Uncomfortable

I had a lunch with a friend the other day that reminded me of the first time I traveled to a developing country. Our conversation took me back to when volunteered for 6 months in Honduras at the age of 22. I now realize now how lucky I was to have had the opportunity to experience life outside of what was real to me at such a young age.

I recall riding through the streets of Puerto Cortes for the first time, shocked by the tiny family shacks and heaps of trash on the side of the road. I remember the barefoot children sitting on their porches sucking Coca-Cola out of a plastic baggie with a hole bitten in the corner. I recall the smell of my skin after working a blistering day in the sun at a trash dump.

I woke up every day knowing I would be in an uncomfortable situation at some point. We did all sorts of projects from cleaning up the town hospital's yard (full of medical waste nobody should see) to helping the well drilling team explain to locals that using the water pump was a good thing - that allowing a donkey to drag a bucket up the well would contaminate the water (since the rope dragged in his excrement and then back into the water for the people to drink).

I was lucky. My days made me grateful, angry, uncomfortable and they invigorated at the same time. I was emotionally and physically exhausted every night. But I slowly started to realize that being uncomfortable made me feel so alive.

I started to develop a broader emotional spectrum. My happiest happy was stretched to be happier. My saddest sad became much sadder. I started to realize that in order to fully experience life, we need to put ourselves in uncomfortable situations. Its a simple as forcing ourselves to talk to someone in an awkward social situation, confronting a loved one, or it can be as big as taking on a role to make the world a better place.

There are many things about my job that feel uncomfortable, like asking people for funding or drinking 2 month old milk from a gourd because it is considered a delicacy in Kenya. But in order for HALO to reach our potential, these things must be done. Being uncomfortable makes us better people. Once the uncomfortable becomes comfortable we have learned something new.