Dad's wheels.

It is so hard for me to relate to these kids economically. They have nothing. But the look on their faces is priceless. We can identify with the look but not with the location. The bike is their “Corvette” or their “Audi.” We live in a culture of planes, trains and automobiles. They live in a culture of donkeys, bikes and Mopeds. The skies are as silent as our skies the week after 9/11. There are no trains and they stare at cars like we stare at a Rolls Royce.

We wonder how they can be so happy when they are so poor. We compare their culture with our own and wonder how they can even exist. They have no running water, maybe a light bulb, and no indoor plumbing. The world has developed around them and no one let them in on the plan, yet they survive and move on. They dream of a better life, a day when they will be grown up and have a bike just like dad’s, a bike with thirty speeds so they can zip around town and not have to walk barefoot in the streets like everyone else.

In our culture, it seems that we never have enough because there is so much to have, so many “Joneses” to keep up with. For me, the culture shock is not the third world nation that I’m visiting. Instead, it’s coming home and realizing how blessed we are to live in this nation, regardless of what the Joneses think.