A glimpse outside the "bubble"

If any of you have spent any time in a developing nation then you have had a glimpse outside of the "bubble" that we live in as Americans. The reality of that bubble was brought home to me afresh during our time on the cruise.

As I mentioned before, the crew of the ship, (I believe the crew is more than 1,000 people,) was made up of folks from 57 different countries. The vast majority of them were from developing nations. If you know me at all, you know that I love people from other countries and cultures and I absolutely love to ask them questions about their backrounds, families, and so forth. So of course, I did exactly that with many of the crew members. And, for someone who does so on a regular basis, I wasn't surprised at how eager they were to tell their stories. I also wasn't surprised to learn from many of them that very few of the passengers, the people they serve, ever take the time to really ask them about themselves and their countries.

What stands out though, at least to me, is how many of them are married and have husbands/wives and children back in their own countries, and how "normal" it has become for them to be separated from their loved ones for a minimum of six months at a time. The majority of them spend less than three months of any one year period at home with their families and their people! And what's even more astounding is that they are incredibly THANKFUL for the job that causes it to be so.

You see, as difficult as the job itself is, (and these guys work 7 days per week for 6 straight months,) what the job makes possible for their loved ones back home, at least to them, makes it a worthwhile trade-off. The better life that they can afford for their families because of the cruise ship work they have, they themselves aren't able to experience with their families the majority of the time.

With the jobs available to them in their own countries, incredible dilemmas are faced everyday and decisions need to be made that honestly, we're never forced to make here in America. For example, with a 4 dollar per day salary, there are times when they literally have to decide whether they will feed their 3 children dinner that night, or, purchase the medicine/prescription that their other, hospitalized child needs in order to get better. They can't do both, so which do they do?

Those are the kinds of decisions they no longer have to make when they have a job that pays what the cruise ship job pays, (which is quite a bit less than minimum wage in any of the 50 states.) And of course, because of what they're making on the ship, now they can even consider purchasing all of the materials necessary for their children to go to school, or even sending them to a private, rather than public school.

I thank God for those occasional glimpses "outside the bubble" of life here in America.