This is a picture of two Nepal children. They both live in the slums of Nepal. Some other kids and their families have fled from India and China to find work. As you can see in the photo, they have overflowing joy, even in the middle of their conditions. A bit about their lives: they travel a mile to get one meal a day, and they have sores and blisters covering their body. Most kids show up in tattered clothes that barely fit, without shoes on their feet, and without baths to wash away the dirt and grim. Boys and girls in elementary school are taking care of and holding a baby in a sling because their mom is too sick or busy working to feed their children. They live under fabric folded up to mimic a tent. Their homes are level with the pigs. The stench from their livestock is atrocious. They live in the same, if not even worse conditions then their animals. When the monsoons come, they have nothing to protect them from the floods and landslides. When the heat is at its peak, they have no air conditioning or sufficient shade to protect them from the scorching heat. The pain manifested while walking through their neighborhoods cannot be put into words. Nothing I can say or write would give justice to the cruelty I witnessed firsthand. We came first to feed the children, they ranged from a few months old to my age. When everyone ran outside to play there was one little girl who stayed behind to eat her meal. She had a terrible infection around her mouth. This 3 year old girl was sitting in complete silence just staring at me as I fed her the only meal she would see all day. Just looking at her I couldn’t help but feel angry at the reality of her life and pitiful for her. How could someone so innocent and sweet have to suffer like this? Why should anyone at all suffer like this? Life isn’t fair and we have reasons to be upset. Those children don’t deserve to live in such awful conditions. They have every right to be angry and downtrodden. However, after playing games and learning handshakes with a few girls and boys, I found that they filled my aching heart with joy. I came to bless them and instead they blessed me. I am touched by all of these things. If these kids pour into everyone around them, why shouldn’t we do the same? Aren’t we expected to even more? We can bless others even if we are going through something tough in our lives. I’m not saying that our problems aren’t real and life isn’t tough, but our perspective plays a huge role in how our life unfolds. We can see the beauty in the pain or we can “look for the devil in the toaster.” We cannot change our circumstances- people lose their jobs, break up with their significant others, fail a test, crash a car, have health issues, or any other misfortune. Consider this however, we can control how we respond and how we react to difficult moments in life. Those are the lessons I learned that day in Nepal. Face to face with a smiling child of the slums.
