From the Back of a Pickup

I had been in Argentina for a couple months by then and we were up in the northern part of the country. We were based out of a rural town and traveled during the day to even more rural towns. The people were always welcoming but, although I spoke Spanish fairly well, I had difficulty understanding their country accents.

On one specific visit, we drove to a town to hand out food and other necessities to its inhabitants. My job was simply to sit in the back of the truck, hand out the supplies and make sure no one took anything. Well it wasn't long before I became the focus of a group of young boys. I was blond, tall, crammed into the back of a truck. Plus, I had a digital camera in my hands, most likely a contraption these children had maybe seen a few times. Their lives were very different from mine. They were clad in hand-me-down clothes, owning maybe few extra sets at home, and the thought of going to a movie theater or a mall was incomprehensible to them.

So, without much else to occupy their attention, they stood at the back of the truck and willingly answered my unspoken request for them to become my photo subjects for a short while. In the end, I was able to take a few photos which they were then able to look at afterwards.

Whenever I look at this photo I think about how it would be easy to look down on them for having so little and being amused by something so simple, but I don't think that way. In the end, they did much more for me than I did for them. Sure, we gave them clothes and food, but I was able to come away humbled by the fact that they live with so little and still have the ability to laugh, while I possess so much and struggle to see the blessing around me.

Under Inspection, Argentina