This week, thousands of westerners—athletes and media—have
converged on Sochi, Russia for the Winter Games. And while they lug their
expensive camera gear or don their sponsor-laden apparel and compete for gold,
silver and bronze medallions, they are not happy. Perhaps you have seen their
tweets, status updates and Instagram pics of the horrible conditions they’re
forced to endure while spending their time in the Russian city.
Now don’t get me wrong, some of the conditions are, at best,
embarrassing. And our athletes deserve better. While they represent our country
on the grandest global sports stage, they shouldn’t have to worry about cold
showers, group bathrooms without privacy, and insect-laden, half-finished hotel
rooms. Russia was obviously not prepared to host the biggest modern day winter
sporting event.
But perhaps we need to put things into perspective too. While these conditions are obviously not up
to par, they are, for the most part, certainly not “appalling.”
In my travels for Compassion International, I have seen families
who live in 6x6 shacks made of scrap wood or tin. They sleep on filthy
mattresses or on dirt floors, bathe in rivers and gather their drinking water
from those same waterways. Their bathrooms are holes in the ground and many
often have open sewage running just outside their doorways. That, my friends,
is appalling.
Almost 2.5 billion people in this world live on less than $2
per day. That’s billion with a “b.” Just try feeding your family on that meager
income. Over 780-million people live without access to clean water. That’s two
and a half times the population of the United States that doesn’t have access
to healthy water at all. None of them will get to leave these conditions in two
weeks and return to homes with faucets that pump out hot, clean water on
demand. They do not get to leave these truly appalling conditions for warm,
safe, comfortable homes with private bathrooms at the end of the month.
Tomorrow looks as bleak as today. And today is as bleak as yesterday.
I’m not comparing Sochi to villages in Uganda or the slums
of Guatemala, Indonesia or Haiti. There is no comparison. Unfinished hotel
rooms do not compare to the slum villages of the poorest of the poor.
Unfinished bathrooms in the athlete’s dorms are still tiled, with porcelain
toilets.
Nor am I saying that these athletes and media don’t have
legitimate complaints. But let’s try to keep things in perspective, shall we? And
use this opportunity to learn something. Perhaps Sochi is an opportunity to
teach us all the difference between first-world problems and third-world
realities. There’s a difference between those things we believe we are entitled
to and those things that should be available for every human being.
