working in the third world

I used to dream of working in a field that helped poor people in the third world.  I wanted to save these unlucky people who had to live a tough life just because they were born in an underdeveloped part of the world.

Fastforward ten years and I'm still interested in working in a developing country, but it's not because I want to save anybody.  It's more about myself.  People are never really desperate to live in an advanced country like Japan, unless they're suffering a fatal disease or something of that kind.  In a place where you have to walk 10km a day to get clean water, people are desperate regardless of whether they are aware of it or not.  They have the strength and patience all humans used to have.  I think it's something primitive yet fundamental about being a human, and I want to observe and feel that desperateness I would probably never encounter in Japan.

I happened to have a conversation about this with a couple of friends today, and we were all a bit hesitant about working in a developing country especially after all the microbe classes.

The thought sort of reminded me of what Edward Zwick had said when he explained about Blood Diamond - how they had actually lived in Africa for two years to make the film.  He had interviewed many people and had done a lot of research to make the film as realistic as possible.  He said it was great that actors from all over the world all came together to find there was actually one common language for actors and "that had to do with telling the truth".

I understand they know more about Africa than people who have never been there.  I know he just meant they all had the passion to learn the truth and express what they interpreted as the truth.  That itself is very impressive.  But at the same time, I thought it was impossible for them to tell the truth.  And the reason is pretty much what Leonardo DiCaprio says to Jennifer Connelly in the film:

You come here with your laptop computer and your malaria medicine and your little bottles of hand sanitizer. Think you're gonna change the outcome, huh? Let me tell you something. You sell blood diamonds too.

I don't want to be too cynical; I don't think that the film makers were selling/exploiting tragedy, but I couldn't help imagining Zwick living in a safe nice apartment building, and DiCaprio relaxing in a jacuzzi after shooting in the jungles.

"It's a world where life is lived down the street. In America, you see nothing around, you don't see old people or babies, you don't see death or sexuality, and there (in Africa), it's all in front of you, every step of the way. The experience of being in the midst of it and being so confronted by poverty and disease found its way out on to the film. It's in the performances."

I thought it was the opposite.  They might've witnessed everything, but I don't think they were quite "in the midst" of it.  And it showed in the lukewarmness of fiction.

When a doctor decides to work in a place like Africa, she will still be just a foreigner with her malaria medicine and hand sanitizer; she might be not that different from Zwick, but in the end, I think she has to be ready to die in that country.  I don't mean to make it sound over dramatic, I just guess it's pretty obvious that actually getting into the picture more or less takes more courage than making a sketch of the scene from the outside.