I sit on the floor of a hut, where Gogos, Geckos, frogs,
chickens, sisters, moths and Jeffries make cameos. The dirt never fully comes
off of my feet or out of my clothes. I really only bathe and do laundry out of
buckets for mental comfort. Not too long before I left, I found myself sitting
in front of my flat screen TV telling my mom how badly I NEED an iPhone. Here I
see needs, poverty, and emptiness on a whole new level than imaginable. Yet, I
sit and complain about my phone?
This is the end…
Nights leading up to me leaving I would stay up late, again
in front of my flat screen TV. I would watch mindless television to try to ease
my mind, which never seemed to stop racing. Half the time late at night they
play those infomercials, ask for “a dollar a day” to help some nameless kid, in
some country you’ve never heard of… You see an image of a child picking around
the dump, or living in a shack. Our hearts say “how sad”, and then our show
resumes. Mind goes blank as the TV switches back to South Park, How I Met Your
Mother or SNL. That “how sad” remains what it is, an empty thought, with really
no feel. Since you know there is nothing you can really do about it.
This is the end…
I have been spending days with those children, who come from
those shacks, who pick around the dump for food. Children who don’t know their
actual age, or what illnesses they may have. And yet these children have so
much joy just to see me: this white girl from New Hampshire. Their eyes light up
and big smiles engulf their faces. However, I really have done nothing but
donate a few months of my life thus far to holding babies, toddlers, and even
10 year olds. Maybe that’s all they need.
This is really only the start, to the end of my apathy.
