America
Some of us fail to realize how lucky we are to live in such a great country. We take the most basic things for granted and never stop to appreciate the little things that make our lives so comfortable and free. Our way of life is exclusive because few others in the world live like us. We live in the land of opportunity, a place of social mobility, regardless of a person’s background. Our system is designed to reward those that take advantage of the opportunities offered in America. Everyone can go to school. You have the option to go to college and from there you can choose almost any career opportunity you desire. We don’t always realize that this is not how the rest of the world works.
Last summer I was lucky enough to spend three weeks in Peru. My expectations were not high, knowing that it was a third-world country, but I was not prepared for what I saw. After living in the United States all my life, I came to the understanding that this is what the world is like. I believed everyone had a school, a home, a hospital, even clean drinking water. This was nowhere near the case: the people of Peru live with simple pleasures. Their national education budget is barely one-tenth of a percent to that of the United States’s. After high school, we have two main choices on how to start out our adult life. We can choose a career or continue our education by going to college. Unlike many Peruvians, we are able to control our future. For some, if they are born into a small village in the Andes, they have to work the land all their life on sustenance farming, never getting the chance to go to a formal school. If you are a little girl, you often sell scarves and hats to foreigners until you are an old woman. These people are never given the opportunity to expand their knowledge or make something else of themselves.
Peruvians cannot count on their fellow citizens to have the least bit of respect for the law. In Lima, the capital, all of the downtown buildings are surrounded by 10 ft high walls with electric fences on top of them. This sends the message to travelers that Peru is so corrupt, that they have to take extreme measures to protect themselves. We are not perfect in the United States either, but at least we do not have to live with electric fences around our homes. Sanitarily, we have institutions in place to take care of things such as trash and sewage. Every Wednesday, my family can count on the garbage truck to come by to pick up our trash. In Peru, these institutions are much less organized and waste often ends up in the street. In America dogs are often referred to as “man’s best friend.” On the other hand, Peru has an outrageous number of stray dogs roaming the streets. Every block has at least one neglected dog, with nowhere to go, nowhere to call home.
On the other side of the equator, we live in the utmost comfort: we have cars, lavish homes, cell phones, etc. Materialistically, Peruvians have simpler things resulting in a simpler society. Some have cell phones, and others have cars that they can use to communicate; but outside of big cities, you feel as though you have gone back in time. Small villages are not connected to the internet and few, if any, have cell phones. In order to be an active member of our society today, some sort of cell phone or social media network is usually required to keep up with society. These objects have become a way of life for us, giving us a sense of identity as a world leader in technology.
Because we are lucky enough to live in one of the best countries in the world, I feel we should embrace what makes it so excellent. First and foremost are our rights. When comparing individual freedoms of various countries, we are often at the top when it comes to rights and civil liberties. Peruvians have nearly identical civil liberties except for that women have reduced rights to land ownership. A chief characteristic of the United States is its high standard of living. Many of us have extravagant homes, which is the single most distinctive trait of American prosperity. We are blessed with homes consisting of multiple amenities. Homes in Peru are usually one room buildings made of adobe bricks, like a mud hut. The roofs on these homes are made of thatch grasses and sometimes corrugated tin. There are many parallel comparisons between the United States and Peru that illustrate the overall differences in society.
It is obvious that we live a luxurious and prosperous life style. We express our freedoms through our successes and our prosperity. We are blessed to have the opportunities we have: the opportunity to better ourselves, the opportunity to make something happen in the world. We cannot truly appreciate the fortunes of living in America until we have a chance to experience another country. And even though we have our own share of problems, we are better off than most of the world.
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