As much as I like to think I am an openminded and globally aware individual, I realized that there is no way to truly understand the world without experiencing for yourself. When I was back home I strived to educate myself about what was happening in the world. I read the news, I sought out articles, and I took classes that opened my mind to the hardships people face around the world. I am not the kind of person who lives by the saying, “ignorance is bliss,” because I don’t want to be in the dark about the world I am living in. I want to understand. Even though I lived what I deemed to be an intellectual and world conscious life, I still lacked genuine empathy until I came to Thailand.
Now to be clear, when I read those tragic articles about child slavery in impoverished countries and terrible living conditions in developing nations I thought I was empathizing with them. I felt a real connection to these things, because I am such an emotionally driven person. Living in Thailand really opened my eyes to what it’s really like to live in a developing country. I live on the outskirts of Chiang Mai, tucked right up against the Inthanon mountains. A quick walk to the west pulls you out of the busy, smoky streets and into the quiet, rural mountains. Poverty is a hard thing to understand, but the more I see it, the more connected I feel to the world. It’s opening my eyes to the real world.
For the majority of my life, I have been "aware" of injustices around the world. At school, we have discussed chiald marriages in India, poverty in Tibet, and female genital mutilation in the Middle East. I’ve signed petitions at home and bought expensive fair trade coffee to fight something I don’t truly understand. There are so many ways the western world tries to bring this reality to us, but there is no way to compare it to the real thing. Ethos driven pictures of starving orphans can only pull on your heartstrings so much. They become almost commonplace in a world begging for change without tangible connections to the people it is begging for. I was wandering through the backstreets a few days ago in search of a quiet place. Within minutes, I found myself on a road with thick jungle all around me, and with the occasional food stand, and even a lonely looking Wat. I rounded a corner and saw an old man walking up a hill pushing a rickety bike. Getting up that hill was obviously laborious; he was barely able to bend his knees to move, so his each was abrupt and sharp. His bike squeaked slowly as he pushed, as if it were calling out the pain his joints looked like they felt. His tattered orange shirt was faded and smudged with brown, and it hung lifelessly on his wiry shoulders. He called out to me something I didn’t understand, and I saw a few darkened teeth behind his thin lips. I smiled kindly and nodded as I passed him, but my mind followed as he walked away.
This isn’t the only scene that has driven home the reality of poverty. On a daily basis, I see people living in rusty shacks barely five tall, and washing their clothes in buckets on the street. I see elderly people sitting on ripped up car benches on the side of the street, their eyes cloudy and distant. I see dozens of stray dogs, chickens with molted feathers and open wounds, and people collecting plastic bottles to sell. The phone lines are a chaotic tangle of black wires, with frayed cords and dangerous looking loops. It’s cheaper to prop up a bamboo ladder and string up a new line when it breaks than it is to remove the faulty one. Apartment complexes are being built with rusty excavators, and the workers are wearing floppy sun hats instead of helmets. I am not saying all of this because I am looking down on these people and this country. I am not trying to compare this to the pristine world I come from and say, “we do it better.” I am trying to explain how different it feels to actually live in a totally different world. One you hear about or read about, but don’t fully understand. I don’t want to downplay my feelings about Thailand. I think the culture is beautiful, and I am still in love with the place. I am not writing this to evoke pity for these people either; I am writing to evoke true perspective. If I have learned anything in this past month, it is that perspective is the most important lesson you can have. I came to learn about culture and a different part of the world, but I didn’t expect it to be so… impactful. The realities people live through here everyday are something I would never have understood without living abroad.
I am not a perfect person. I am not some enlightened being who has amazing wisdom to bestow on you. But I am learning things I never thought I would learn by living here. It’s scary and sad, but it puts life in perspective. It puts the world in perspective. I can already tell that no matter how hard it is to live here, I will not regret it. I can feel myself evolving as a person, or at least there is a part of my mind now open that I never knew was there. I encourage everyone who has the opportunity to live in a (for lack of better words) developing country; it will change you, and you will grow as a person.
-Rebekah