Changing an image presented by media

We, in America, often have this negative view on poverty, this image that in impoverished communities around the world there are skinny unhappy kids living in small broken homes. Media, literature, and people in general tell a single story about poverty, to make the viewer upset about the issue and view it as a bad part of the world.

I’m not dismissing all of these stories, but I know they aren’t universally true. I know this from my trip to Nicaragua.

It was the third day of our one week trip and the impoverished area we visited really made an impression on me. We were around the capital, Managua. The first 2 days were spent shadowing at an elite school and exploring the history of Managua. For the next three days we were going to be driving an hour out of the city to a rural area where people who had been living in the city dumps had been pushed to. There, we would be working with the Chacocente school, a small Christian school that took over the one room public school previously there. They were working with organizations around the world with the mission of providing their students with a well rounded education that could compete with the rest of the world.

Our drive to the school started at 6 in the morning. After an hour on highways, we pulled off onto dirt paths leading through farms and empty fields of dust. On the side of the road there were tall horses, so skinny you could count each rib. Next to them were little dogs, their legs so flimsy they were struggling to walk. Looking past the animals were small houses built from reused tin roofs and big cement blocks. No running water or full electricity was obvious. This image of poor communities was one I recognized, probably from the way the media represented disparity. I was prepared for what was to come, the sad kids who were losing their will that I had seen in commercials asking to donate for ending world poverty.

We finally pulled up to the school buildings and hopped out of the van. I could immediately feel the dust and heat affecting me. The head of school came over to us, “Hola nuestros visitantes, should we start your tour?” He began to walk us through the close school buildings, each a small classroom. The computer lab was our last stop, a small room full of 2005 Dell laptops. “All of our computers are donated from schools and people from around the US who have no use for them anymore, we are very fortunate to be the only school in the area with computers,” the head of school explained. It really hit me then that the things we throw down as worth nothing really changed their opportunities for education and to communicate with people in the world.

Next, we were going to spend the rest of the day with the students of the school at their field day. We began by playing tug of war over a mud pit. We pulled to our side, they pulled to theirs, and we all couldn’t stop smiling. I looked around and everyone was happy, even the ones I least expected.

The kids of the school were put in a horrible situation by our standards. But looking around this community, they weren’t pushed down by it. I came to the realization that they knew no different, this was how they lived and they hadn’t experienced anything else. I had been very narrow minded before this experience, expecting them to look the same as all those commercials make impoverished people out to be. I’m sure if any of us had been put in this situation from birth we wouldn’t sit and cry about what we didn’t have, because we didn’t have experience of what we we were missing, it was just a form of living. The heat all day led to more complaining than I saw any of the kids of the community complain about. We got more upset by the little unnecessary things we were missing for a few hours, than happy about all the great things we had that they wouldn’t be able to imagine of. When we gave the students little presents, we made them all bracelets, they were full of joy, smiles, and thankfulness, even though these gifts wouldn’t change their living at all. This made me think about how I can be more appreciative of everything in my life and be ecstatic about the little things people do for me that might not mean too much as far of survival, but a lot as far as caring.