Experiencing Dire Poverty Can Transform Your Perspective
It’s incredible how experiences like living among extreme poverty can re-calibrate our perspectives on what truly matters. Your recognition of the dichotomy between enjoying material benefits and the profound impact of challenges or helping others is profound. Even small steps towards overcoming challenges or aiding others can shift our outlook on life.
On reflection; personally I found that these experiences prompt a reassessment of what brings you genuine fulfillment?
I notice that I am like a recent non-smoker who doesn’t want to smoke but checks his pockets feeling something is missing. For me today it’s my attachment to my mobile phone.
No calls to make or answer. No text to send or receive.
No checking my emails, no google or surfing the net.
This is all humbling stuff for me when I see what is happening around me.
Kids here, play the same way children throughout the world play but without shop bought toys and hovering supervision. I watch them making their own toys from just about anything including sticks, pieces of string, empty plastic container, mud; add vivid imagination and enthusiasm equals happy kids.
Many of the same children go to school without having had any food, arriving to enjoy a cup of water before the first class. The water will has come from a borehole, rainwater tank or a stream!
The infants have a mid-morning cup of maize porridge, is this somewhat similar to what we feed kids in UK workhouses in the 18th century? These kids queue up with gratitude and drink every drop.
So when standing precariously on top of my personal mountain, , I get panoramic view of my little world. With a pinch of self-honesty I can become a little more able to reassess my values, focus my aims, attempt to reducing my self-centeredness and anxieties.
An example of my Menu; the main meal of the day is at 8pm.
Sunday; breakfast, 2 toast with Kenyan coffee; lunch, Pineapple or Banana; evening, Ugali and Kales (thick maize dough with Kale).
Saturday night’s special was, boiled rice with peas and a side dish of finely sliced fried cabbage.
