THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED: Part 2 of 2

Life for the Other Half 

I confess that I wasn’t initially prepared for some of what I saw. 

Walking through the unpaved streets and disorganized red dirt roads of a place like Lomé was more than a little unsettling.  Though I had of course scurried past shantytowns of similarly unspeakable poverty in my many travels – and perhaps even exposed myself to smaller samplings of it in my brief bouts of community service at home – never before I had experienced poverty of such size and scale.  The first time a colleague of mine told me that, since sanitary wear was simply beyond the reach of many local girls, they were forced to resort to the use of old rags, pieces of blanket, sack, newspaper or even leaves to contain their menstrual flow, I refused to believe it. The next day, I had a client who prostituted his daughter to help pay his wife’s hospital bills – my introduction had only just begun.  By the time I walked through the Buduburam refugee camp, I thought I had seen enough to be prepared for anything, but I had difficulty believing what I saw was even real: there was what felt like an endless chain of pleas for food, help, comfort – anything. Body after body, so thin and emaciated, that it was legitimate to ask, how are they still alive?

While true that in some ways I had never felt so helpless, in an ironic twist, at the same time I had never been so empowered. The former being obvious – the poverty that surrounded me was not just confronting but inescapable and impossible for me to heal – but the latter, because every client I spoke with and represented expressed a sincere appreciation and genuine feeling of gratitude. There was none of the bitterness one would expect from someone who had too often been ignored and neglected and too seldom shown so much as a sliver of decency or mercy. Instead, there was a warmth to these interactions that seldom occurred in private practice; they believed that I could help them and, slowly, I began to believe it too.

"The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems" - Mohandas K. Ghandi

For the first time, I truly understood just how dangerously out of balance our world is, and I was determined to do something about it.

A World Divided

As I took in the reality that surrounded me everyday, I couldn’t shake the feeling of a global wrong or help but to begin to connect the dots.  Coming from my world of relative plenty, it was difficult to digest that such abject poverty even existed, much less persisted, unabated and with little more than the most fleeting levels of attention or urgency.  Knowing we live in the wealthiest of times in all of human history, the cruelty of witnessing so many lives condemned to either untimely death or unnecessary suffering was incomprehensible. 

"He is now rising from affluence to poverty." - Mark Twain 

Technology and globalization have made our world smaller than at any time previously, only heightening the fact that the fittest of the First World really does live smack in the face of the Third. So why is it that so few of us get to enjoy our "first world" membership whilst the majority of the human race is denied this gold card status? As my days turned to weeks, and weeks to months, that was the burning question that I couldn’t shake from my mind. Perhaps as you read these postings, you may begin to ask yourself this same question. While the answer is not a pretty one, I do believe that it is an essential acknowledgment that should be part of each and every step that we place on this Earth.

Yet, in spite of painful story after painful story, misery upon misery, I found people getting on with their life, rising gloriously above conditions that would break the best of us. In this ability to persevere through the worst, I gained not just a newfound perspective, but a worldview.  What moved me most was finding such a large number of people in places as poor in economic wealth as Ghana or Togo, nonetheless standing together to make life better, not just for themselves, but for one another. I was blessed with the opportunity to talk for hours on end with inspiring and dedicated companions. I was privileged to work alongside lawyers earning modest 5-figure salaries with a desire, indeed, a shared obligation to give more than they took. It was a far cry from my experience back home with 6-figure salaried lawyers for whom more never felt like quite enough. I quickly learned from this experience that the degree of one's happiness has far more to do with their disposition than their circumstance. 

It's also why I view seeing other places and cultures as, not only a way of understanding the special challenges that are unique to different parts of the world, but also as quite possibly the best means of appreciating the common interests and aspirations that unite us. After living with people on the edge of survival, it becomes difficult to go back to your old ways and, to my surprise, I soon discovered that I was able to live quite comfortably with an almost monkish simplicity. Gradually, I learned to be indifferent to myself and to my own deficiencies. I came to center my attention increasingly upon external objects: the state of the world, various branches of knowledge, individuals for whom I felt affection – ways in which I could seek to become much more than just an armchair critic.

"The tragedy of life is not death, but what we let die inside of us while we live" - Norman Cousins

Witnessing firsthand how seemingly small and fragmented individual efforts can add up to a powerful social force, provided that enthralling eureka moment that finally rid me of the 'excus-itis' that had always held such sway.  The period that proceeded was one characterized by a ravenous quest for answers, and the topics and discussions that follow are the fruits of this labour. I am most humbled by all who read these pages, encouraged by those who may share them and anxious for any that may actively participate in their evolution.  I hope that what I have produced herein conveys some of the passion that I feel about the issues that follow and, ideally, helps you to foster some of your own. 

With that, we begin...