Travel Trekking

The caked dirt on his face stood in marked contrast to the gleaming whites of his eyes. The boy could not be more than 10 years old, yet the maturity in his soul seeped through as he harrowingly directed a group of sheep past a narrow mountain ridge at 11,000 feet. I was in Peru, in a place that not many locals go. “Turista?” he asked. “Um, yes,” I shyly answered. I knew I had told him a lie. In the past few weeks I had come to feel more at home in his country, than in my own. He quietly nodded as a gust of wind tugged at his parched, sand-embezzled, torn clothing. Meanwhile, I stood across from him in my branded polypropylene rain jacket; his image reflected in my 100% UV resistant, polarized sunglasses. I wasn’t sure whether to feel ashamed, or proud, of the gear I had outfitted myself with before leaving America. Instead, I broke the awkward silence and asked, “You hungry?” “Yes,” he said. I withdrew a protein bar from my pack and handed it to him. He took a seat next to me and smiled. We looked out on the fertile green terraces below, and the unforgiving callous moutains above. He looked over at me and asked what I do in my country. “I’m a doctor,” I said. This time it wasn’t a lie. I am an Endocrinologist by training, but a world traveler at heart. I have saved lives, worked countless 30 hour shifts, and had every form of human excrement caked onto my clothing at some point in time. All my prior experiences, however, were overwhelmed by the next moment in which he took my hand and said, “you heal my hunger, doctor, thank you.” He quickly finished up the meal, placed the golden wrapper in his sack, almost as a prize, and departed. The stillness and beauty in the air reverberated in my ears. I had impacted someone's life, and that life had impacted my own.