The summer before I began my master’s program in psychology in Abilene, Texas, I traveled to Guatemala and Honduras in Central America with the department chair and one adjunct member of the faculty. We all three were interested Spanish culture and language. We traveled first to Guatemala visiting lakes, volcanoes, and ancient buildings. One day while in Santiago, one of the cities near a large lake, the three of us stopped and had a mid-afternoon snack of tacos. Our tacos were filled with meat and onions. None of the three of us ate any of our onions, because the meat was the most filling and best tasting. As we were finishing our meal and watching the locals play futbol on a blacktop through the window, some little boys around age 5 came up to us and, climbing through the open window and seating themselves on the windowsill, began asking for “quetzals”, the Guatemalan currency. Accustomed to hearing the constant cry for money in the streets, we easily put off their pleas. But, after being well-stuffed with grilled chicken, and pork, and tortillas, we still had a plate full of those nasty onions and one half of a taco leftover.
So, to quiet the constant pleas so that we could watch the game and discuss our next activities in peace, I calmly slid the boys the plate full of onions and remnants of the taco, thinking to myself as I handed it to them “let’s see if they’re hungry enough to eat this.” In my experience back in the states, I had learned that if someone asks for money to buy food or gas, when offered food – the very food I eat – or a free fill-up, turn it down. What they want is the money. In fact, I had learned that the best way to run off someone who comes up begging for money is to hear their story and to actually offer them what they state they intend to buy with the money they are requesting (I don’t mean to say that all the poor in the US are like this, only the majority of those that requested money from me). So, my expectations were not much different in this situation.
This time, the response was quite distinctive. Immediately upon being passed the plate of my leftover onions and taco, the two boys ate the rest of the taco I was eating and began stuffing handfuls of onions into their mouths. I looked on in disbelief as the two boys, and a younger girl whom I took be one of their sister, ravenously devoured the plate full of onions and leftover taco. This was my first true hint of the difference between Americans and the poor in other nations.
We moved on from that village and eventually traveled to Honduras and stayed there for 3-4 days. One of the days, the adjunct faculty member, Ryan Bluecker, and I got on a bus and traveled down to Choluteca, a city that was destroyed by a hurricane a few years previous. Ryan had come down to help rebuild the city after it was destroyed and he wanted to visit some friends in the city that he had met while helping out. Choluteca, the original city, was almost completely destroyed, and so a huge section of houses were built from sod in what looked like a desert just outside the old city. We got off the bus and walked the dusty streets where sod houses, each about 10’ by 10’, lined the road. We came up to the house of his friends, and they were very glad to see him.
As these old friends talked, Ryan would occasionally share with me the contents of what they were saying (I was not very fluent in Spanish). Some of the things that came up during the discussion were the fact that the middle-aged couple who lived there with their 4 children had 2 more children move in with them because their parents had recently died of illnesses. This couple took in these orphaned children because the two families went to the same church. I also learned that there were three hammocks, and no beds, in the entire house. The parents and the two youngest children all slept in the hammock in the main room, the elementary age boys and teenage son slept in the hammock in a second room, and the elementary age girls and teenage daughter slept in the remaining hammock. As they were talking, the mother sent the children outside to turn on the faucet. Ryan then told me that the water is turned on only twice a day, and so this family fills the entire sink with water to use for cooking, bathing, and drinking throughout the rest of the day.
While listening and waiting for Ryan to explain things to me, I observed the small sod structure in which this family lived, smaller than one of the rooms in the middle-class American house I grew up in. I noticed the dirt floor, the open windows (i.e., open holes in the wall with no glass) covered by a sheet, perhaps to mimick curtains. I have no recollection of any electricity in this house, certainly no television.
Not long after we arrived, the mother handed two of the children some money and they took off. After we had been talking for a while, the two children arrived, bearing our lunch which our hosts had prepared for us. This feast, which this family had gone out of their way and to great expense to provide, consisted of 6 saltine crackers apiece, a small slice of goat cheese, and Coca-Cola (because us gringos could not drink the water). As we were eating, Ryan informed me that this was a feast for them; much more than they ordinarily eat for lunch.
After we finished our meal, a few of the children wanted us to walk around the city with them. We trudged down their dusty roads and came upon a dusty futbol field where a game was beginning. I played for about 10 minutes in my Teva sandals and thought about the recent dominance of the US men’s soccer team among central and North American teams. I realized that if 6 crackers was a good meal for these children, then it should be no wonder that the US team is able to defeat nations like Honduras in soccer – how could any nation so poor produce athletes able to compete with a nation as monetarily rich as ours? US children get plenty of sustenance such that they are overweight; our soccer fields have grass on them, as opposed to these, and our equipment – shoes, balls, etc., - are far superior.
Throughout all this, I was consistently plagued by something. The family with whom Ryan was friends had a daughter around the age of 13 whose name was Anna. When I first laid eyes upon her, I thought she was quite beautiful, and as I learned more of the plight of the families in Choluteca, Honduras, I began to be all the more impressed by Anna’s outstanding beauty and bright shining eyes, along with her loving spirit. I considered how, if Anna lived in the US, she would have been very popular in her school and well-liked. I thought about how, even if she were poor in the US, with her model-esque beauty, she would have a better chance of stepping out of the poverty in which her family was mired. Certainly the prospect of a better education and abundance of opportunities would benefit her. With so little, this family, indeed Anna, would have nothing to lose by going to the US. Even the poor in the US have more than Anna and her family had. I began to be troubled by these thoughts, wondering if we should recommend that she somehow be sent to the states for an opportunity for a better life. As we began to say our goodbyes and took pictures of them, I felt as though leaving her in Choluteca doomed her to a life of the poverty that she and her family had known. That she would be married within a few years and begin a family perhaps down the street from her parents, another generation living their lives, knowing so little of what I know to be reality.
As Ryan and I waited for the bus to pick us back up, some little boys came up to us – they seemed to want us to take a picture of them. Perhaps they saw us taking pictures of Anna and her family. I took a few pictures of these little boys, and I have never seen boys so happy to have their pictures taken. I hope to post their picture so that you can see their expressions, when I get a chance.
As Ryan and I rode the bus back into town, we stopped at the ice cream store because we were still hungry and very hot and thirsty from the dusty roads. Ryan and I discussed how the family we just left would never be able to just go and buy ice cream simply because their meal wasn’t filling enough or they were too hot and dusty, even though we had treated ourselves to licuadas and ice cream only a daily basis. While we were eating our ice cream, I brought up the topic of Anna, and my thoughts on her need to move to the US. We discussed it for a while; he told me that Anna’s father had proposed the idea to Ryan that he should bring her to the US the last time he was there, hoping as did I, for a better life for his precious daughter. We talked about how in the US Ryan and I each have a safety net of family and friends and religious connections, such that, even if the worst happened to us, the others around us would be able to offer support to us to help us get back on our feet. Both of us had parents who helped us out financially in our early adulthood and would be willing to help us out again if necessary. We each had school loans, loans which Anna would never be able to pay off living in Honduras. But Anna had no such safety net. She was surrounded by destitution; she had a wealth of poverty. Even if she had found a way to pull herself out of the poverty in which she grew up, one major mistake, or uncontrollable event like a hurricane would only send her back into it.
We wondered, however, what it is that makes a life better. Does money alone? Riches, opportunity? The abundance of wealth and opportunity in the US does not seem to solve any problems. Ultra rich entertainers (e.g., athletes, musicians, actors, actresses) all seem to have their share of problems. The abundant provisions of these rich apparently does not make them immune to broken families, broken hearts, and broken lives. Is it possible that most of these wealthy people would exchange much of their wealth for a trustworthy and stable relationship with someone they loved? And isn’t that the sort of thing people truly desire? This, of course, is what Anna already has – a loving family who has compassion on others, and a strong relationship with them. Happiness is what people long for and they don’t care what form it comes in, or what delivers it to their door. If all the poor had limitless happiness would they desire anything else? The rich are able to afford more expensive short term solutions but they never provide lasting happiness.
Contentedness does not seem to be a core American value, despite the wealth of money and opportunity we have. Would Anna’s life truly be better, simply by coming to the US? Even if she took advantage of the land of opportunity and obtained a mediocre degree of wealth by US standards, who is to say that her life would be better? Perhaps she would then run into new sets of problems, problems that she never encountered at home, yet problems that are real to many of us today? Truly, I know of no person who claims to be without problems or without worries, and I know of no person (though they may exist) who lived as poor as Anna and her family. Perhaps the simplicity of her life provides her with more benefit than all that money and even opportunity could provide for her.
I do not know the answers to the above questions. But, after my experiences in Guatemala and Honduras, I vowed to never forget the reality that Anna knows on a daily basis.
What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?
Jesus of Nazareth