I’d always heard that you could smell poverty. But it was many years ago that I actually experienced being smacked in the face with the stench of destitution. Most of us have clicked past images on television or social media of starving children living in filth on our way to some mindless entertainment, yet they offer only antiseptic renderings of the real thing.
No mediated lesson in poverty can prepare you for standing in it up to your ankles. That’s exactly where I was, several inches deep in the Riverton City dump outside of Kingston, Jamaica, in the late 1990s as part of the project I mentioned earlier in the book to help raise money to build houses for impoverished families. The “ground” below my feet wasn’t soil at all but actually over twenty feet of rotting garbage. Each step was like walking on a gigantic sponge. The heat of the scorching sun overhead penetrated the refuse, cooking the concoction until its pungent odor hung like a thick, devilish haze. A light afternoon breeze carried some of the foulness away. But not enough.
In a few minutes, I knew I would be able to retreat to the cool comfort of the tour bus. For those around me who called the dump “home,” there was no escape. It was just another day at work as children and adults hopped onto the garbage trucks on their way to the massive, rotting heap, hoping to get first dibs at the bits of spoiled food, rags of clothing that the more fortunate had tossed away, or bottles that could be sold. A teenage boy, donning the traditional multi-colored knit hat of Jamaica, jumped off one truck near me just as its metal jaws vomited out its latest load. He joined the others slicing open the plastic sacks with short metal rods, separating the usable garbage from the rest. An elderly woman dressed in someone’s tossed out dress huddled in a cardboard shelter sorting her finds.
As I looked out across the endless mounds of trash, cows, pigs, and birds competed with the residents of Riverton City for the barely edible fare. Mixed in with what passed for food was medical waste and dung. I found myself taking short breaths—partly to avoid the stench while knowing that, with each inhale, God only knew what was seeping into my lungs.
At the edge of the dump, a small city of trash pickers had cropped up over the years. Over 8,000 souls huddled on twenty acres of a decades old garbage ground, building their tiny homes from bits and pieces of sheet metal, wood planks, and cardboard, huts I wouldn’t want my dog to live in. The dump provided the only industry generations of these people had ever known.
I looked up at the green hills, just above the teeming mass of destitution, where beautiful homes seemed to glare down, mocking with disgust. The endless, gleaming beaches, crystal blue water, and opulent resorts associated with Jamaica were nowhere near this hellhole.
I had come to this forgotten corner of the world as part of a contingent of U.S. broadcasters hoping to share with their listeners the plight of the Riverton City people. We took photos and shot video. With our audio recorders, we captured the sounds and voices of the people and attempted to paint word pictures of what we were witnessing.
But the smell could never be captured. It was sustained only in our memories. I climbed aboard the bus and sucked in my first breath of fresh air in nearly a half-hour.
The sheer magnitude of the problem and the apparent hopelessness of the people tempted all of us to turn away and never look back. Yet, I couldn’t wait to go back to Riverton City, and I was deeply disappointed that the passport incident I mentioned in my previous blog post caused me to miss that opportunity. So many lives were snatched from the grip of destitution because people chose to give sacrificially to help them.
Riverton City children who wore crisp blue and white uniforms to school and received a hot meal at lunchtime.
A single mother sobbing with joy and thanksgiving for a small 10-foot by 10-foot home that had been provided for her and her four children.
A young lady who grew up in Riverton City’s filth who was given an education and went on to become an administrator of a nearby community college. She would stay in Riverton City to help lead her neighbors to a higher level of life.
Men given a meager start-up business building furniture, allowing them some dignity and enough money to feed their families.
A lady who was given enough assistance to start a “grocery store” consisting of a handful of staples with which she built a business that provides food and goods for her neighbors and her children.
A severely disabled woman whose infirmity kept her confined for years in a dark hole she called home who now had a wheelchair that allowed her some freedom.
Grotesquely deformed children, literally tossed away by their poverty-stricken parents, who were given love, sustenance, and a home.
All of those life-giving results and more moved me from peering at poverty through a keyhole of first world, mediated renderings to opening a door that led to lives transformed through generosity. Every one of those results impacting real people and hundreds of other such results I didn’t see during my trip were plucked out of the stench of destitution because others decided to invest in their lives.
In the past few years I’ve been involved with an organization called Unite 4 Africa that focuses on sustainable community-based solutions to physical, emotional, and spiritual poverty. Last year, my wife and I visited several of the villages and met many of the people whose lives were transformed because people a half a world away chose to give.
In both cases – Jamaica and Africa – neither the recipients nor the givers were ever the same again. Giving generously to improve the lives of others has a way of improving the giver’s emotional health. Not that our own improved health resulting from giving should be our primary motivator, but it is a legitimate and very real benefit of generosity.
There are numerous studies that provide evidence that your brain responds very positively to giving to help others less fortunate. Your serotonin, the chemical that regulates your mood, is released. You get a shot of dopamine which gives you a sense of pleasure. And oxytocin, giving you a sense of connection with others, is released. Plus there are many other physical benefits to giving generously to help others. But more importantly, it’s the right thing to do.
So, do yourself and others a big favor by giving. It’s a passport to a better world and your better health.
Adapted from Rod Robison’s book The Magic of Cultivating Positive Emotions: Four Powerful Secrets Mentalists Use to Influence Thoughts & How You Can Use Them to Improve Your Emotional Health.
“My husband and I are reading this book together and both really love it. The stories keep it engaging. It’s great how the author combines what illusionists do to “trick” the audience with how we can use those same ideas to change our thinking. I am considering buying this book for my team at work. As a Development Director at a nonprofit, I would like to hire the author to speak to our top donors and gift each of them with this book.” – Tiane Kennedy
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Rod Robison is Tucson, Arizona based mentalist, magician, author and speaker who helps companies and organizations throughout Arizona and beyond create unforgettable events for their employees and clients. Visit www.TucsonMentalist.com
