Today, I am quite discouraged. In the past two days, I had two meetings with two different NGO's and it seems like the list of obstacles facing me on this project is just growing. Even though all of the obstacles are challenging, they all seem surmountable. There is one great obstacle however that just seems too big. That is, food, or the lack of it especially in rural areas.
So my initial impression which I wrote about a few days ago remains dead on. The level of intervention which I am seeking may be too high. In any kind of pediatric care, obtaining the cooperation of the family is essential. When the family by necessity can only think of putting food on the table, how can they even entertain the thought of pursuing an education for their child?
Tonight, I had one of many discussions with my new sister-in-law about food. She's an English teacher and today in her class to stimulate conversation, she asked her students to pick from a list of needs identified by Dale Carnegie which is the most important to them? She said all the Lao students picked food. Even though these students are doing well enough now to afford English lessons, and presumably more food, they all grew up on one meal a day.
She told another story of a prisoner-of-war survivor who was interned in the Phillipines. Apparently, this man remembers being so hungry that he wondered if he could eat the wall. I've heard this before that when you are truly starving, all you can think about is how to find food. Your brain becomes obsessed with it. It's explained by Maslow's hierarchy of needs. When your basic needs are not met, there is absolutely nothing else you can attain to.
All of this may seem painfully obvious from an intellectual perspective. You may even call me naive for writing about this. Of course, I have read about poverty and know that I am one lucky dog by birth. However, even though I've studied it and seen this before in a previous trip to a developing country, it still is nothing short of shocking. To witness the survival of the fittest in humans and in animals, it's all here every day in real life and in real time.
