Readers often ask: Why do I travel to places like Sudan or Myanmar when we Americans have so many challenges at home to worry about?
As Janessa put it on my Facebook page: “Shouldn’t we take care of the issues within our own borders BEFORE we try and fix everyone else’s?”
It’s a fair question, and it comes up often now. We’re weary with the world, and so many humanitarian problems seem insoluble. We’re ready to turn inward.
Yet perhaps an encounter last month in Myanmar on my annual “win-a-trip” journey, with a college student in tow, can help answer the question.
The winner of my contest this year was Nicole Sganga, a 20-year-old Notre Dame student. One day, we hiked into the remote village of Yae Thay, far from any road, and we met a woman named Sajan, also 20.
We stopped and chatted, meeting her children and talking about her aspirations. Nicole and Sajan are both bright, hard-working and fun-loving, and they got along well. But their lives could not be more different — a reflection of the lottery of birth.
While Nicole grew up in a middle-class family on Long Island, N.Y., thriving in school, Sajan dropped out at age 10 when her father died. “I couldn’t afford to go to school after that,” she explained.
Sajan, a model of resourcefulness, resilience and tenacity, became a cook to fishermen and married at 13, traded for a bride price of one cow. She has two daughters whom she aims to send to high school, but she wants sons because, she explained, “a boy is better than a girl.”
She has never seen a dentist. She wears lipstick but has no television, no radio and even no electricity. She has never ridden in a car, and she doesn’t have a bicycle to get around. Her wardrobe consists of two sarongs and four tops, but no shoes or sandals; she goes barefoot.
It was eerie to watch Nicole and Sajan talk to each other: Two young women, born at almost the same time, both with talent and dreams, both seizing opportunities, yet only one in a context in which her abilities can come fully into play. It was a reminder of a basic truth of life: Talent is universal, but opportunity is not.
That’s one reason I encourage young people to travel outside their comfort zones: From afar, it’s often easier to see our own privilege — and responsibilities.
Vaccines save lives. Iodizing salt raises IQs and reduces mental disability. Wells, bed nets and deworming improve health. Family planning would help the 215 million women worldwide who yearn for a way to avoid getting pregnant. Education allows people to transform their own lives. These are all bargains.
In some quarters in America, it’s considered glamorous to volunteer in Tanzania, but not to mentor a child on the wrong side of the tracks. That’s myopic. But I think it’s also shortsighted to insist that we solve all of our own problems before beginning to address those abroad.
Compassion shouldn’t depend, one way or the other, on the color of one’s skin — or passport. We can, albeit unsteadily and uncertainly, try simultaneously to chip away at problems both here and abroad — spreading opportunity so that the Sajans of the world are as empowered as the Nicoles.
