A humbling experience

We had promised Sunny, our dog walker a visit to his house for a while now. Both Cristina and I love the kid, his attitude, his smile, his gratitude when he receives the money he works so hard for.

We finally got around to it and we're glad we have. It gave us another chance to reflect on how fortunate we have been and have much we have to be grateful for. A stone throw from the biggest mall in South Asia (brandishing lavish luxury stores, an amusement park like rivaling the best we have seen and many others), Sunny's "home" is a small room where the parents and  three children sleep, do homework and all the other day to day activities. The bed was large enough just for the kids, while the parents slept on a mattress stored during the day under the "desk".

Needless to say, everybody rushed in to meet and greet us. Uncles, cousins, aunties, nephews, grandmothers, neighbors, brothers in law, all came out of the woodwork to see the Americans who had promised they WILL COME (no similarity to my blog title). There was no room for everybody inside, but that did not prevent them from showing up.

What was surprising for us was to find out that it was actually an "upper lower class" family we were visiting. These guys actually had broken free from the slum and are living now at least in a "permanent" structure. As bad as it looked to us, this was actually the Deshi equivalent of living the dream.

My bed never felt so comfortable the night we returned from our visit. Or the home so warm!