traditional round clay pot with a short spout and a long neck in which water is boiled. A pan with green coffee beans is put on top of a separate pot of burning charcoal and roasted until the beans become black and shiny. To make sure everything takes place in the right atmosphere, frankincense is lit.
Once the coffee is roasted, it is ground using a wooden mortar and pestle, then put into the jabena. The mixture is boiled again, then sieved and poured into small, handleless cups and drunk in three rounds, starting with abol and tona -- first and second in Amharic -- then finally baraka -- blessing -- accompanied by light snacks such as roasted barley, peanuts and popcorn. Preparation alone can take half an hour; the drinking can last for hours.
Coffee is a vital part of Ethiopian life. Directly or indirectly, around one-quarter of the population depends on it for their livelihood. The world’s fifth largest producer in 2012, the country earned more than half a billion dollars from exports of beans.
Ramla Sharif roasts coffee inside her home at Choche, a village which many claim was where the original ancestral coffee tree was discovered in the 13th century.
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