Argentina - The start of a new beginning
While my friends rejoice in summer’s assets, basking under the enticing heat, abandoning all eight months of education at the backs of their minds, and sleeping in until the morning has passed-- a period of laziness -- here I am, below the equator, encompassed in the calm winter of Buenos Aires, Argentina. I step into the hospital and am immediately swallowed up by the insufferable cries of poverty.
Dressed in our private school uniforms, we walk in silence through a bland and dreary hall--heartbeats racing with adrenaline, footsteps quickening with anticipation-- towards a door that separates sad from tragic. One of the employees holds the door open for us; but how can such a welcoming gesture lack the feeling of “welcome” in this gloomy dwelling? A bitter, impure aroma, bouncing off the corners of the walls, assaults my nose. Beds, about 30 in total, are lined up within the narrow, enclosed space of the room. Infants and adolescents are settled on them, suffering from disease, malnutrition, and lack of company. The deteriorating hospital, Dr. Raul Federico Larcade, is reeking of despair.
As a selected participant in the Mercy Ambassador Exchange program at my school, it was this awakening moment that ignited my desire to extend my hand globally to help those of Spanish blood, not only to help the less fortunate; but also by engaging in multicultural exchanges.
I was and still am influenced by a powerful American woman: Kari Engen. Like me, Engen has travelled abroad to a Spanish country: Guatemala. It was much more than just enjoying a new lifestyle; it was an encounter with an alarming reality: the serious poverty gaps facing Central and South America. In Guatemala, Engen saw children literally living in a dump, where government did not do anything to help them. Adults and children gravitated toward the habit of sniffing glue to get high in order to escape their setting. Engen reacted by providing a better life for the Children of the Dump with the construction of her school: Mi Refugio (My Refuge), offering free education to the kids. She is a role model to me in that there are more serious issues of which people are unaware, because it has nothing to do with their own country. I kept this in mind as I played with the children with low income in Argentina and cared for the patients at the hospital.
Generalities and ethnocentrism are obstacles in learning about the world. Having friends from different parts of the world has broken down these barriers. Argentines do not eat Mexican food; people from Mexico are called Mexicans, while people from Spain are called Spaniards; and the rest of the populations of other Spanish-speaking countries can be generalized as Latin Americans. South Americans even get annoyed when one connects the term “American” to the United States! All of this has shown me that many of these countries have different views of the world, different values, but the one thing that connects them all is Spanish. Though people in those countries might have their own biases (for example many countries believe Spanish from Spain is arrogant, believing Latin American Spanish is better), I --as a non-native speaker-- have learned to accept their different views without judgement. Because I was fortunate enough to experience another culture, I was able to widen my mind; I have grown as a person. This experience has enlightened me to embrace tolerance in diversity in the world, pushing me to obtain a career in Spanish.
