What My Travel to Haiti, Tanzania, Malawi and Other Countries Has Taught Me About Empathy

I grew up in a pretty sheltered environment void of diversity.

My entire graduating high school class was white,  all of my friends and my families friends were also white and I never traveled outside of a trip to Disney World with a cruise that dropped us off in the Bahamas for 3 hours when I was 8-years old.

So when I found myself standing in the killing fields in Cambodia, a place where children were murdered by being slammed against the very trees that still stand tall in those fields by the Khmer Rouge, I totally lost my shit.

Because for 28 years I lived in a safe and comfortable bubble of privilege, never knowing or caring what happened in pockets of the world I didn’t even know existed.

Then I began to travel and my perception of the world started to expand. I began to connect with the suffering of the world in a much more tangible way.

When you get slapped in the face by a 5-year old boy while working in an orphanage in Brazil because his mother’s boyfriend beat the shit out of him and he’s in protective mode or have to comfort a crying child who’s literally starving because he hasn’t eaten in days and not just hours it’s hard not to feel the pangs of empathy coursing through your veins.

But I’ve also witnessed such strength and power and beauty on my travels as well.

Like when I had the chance to meet this amazing group of female builders in Haiti, or while digging a massive hole with men from Malawi that would be the latrine for the new school we were building.

Or teaching yoga to hundreds of smiling little faces in Cambodia, Brazil, Tanzania, India, Nepal, Nicaragua, Malawi and Haiti. Each country we sang the same song:

Lokah Samastah Sukhino Shavantu 

Which means:

May all beings be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and freedom for all.’

Oh the irony.

For anyone to think these amazing, hardworking, bold, joyful, humans are less than because their country is different from ours is simply an indication that they are steeped in an ignorance birthed from their own convenient privilege.

For that person to be a president. Well that’s just scary.

I’ve been welcomed into the homes of 5 different host families in villages that didn’t have the luxury of electricity or even clean water. I’ve slept in concrete rooms where cockroaches the size of mice climbed the walls and squatted in holes in the ground that was my bathroom.

Never once did the term “shit hole” ever cross my mind. Not even close.

This is simply a different way to live. I’m not saying all of these people are thriving in all ways. They may not be. I’m not even going to say they are all happy and that’s what counts because material things don’t matter.

What I am going to say is that the hundreds of people I have met in my years of travel are bursting with integrity and grace and intelligence and deserve our respect.

It is so easy to judge something or someone you’ve never had the chance to experience.

When you are able to step foot in a country different from your own and drop your beliefs on what is successful and what is thriving your life can change in many ways.

This is what travel did for me. And during that time I had little money and moved back in with my parents so I could volunteer for 4 months.

Traveling to these underserved populations opened my eyes and my heart and shifted my perspective. And no this isn’t the only way to to do this but if you have the oppurtunity and the means and the privlilge I strongly suggest it.

We get so wrapped up in our own little bubble of stress and responsibilities and struggle. Experiencing someone else’s life and seeing from their eyes for even a few days can open our eyes to what is possible.

It can open us up to a connection that can only be felt in our hearts.

This is empathy. It bring us together and puts us side by side instead of one above another.

It’s a quality we all need.

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