A world we can't imagine

        

As American’s, living in a hot, polluted, and trash filled place is almost unheard of to us. If it gets too hot, we turn on the air conditioning. If our house or neighborhood gets trashed with garbage, we put it in a trash can to be picked up once a week. But what if we didn’t have these luxuries? What if we didn’t have electricity or running water? Would we go crazy because we are so addicted to our phones? Would be grow sick because our bodies are not immune to the different diseases of an undeveloped and overpopulated country?

                My friend, Monique Fitzpatrick, experienced this way of living for a week. She visited Haiti on a volunteer trip with her Aunt and lived without anything she has here. When she first got there, it was hard to get used to. She had no phone service, electricity, running water, or air conditioning. Some of the things we teenagers couldn’t even imagine living without. She explained that it was hard to get used to, but she soon did and it was an eye opener.

                While Monique was in Haiti, she lived in a compound called Petit Groave. Each room had four sets of bunk beds, no running water, and despite the heat, not even a ceiling fan. Also, all of the houses around her looked the exact same. She observed that everywhere she looked, there was trash. Trash on the streets, trash in the city, and trash even in her compound. The trash simply had nowhere to go, and since they don’t have a landfill or anything like we do, it just stays on the street and hopes to be ignored.

                Monique also did volunteer work and made close friendships with some of the orphans where we volunteered. One little girl that she remembers so well was a three year old named Kristina. Kristina went to school with her siblings, despite her age, and would always come to sit on Monique’s lap when she visited. To cheer up the children, Monique and her group brought the children stickers. Although a small gift, it didn’t fail to put a huge smile on each of their faces. Also, Monique and her group did volunteer work at a church. They built bricks from hand and put them all together to build a new stairwell for the church. Some of the other group’s responsibilities were building new walls for a couple’s house and building a new foundation for an orphanage.

                At the end of the trip, Monique was happy to go home, but it was also bittersweet for her. Seeing people having nothing and still being happy made her realize that she doesn’t need much to be happy. People in Haiti were so happy despite being in poverty and despite living without everything and we say we “Need”. I feel like we can learn a lesson from people from Haiti and that it is a very important lesson.

                I feel like we are so addicted to the luxuries that we have, that we don’t step back for just a minute to realize that we are starting to love things instead of people. We are also more worried about when our phones are broke, but don’t blink an eye when the problem of global warming gets brought up. We feel as though we need more shopping malls, factories, and strip malls, but we don’t realize that to make these things they cut down trees that give us oxygen to be alive. What will it take for us to realize that all we need is little to be happy?