“You never really
understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until
you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Harper Lee
I like to think of myself as a fairly empathetic person. I
try very hard to understand things from another’s perspective, and I believe I
do a decent job at that.
However I find that instead of embodying their perspective,
I put myself into their situation. I
view their side from my own filter, colored from my life and worldviews. I
arrive with my own assumptions until the universe reminds me of how utterly
wrong I can be. And so I try again.
I’ve been given an incredible opportunity to better understand the impacts of poverty. Appropriately named, Week in the Life simulates an average week in the life of the people in our community in Mexico.
The six students make up a family consisting of three kids and three adults. The adults earn local wages for common jobs and pay for the kids’ school fees using their earnings. We must budget our income to pay our bills, namely consisting of rent, transportation, school fees, food, drinking water, and gray water. We also had to take special consideration of unexpected costs like “hospital visits” or “stolen items,” and a day off.
We gave a new definition to “house hunting.” Just as someone
moving into the Baja looking for work would, we searched for materials to build
our home along the side of the road. I never thought I would hear myself
complain of a garbage clean up until my team and I found it hard to find
building materials.
In the van, we directed Rose where to drive us find our materials and
Santi followed us in a pickup. As I looked out of my window, desperately searching
for cardboard, plastic, or whatever else could be useful, I felt like I had
grown an entirely new perspective. What I usually regarded as trash was now serving
as a potential lifeline. Cardboard, plastic, and scraps of wood were now worth
their weight in gold as I would be homeless without them. Finding a large
section of (relatively) clean cardboard felt like wining the jackpot.
Materials collected, the girls and I started building our
future home. We started off idealistic and full of ideas until we realized we
had absolutely no idea what we were doing. We had a brainstorming session that
night and built all four walls the next day. We were lucky enough to be gifted
with a couple pieces of lumber, which served as crucial elements in our walls. Our
wall posts consist of plastic tubing, 2x4s, sticks, and paper rolls. We built
our walls with cardboard, door panels, wooden pallets, and kept it all together
with plastic tubing and a handful of nails. Our roof is made of a web of
tubing, woven cardboard, and lots of plastic and tarps. We plan on sweeping out
our dirt floor and lining it with cardboard for a comfortable night’s sleep.
I loved seeing everyone collaborate on the shack. We shared
ideas and worked together to put our vision to life. We grew closer together
and I can only image our dynamic after this week.
I believe this week will be equally exciting and
challenging. If you know me well, you’ll know how well I fare off of early
morning and limited food. We will work long hours doing hard, physically
demanding, and monotonous jobs. It’ll be easy to slip into a state of tired,
hungry misery. At the same time, it is a perfect opportunity to grow and
appreciate what I have. What I live for one week is what people will spend
their entire life in. The families we’ve built homes for, whom I have come to
love, lived in a shack like this for years. It’ll be their faces that will keep
me motivated this week.
I may not fully understand what living off of a couple of
dollars a day is like, but I am sure I’ll have a better understand after this
week. Let this week motivate me, and you, to take everyday actions to
understand people in their struggle and to do something to help. Educate
yourself and those around you, and always remember that you can always change someone
else’s world, if not your own.
Lots of love,
Meagan <3
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