by Mardy Chen

It was a ten-day trip that rocked my world. From the conversations and stories, I thought I knew what lie ahead of me. But there is no substitute for the living, breathing experience. There is no story, no photograph that can ever give you the living experience and depth and knowledge and smell and touch and feel of the people, of the place, of the challenges, of the richness, of the beauty, and of the despair. There is nothing.

It is only when you spend time with the people that you can fully have insights as to what the challenges are for them. You can visit rural Ethiopia and never truly know what it is like to be an Ethiopian woman, who awakens and walks four or five hours a day to collect contaminated water and then carries the water back to begin her day plowing fields with her baby strapped on her back. I shall never know what it is like to cart thirty or forty pounds of sticks on my back for firewood. I shall never know what it is like to walk seven miles to a health post to give birth to three babies and have two of them die of hypothermia before their first birthday.

We walked in the footprints of the children living in the Semien Mountains. Surrounded by breathtaking scenery, these children walk miles across treacherous landscape just to go to school. At an altitude of 10,000 feet, the air is thin and cold. Our hearts shattered as we saw hundreds of children shivering, wearing nothing but oversized t-shirts, and chanting "Bic! Bic! Bic!" They were referring to the brand of ballpoint pen - they just wanted to write. Giving our coats, shirts and socks to the youngest children, and shivering among the elders, we walked in their footprints. And it is so much deeper; it is so much greater than I ever could have known. My regard and fury have been raised to a new level.

My love and compassion have always been present, and have grown through yoga. But I am so ignited with fury because people should not have to live in such an inhuman way. It is not okay anymore. It is not right - people literally breaking their backs and walking thirteen hours barefoot over a rocky mountain carrying grains to sell in markets.

It is not okay anymore. Before A Glimmer of Hope arrives, people drink brown infected liquid and spend hours in search of it. The children are not in school, and the women die on birthing tables. It is time. It is time for people to sit up and stand up and take responsibility and know that God truly lives in the poorest of the poor.

A Glimmer of Hope is doing just that - really addressing poverty. The solution to poverty is to help them make money. That's how people rise out of poverty by economic growth, by jobs, by income. Glimmer is funding farmers through micro loans to buy low-cost irrigation foot pumps and drip kits. Fields of rock and rubble are turning into fields of green. They eat, their food is now secure, and they are taking the excess cash crops to market, and they are making money multiple times more than what they borrowed for the pump in the first place.

We met with a group of women entrepreneurs, and what I noticed more than the economic impact on these women was the empowerment. Women have been the mules of African society for centuries, and providing economic empowerment to women provides personal empowerment. It was truly a blessing to witness the joy and pride of these women.

I thank A Glimmer of Hope for providing me with the opportunity to see and experience a way of life in Ethiopia that is very different from what I see at home in Austin. I walked and talked and played with children with no shoes. I connected with people in rural Ethiopia living in huts. I have seen what it is to not have access to clean drinking water. I saw and touched poverty at such a deep level that I came back knowing that it was time to devote myself to helping these people I had met in rural Ethiopia. These are our brothers and sisters who happened to have been born in Africa as opposed to America, or developing countries as opposed to developed countries. I had no frame of reference for poverty and human suffering on this scale.

These experiences have changed my perspective forever, and I realize fully that there is a whole big part of this world that is not living the life that we are exposed to everyday. I appreciate my family, my health and the yoga in a new way. Most of all, I have seen that we all have a duty to give of ourselves to help people in need.

"When extreme poverty breaks your heart, you can no longer turn your back."
~ Philip Berber