Needy third world countries have always meant so much to me. As I posted in the Action Day post of Poverty, I have been on one mission trip to Nicaragua, a visit to Guatemala (where my two baby brothers were adopted from) and I will be heading down to Nicaragua this January for a week as well.
This morning I spoke to Dan Rogue, a student in one of my Communications classes who has taken off school for a semester to travel with Invisible Children. Invisible Children is an organization which travels to high schools across the nation talking to students about the terrible things that are occurring to the kids in Africa. Kids getting raped and abused daily without any one capable or willing to help them are rarely brought to anyone’s attention throughout the US, especially not high schoolers. By bringing awareness to students, this team of young people is able to draw people to their cause either through money or service like traveling with them. Instill ideas that we are not the only ones on this planet and some people are suffering
As Dan and I started talking, we discussed the benefits of taking an interest in our world. It benefits not only the people that we are trying to help but it is equally important to our self being. Before I went to Nicaragua I was living in my own selfish world. Sure, I wanted to help friends and family and I gave presents to the “needy” living in Columbia, South Carolina during the holidays. However, what I saw in Nicaragua surpassed any definition of needy I had ever known. I can’t remember if it was the moment when I realized that the kids who we were passing out food to in the landfill (literally stacks of trash) were actually LIVING there or the moment when we walked into one elderly woman’s shack with dirt floors and she got tears in her eyes when we gave her a few t-shirts. Yes, t-shirts which I have at least 50 of and buy at the drop of a hat for nearly every one of my sorority functions are incredibly valuable to such needy people. Nevertheless, there were countless experiences which I had in Nicaragua in one week to make me change my aspect of what I considered to be needy and I think it is important for everyone to, at least once, discover these incredible places around the world that have endured more suffering than most of us will ever come close to knowing.
