“We dedicate dis to you for what you offer,” he said. “May God bless you.”

“We’ll wait until all of the kids receive their meals before we eat,” Dubu said.

The kids sat patiently until everyone in the room had their food, then everyone prayed out loud and blessed God for their meals. I smiled, learning so much about what true gratitude was.

Isaac goes, “I will now try it first so you can be safe to know it’s not poison.”

“We know it’s not poison,” I said.

“That’s not something I ever even considered,” Dubu laughed.

People threw plastic bottles out of their car window and my natural reaction was to yell at them, but then I remembered they truly did not know. It was simply ignorance. We saw people wheelbarrowing hot dogs and men peeing wherever they saw fit. Little kids were sleeping on the sidewalk just inches away from the road. There was so much dust, so many people in ratty clothing covered in oil, dirt and sweat. Their bodies appeared thin, as if they were malnourished and barely making it by. The sky was so grey I thought it was raining, only to discover it was actually pollution. The stream of water beside the sidewalks was oily and full of debri/trash. I got the first hand visual of understanding that we were truly in a third world country. It brought me to tears. I felt a lot of sadness arise for these people, and I was only the one watching it all. Maybe it was just sad to me because I knew where I came from and what we had in America. Even the places I hitchhiked through that were considered ‘the most dangerous’ or ‘filthy’ areas in the country were nothing in comparison to this.

“Silvanus was right,” I said. “We are rich in comparison to this.”

I felt that this trip was very important for me to experience. It was one thing to immerse oneself into an actual third world country and an entirely different thing than to just see a photo from the internet.

We opened the windows to get some fresh air but instead received dust in our eyes and the smell of exhaust that seemed to make our heads hurt. The paved road would end then turn into gravel and back to paved. Most of the trash I saw was directly by the ocean—bags and bags, overflowing heaps of them, mostly full of plastic bottles.

There was definitely a sense of fear that came over me. A sense of ‘oh my god, where am I and what did I get myself into,’ but deep down, I knew this experience was what I was asking for. I could already feel my mind shifting. There was an understanding occurring, of how the media didn’t really show these sides of the world because they might appear ugly, gross or scary.