The Idea of an Essay, Volume 3

Narrative & Memoir 77 build. After that first day, my husband left for his first day of work in the city. He didn’t come back that night, and I never saw him again. After a week, we knew no one was coming to build, so we built the whole place on our own. And now, ten years later, no one has ever brought us clean water.” When she finished her story, we thanked her for sharing, then a piercing silence settled among us. To this day, I still think about that moment immediately after she finished speaking. I fully realized the irony of the situation I was in. I came to this woman’s home to serve her, but here she was serving me in capacities I wasn’t capable of. She didn’t open up her home to me to impress me. She didn’t serve me all the food she had to make herself look good. She did it because she genuinely loved and cared for me. After all the hardship she has been forced to deal with, she still puts the needs of other people high above her own, even if they don’t speak the same language as her. I thought of the people living in the luxurious homes less than a mile from Milagro, and I knew Rosa was far better off than them. Meeting Rosa was the most humbling experience of my life, and I desperately wanted others to know about her. The first half of the puzzle was coming into place. I snapped out of my daydream when my professor dismissed us from class. For the last forty-five minutes, I didn’t listen to a single word of his lecture. I made my way across campus in the brisk October wind with Rosa still on my mind. When I arrived at my dorm room, I sat down at my desk and noticed the latest issue of Relevant Magazine lying there. Gradually, more and more of the missing pieces were coming together. Relevant puts names and faces to many of the third-world issues we don’t like to think about such as sex-trafficking, slavery, and poverty. The stories are told of actual individuals who are suffering from these things, people like Rosa, and what others are doing to help them. Before my El Salvador trip, I knew these injustices existed and I knew they were bad, but they were so far from anything I had ever experienced that they were difficult to connect with. I never gave them a second thought. But now, after developing an actual relationshipwith someone living this way, everything changed. I realized that there are Rosas all over the world suffering in ways most people may not be able to comprehend. I was apathetic before meeting Rosa, but now I deeply care. I yearned for people to understand and care. Relevant showedme that I could focusmy life on telling others the stories of people like Rosa.