This is the third of a four-part series entitled I Am the Developing Person. This is an unedited account of a personal journey and will be followed by stories from a few more of my international volunteer trips. Many of the experiences on these trips would become the impetus for founding UniversalGiving™.  You can see additional photos here.

A Simplified Room

Often when I am abroad, and I stay in a simplified room. 

A thin woven bedspread.  White or cream painted walls.  A simple mirror; two local paintings; perhaps, maybe, a small plant kindly placed.  A gentle embroidered mat underneath a plastic tray, with a cup of water on the table.  A Modest, flatly filled, flat flattened pillow.  

You lie on your back and feel as if you have been cleansed.  There is not much to organize, be distracted by.  There is not a T.V., a menu, writing paper or a commercialized welcome card. And there is not usually a room key. 

It’s just a room.

Sometimes my rooms have been a very tiny, thin converted windowlesscloset with a broom in the corner.  Sometimes my floor is cement, and I learn to feel its softness, or gentle roughness against my feet.

Sometimes, when I come back home to the United States, I am overwhelmed.

The softness of my sheets; the pad of my bed

The blue tile of the bathroom that gleams in color

The water which comes out immediately hot

                                                A luxury of itself, its                        

immediacy

Toilet paper, which is
On a roll
A holder for Kleenex
Flowers, in a bathroom….

Shutters
Shutters which open and close

Shutters whose flaps are clean.

Toilets
Toilets that flush fully the first time.
That are white.
It’s almost as if our toilets here are treated with extreme kindness, care… kid gloves

There is silence, clean air
It feels as if someone is taking care of me

Who takes care of them
 

And there is no squeaky
As  I turn on the water
To wash my face

Grateful, grateful I am for hot water, water warm, on my face
Grateful of not just a kind home but kind parents who love, love me, love home, I love them, love our home

And there is a wash cloth
And my nose jolts as the scent, fine, of a sweet soap with a fragrance
Opposed to the drier rougher soap for some days
And I am bit stiffened to take in the high level of this soap

And I cannot stop thinking about
The millions
That I saw

And    

That I didn’t see

Who will never smell this soap
Who wonder what a real bed is like
Who have never pondered
A
Wall-
To-
Wall

Carpet

            Without

                        Stains.

 

This Time

Times Two

This time what shook me was putting 2, and 2, and 2 and 2 and 2 and 2 and 2 together from numerous trips.  I had seen the poverty before… but now, it all came together.

This time

I realized that

       What we experience in the United States

                                  What people experience in
                                                                                Canada,
                                                                                     Europe,
                                                                                             Japan

 

Is an overwhelming anomaly

And I stay silent

I stay even more silent

And try to appreciate the Heaven that is present in both worlds
For both have love in different ways

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You can take action.

Give $25 and bring water to villagers

Give $100 to provide a student with housing

Volunteer with impoverished children in Peru.