Etenrnally surprised

So after a week of intense training and a 24 hr plane ride I'm finally here in Lusaka, Zambia. We had training sessions on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we met with my partner organization, Africa 2000 Network. To say the least the past few weeks have been a blur and a roller coaster ride of emotions.
The week long training in Toronto was really good. I now know so much more about development and am suddenly painfully aware of how much I don't know about it too. But for now I have a vague idea of where I fit into the grand scheme of development or hope at least am on the right road to figuring it out. But I now realize that there are so many levels and steps to go through before development can be achieved and so much that people need to know and plan before they can just go help the 'starving children'. It’s because of this gap or lack of knowledge that Africa and its people are directly suffering. We as individuals don’t truly realize the impact of our actions. And that realization can come only when we start introspecting ourselves and start asking questions- the right questions, and realizing that we don’t have all the solutions. The solution seems simple enough yet we haven’t really applied them to our own lives. So how do we help the 'starving, homeless children'? Do we just give them money or food? Or is building them a house the solution? Will the problem then go away? The question we ought to be asking is why don’t they have food or a home? Why is it that they don’t have food to begin with? These are some of the questions we have to ask ourselves before we can truly understand the complexity and root causes of poverty and go about helping our fellow brethren. Like I said all this seems so simple but it took me a week long training to figure that out.
I remember coming into training thinking that I know what poverty is. I've lived in India I must know what poverty is. I've been there, seen that and bought the T-shirt. How foolish was I and what was I thinking. My knowledge was truly just a scratch on the surface. I was someone on the outside looking in. I was ashamed of myself; here I was, someone who had been given the better end of the stick in life and with so many choices and opportunities. I had had the power to make a difference yet there are non-Indians who know more about how my country works and the state of the less fortunate than I do and even more committed to improving the lives of my people than even myself. And I wonder how many of us are truly living our lives blissfully ignorant, caught up in our own worries and struggle to live that ‘American dream’ or ‘Indian dream’ or ‘African dream’. It saddens me. I’m driven to change and not live in my own little box….for now. I hope and pray that I don’t lose that passion or forget the bigger picture along the way.