Dichotomy

Over the last 2 days I have spent approximately $5000 on health coverage, medication, perscription eye wear, orthopedics, sanitation items, travel necessities, proper footwear, a camera, suitcases and academic parafernelia that I will need to go to Ghana, west Africa, next friday.

Most of these items were covered in healthcare plans or expected as a part of regular school fees.

Last week I put down $9000 in tuition payments.

Next week I will be stepping onto a $1,250 plane ride, including an 8 hour layover in Amsterdam which may include transportation around the city and a nice lunch in a European cafe.

A day after that I will be setting foot on the soil of a country where the GDP per capita is $1,500, risk of infecious deseases, particularily yellow-fever and malaria is "very high"- and often without treatment-, you cannot drink the tap water and 28.5% of people live below the poverty line- and food and medication, for many people, is pennies. I will be meeting people who have very little, very often, and will have to be okay with the fact that I will be carrying around and have access to a lot of items and medication that could help a lot of people. If I take the precautions this money has bought me I will never get Malaria, a parasite, extreme diarreaha or Yellow-fever. I will have access to higher education and even if something goes wrong, I will be soon returning to a country where healthcare and social saftey netting is very readily available.

There is nothing that will make me different from the people I will be meeting, but these are the strange dichotomies I will have to navigate over the next year.

When I was little and I didn't eat my spinache, or wanted something expensive, my mom would scould me and say that there were starving children in Africa. I saw tons of different charts and examples all through highschool of how far a dollar could go in an African country- the people were faceless, the cause was faceless, and very quickly it didnt mean that much to me. It was just another dollar, in another jar, and an icecream cone on a hot day would often seem much more appealing. Now that I am packing to spend a year in a 'third world country' these things seem like much more of a reality and what I pack and how I spend my money start to seem very, very important.

Wierd.