We step down onto the street to begin our journey. Really, it isn’t a street. It’s a mixture of dirt and sewer water and gravel and tears. I have never seen anything like this before.
The smell is overpowering; it makes my stomach turn and my nose crinkle up.
I hear people yelling in the streets in a language I don’t understand. Rickety little vehicles that hardly pass for cars travel past, bumpity-bump-bumping down this “street”.
New sights await as we come to the first tent city. Do you understand that there are people here who die because they don’t have enough to eat? I don’t.
How is it that I have an entire refrigerator of food-bread, milk, cheese, eggs, meat, fruit, vegetables, JUNK- sitting at home. Nobody touches it. It is waste. And these people are starving. They are dying.
I don’t understand that.
I see babies running naked, playing in the sewage. They are so malnourished some of them can hardly move.
Big yellow crescents are their eyes, which consume the faces of the children. Orange hair sparsely populates the tops of their heads. The way the bellies of these children pop out is unnatural. See their skinny arms and legs? They are twigs. How do they have the strength to support themselves?
These helpless creatures just cry. We cry with them. What did these babies do to receive a fate so twisted and sick? They will die of malnourishment. Of hunger. Of thirst. Of disease.
Mothers who can’t be much older than myself flag us down.
Take my baby! Please take my baby! They plead to us.
How would it feel to give up your own child, because you know he will die in your care?
They must really love them to give them up.
How do we help these people? I have to try. I have to do something. Anything.
You’re just a kid. Nothing you do will make a difference. You don’t have the power.
They tell me these things. They beat me down.
But they are wrong. I can help. I can change this. I will make a difference. I can’t change the whole world, but I can change this own little piece of it that I call mine. We can all do that at least.