New eyes

The first time that I saw poverty, I mean true poverty, the kind of poverty that takes the air out of your lungs, was when I went to the Dominican Republic in 2012.  The kind of poverty where hungry, naked, thirsty, and roofless are accepted normals for daily life.  The kind of poverty that hasn't begun to think about infrastructure, waste disposal, or sanitary needs because they are all further below on the hierarchy of needs - not enough mental and emotional space to give to anything but meeting the most basic survival needs.

I remember pulling up to the Bateye and seeing tiny people waiting for our arrival, waiting for the education we had come to provide.  Some without shoes.  Some without clothing.  All with empty stomachs. 

It put my world on pause.  I had to create space to process.  I had to figure some things out. 

A month later, after I had been in that exact environment for a month, I expected to see the very things that had initially been so jarring. 

I don't mean to suggest that I was desensitized to abject poverty.  My heart still bled at the sight of naked babies sleeping on a cement floor, children eating rationed spoonfuls of rice for entire meals, hair that had turned orange from a lack of proper nutrients, and humans living as slaves right before my eyes. All of that still pricked my heart, but it didn't cause such pause in my world as to alter my entire state of being.

From that time on, I had a better framework for what to expect when traveling to places of crisis and poverty.  Still, every time I saw a new community for the first time I had an initial moment of hesitation at first sight.  The time it takes to process the new information lessens significantly in every new context, but it is always startling at the onset. 

So here I am, living in Mathare, a slum on the eastern edge of Nairobi, working in Kibera, a slum on the city's southern edge.  

Trash covers the ground.  Everywhere.  Layers and layers of garbage blanket the soil.

Houses of mud and corrugated iron define the horizon line. 

Sewage runs congruently with walking paths. You can't imagine the smell. You can't. 

Kids play openly in their environment, wrestling and chasing one another through the trash and sewage.  

It's poverty as I've never seen, besides when I was here the last time. 

I knew what i was going to see and smell and touch and experience. I knew what I was getting into. I knew what to expect. Still, it's shocking to the point of causing pause. 

Every morning when I walk out into the community, I am more and more prepared to see the world that's waiting.

It's adaptation for the purpose of survival, I suppose, because I don't think that I could emotionally function with an openly bleeding heart for such an extended period of time. 

Initially it startles, then I process it, then I prepare myself, then it becomes routine.  

As I reflect on that aspect of my own being, I start to think about my own community. After all, if none of this helps me love my neighborhood better then I have no point being here.  

So I think about New York, about Washington Heights, about my school, and I wonder how I would see all of those places with new eyes, with eyes that haven't processed the extreme poverty that I actually have been desensitized to.  

I wonder what you would see in my world. 

Would it startle you?  Would you notice all that I look passed on a daily basis?  Would your heart bleed where mine has mended itself?

I don't know.  

Ten years of adaptation can alter a person's framework. 

Having new eyes every summer reminds me that it's not too late to see the world again, to refocus my vision.

There's a fine line between the kind of empathy that promotes solidarity and the kind that leads to emotional breakdown, so I want to make sure that I am deliberate. Always deliberate. 

But I think that it might be healthy to be shocked again, to feel the need for pause in the city that I love so dearly.  

New eyes.  

It's so clear when it's new.  So clear that I can't help but think of how foggy my vision must be. 

I guess there are some things that I never want to get used to seeing.