Traveling and The Question of Niger

Traveling is a grand manner to learn within the context of an outdoor setting replacing an indoor classroom setting. I learned that I can learn beyond textbooks and desks—- I can learn without studying, I learned that learning is more than studying, it is experiencing the world! While traveling, passports are textbooks, luggages are pens to keep souvenirs and a new setting (a foreign country) is knowledge. I took the advice of my senior friend Esther Frank, whose life advice was, “to travel” while still being young when mobility can personify the word “globe-trotter” you really do trot the world when you travel and you really do move around. Now I know what a globetrotter is in every sense of the word.

When I went to Puerto Rico, what the people need, as the American constitution dictates “we the people”, their needs are written on the walls of buildings. During my travels, I was able to know the poverty and political needs of foreign society, contrasting with my hometown’s walls. I knew issues a country faced and how “the people” expressed it in their walls were like tear drops of humanity. The personality of the people in the places I traveled were often reflected in their brightly colored homes– I knew their society was vibrant, outgoing and ready to party in the nightlife of Puerto Rico.

The significance of what a traveler deems a cultural landmark as an epic center “tourist site” highlights the importance of nature parks such as The United Nations “El Picacho” in Honduras that can possibly be overlooked to visit by ratio and proportion to another country. Traveling taught me to value the humble aspects and creations by the locals in Tegucigalpa, Honduras for their tourists. What they deem as important to show their foreigners can be seen in one location. The United Nations ‘El Picacho” park has inspiring messages all around as the mountain twirls reverence to saints. Humble monuments made significant and recommended to travelers is what I remember of this trip.

Water bags to drink water were common in my travels around Central America, a brand I purchased is “La Perla” that I drank and felt my throat choke. I knew about the lack of water quality in San Salvador, El Salvador, but I didn’t know that El Salvadorans would sometimes run into water that is contaminated and possibly hurt them. The need for clean water in this country is often silenced by the socio-economic levels and what they can afford. In Central American countries like Honduras and El Salvador, what they call in Spanish “Pilas” is their version of wells; the container in which water drop is made of concrete that leaves water with dirt residue.

The poverty I witnessed as a tourist in El Salvador really widened my horizon as I volunteered to help Niger (with Wells Bring Hope)—the poorest country in the world by title and statistics. The word “sustainability” is more important to me because I have traveled. The economic investments in water/water quality is translated from how a human body is doing physically to how it feels to be a citizen of a poor country. Water is important beyond the physical, it’s important for our emotional needs, it’s important for human happiness sake.