Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
fact is, the popular patriotic sentiment “my country, right or wrong”—while
embraced by many Americans—is by no means unique to our country. h ere
are good people waging heroic struggles all over the world…some of them
against our country.
If you've got a week to spend in Latin America, you can lie on a beach in
Mazatlán, you can commune with nature in Costa Rica, or you can grapple
with our nation's complex role in a country like El Salvador. I've done all three,
and enjoyed each type of trip. But El Salvador was far more memorable than
the others. h e tourism industry has its own priorities. But as a traveler, you
always have the option to choose challenging and educational destinations.
See the Rich/Poor Gap for Yourself
After traveling the world, you come home recognizing that Americans are good
people with big hearts. We are compassionate and kind, and operate with the
best of intentions. But as citizens of a giant, powerful nation—isolated from
the rest of the world by geography, as much as by our wealth—it can be chal-
lenging for many Americans to understand that poverty across the sea is as
real as poverty across the street. We struggle to grasp the huge gap between
the wealthy and the poor. While it may be human nature to choose ignorance
when it comes to this reality, it's better character to reckon with it honestly.
Anyone can learn that half of the people on this planet are trying to live
on $2 a day, and a billion people are trying to live on $1 a day. You can read
that the average lot in life for women on this planet is to spend a good part
of their waking hours every day walking for water and i rewood. But when
you travel to the developing world, you meet those “statistics” face-to-face...
and the problem becomes more real.
In San Salvador, I met Beatriz, a mother who lives in a cinderblock house
with a corrugated tin roof. From the scavenged two-by-four that holds up her
roof, a single wire arcs up to a power line that she tapped into to steal electric-
ity for the bare bulb that lights her world each night. She lives in a ravine the
city considers “uni t for habitation.” She's there not by choice, but because it's
near her work and she can't af ord bus fare to live beyond walking distance
to the place that pays $6 a day for her labor. Apart from her time at work,
she spends half the remaining hours of her day walking for water. Her hus-
band is gone, and she's raising a child. Beatriz is not unusual on this planet.
In fact, among women, she's closer to the global norm than most women in
the United States.
