I'm planning on graduating in January, and although it's not set in stone, I'll be going to Kenya with my family and my friend Alex for five months right after that. I'll be based in Nairobi, and the guy I'll be working with is a graduate student from Cornell who has set up a science-based networking site to connect conservation projects to members of Cornell University, eventually with the hopes that it will be available for all universities in the United States.
I'm definitely going with an open mind. I was previously planning to take a year off before going to college so I'm hoping this will kick-start my year where I can learn and get my foot into the door of the Media and Science worlds, my interests. Science has always been my favorite subject in school, and I've always been interested in media. Funny how my mom's a scientist and my father is an independent radio journalist. It's kind of ironic that I'm interested in what both of my parents are doing. I've always wanted to be a rebel child. I've never wanted my parents to dictate my life, but its happening. I guess they have more influence than I ever expected.
Overall I'm not that nervous about going to Kenya because I have lived in third-world countries before. I was born in Manila in the Philippines. I lived there until I was five, and then my family and I moved to Lima, Peru, where we lived until I was ten.
I've seen people who are really poor, who literally have nothing, who live under such meek conditions. Last summer I went to the Andes in Ecuador. I was volunteering, helping with projects that help sustain indigenous crops and lifestyle specific to that region. I got to know people on an intimate level; I made friends with those I volunteered with, and I got insight into their lives by taking the time to talk to them. Just being an observer, I could see their circumstances were materially so much more miserable than anything I've seen or heard about in the United States. There was this one family with ten kids between the ages of one and seventeen. Two of the kids who were six years old stayed at the house and took care of the younger kids while the others helped with their farm and then went into town to beg for money. I knew that a few of those kids might die because of disease, starvation, or any variety of fates.
The people I met when I was there experience more suffering in any given year than most Americans do in a lifetime, yet they are friendlier, happier, more respectful and optimistic about life than a lot of people here who have no reason to be otherwise.
It's annoying when people here don't appreciate what they have and what they're born into, completely oblivious of their good fortune. For example, there's this “EMO movement.” EMO being short for emotional. The EMO Movement is a new string of teenage rebels here in Ithaca and all across the country. It's kids my age, teenagers, who listen to really sad music and get together and talk about how unhappy they are, how their parents don't appreciate them, how no one understands them, and how society is such a horrible system that doesn't cater to their needs. In reality these kids are upper middle class, and the only reason I think they're unhappy is because they can't figure out a way to enjoy what they have. With only minor creativity anyone can make a great situation with almost nothing. It's ridiculous to me that they can't think of ways to be happy.
EMO kids wear black eyeliner, they look depressed, they listen to a whole musical genre of sad music, and they write bad poetry about how their parents don't understand their real feelings. A lot of these kids will sit at home and do nothing all day when they are surrounded by natural beauty and so much opportunity to have fun and enjoy life. It's insulting to eighty percent of the world's population who are far less fortunate, that they squander such opportunities, such wealth, and such general luck. They don't know that it's luck that they're born in a prosperous country with all the resources they ever want, yet all they want is more.
A lot of these kids are socially inept, lonely and don't have friends and as a consequence sit around and feel sorry for themselves. They have no material reason to be unhappy. I believe it's self-inflicted. I'm a bit of cynic when it comes to the EMO Movement. I think it's pathetic. I'm not insensitive to people's woes. I know people suffer, and I'm not trying to downplay their hardships. I'm referring to kids who don't have a legitimate reason to be sad and can't find a way to be happy. I think that if a lot of them saw the suffering that I've seen, and saw how inspirationally happy those people are despite their poverty, it would be a wake-up call to them, I would hope.
Our culture in general is so materialistic. No one is ever satisfied with what they have. Everybody is so busy wanting more that they don't stop and appreciate what they have. Poverty in America does not compare to poverty in the third world. In the third world it means farming for your own sustenance, it means survival.
If you're a teen and you want to be interviewed by Anne Marie Cummings, e-mail her at InstantMessageIJ@gmail.com.
