Filters

We were warned at Peace Corps Staging that we would enter our host countries wearing a filter and that, no matter what, we will never be able to competely take it off. Filters are the way you see the world based on where you grew up and how you have lived your life so far. All of us have filters that vary in differing degrees, some more alike than others. They used an example of colored sunglasses... A man comes from a place where everyone wheres blue sunglasses and he moves far away for a long time to a place where everyone wears yellow sunglasses. After awhile he says, ¨I no longer see the world as blue. I have changed filters and now I see green like everyone here.¨ He could never fully erase how his past effected him even though he, finally, could see with a different filter.

There are small children here that will beg for money everywhere; on the street, in stores, even restaurants. When I say small I mean maybe 7 years old and most of them do have parents who have sent them out to do this. You all still have perfectly blue filters and can see that this is incredibly wrong. In most cases, our filters have a negative effect on how we view other people and other cultures. In this case, I am worried that my rapidly greening blue filter is not seeing this situation as I normally would. All throughout field based training, we had these children begging us and I took my cues from the volunteers that have been here for awhile. I ignored them and it slowly became easier after a couple more tries. After all, we are volunteers and we don´t make money anyway, right?

Last night, a bunch of us went out for dinner in Chosica (about half youth development and half small business). Somehow, we ended up splitting the table directly in half with youth on one side and business on the other. At about the same time everyone was finishing up, a boy came to our table asking for money. He came to the youth development side first and, ironically, we all did our best to ignore this poor child. Although, I felt I should at least try to talk to this boy in my broken spanish, I did not and that makes me no better than anyone else. It was a business volunteer that, actually, tried to make friends with him (not by giving him money but by simply acknowledging his existence). I really don´t think the situation had an effect on anyone else quite like it did on me. We left the restaurant and walked around a bit. We bought ice cream and took funny pictures. The night went on for everyone but it stood still in my heart. Why am I here? Have I completely lost sight of that? That boy was ¨the Peruvian youth¨and am I not here to show them love? I need to stop focusing on the ¨bigger picture¨and start throwing the starfish in one at a time.

An old man walked up a shore littered with thousands of starfish, beached and dying after a storm. A young man was picking them up and flinging them back into the ocean. "Why do you bother?" the old man scoffed. "You're not saving enough to make a difference." The young man picked up another starfish and sent it spinning back to the water. "Made a difference to that one," he said.