Last week, I had the pleasure of attending a talk with Ruth Magreta, a student, researcher and parent from Malawi. The talk centered around her upbringing in Malawi and the research that she is pursuing. The most interesting part of the conversation, in my opinion, was her upbringing. I found it fascinating that even though she grew up in poverty, she was so content with the little that she had. This led me to think about how, given the privileges that we are afforded by simply living in the USA, we automatically underestimate the quality of life of people from third world countries because they don’t have everything that we have. The fondness with which Ruth spoke of Malawi was eye-opening and allowed me to reaffirm that even though we, from “developed” nations, can’t fathom life without the technology and resources that we have, this is not the reality for many nations.

Another eye-opening aspect of Ruth’s presentation was how affected her community is by deforestation and climate change. I think that it is hard for us, in urban settings, to understand the effects of climate change because it isn’t directly in front of us; we tend to see its major effects in news stories. Ruth grew up seeing the direct effect of climate change on her environment which, in turn, led to economic strife. I thought that this was an important point because it highlights the fact that just because there is no immediate, visible effect on us Americans we still need to take an interest in issues like this because they tend to negatively affect the quality of life of others.