save the trees and kill the children

Today looking out at Nairobi I see poverty. It's not that I didn't see it when I first arrived. I saw, I was just overwhelmed by everything else I was seeing. Although the city is pulling up the frame work for a great democratic country, there are so many holes to be filled. That's just what I see as an American. Yet these working ants know some things that we Americans don't know. They seem to value friendships and family in ways that we have yet to discover. Or if we did know we've cut the strings linking us to the network of emotions that allowed us to think first with our hearts and then with our wallets. I can't say we are in the wrong. Is it my fault that I come from a consumer state? What I value is different than what these humble workers value. What I do in my leisure time are things Nairobians deem frivolous. "Save the money for something else," they've told me time and time again.
But today on our twice daily drive to work I didn't see the swarms of people walking to work as an army of stick people. I didn't see them as cattle meandering to their next destination. I saw fellow men, fighting tooth and nail for their version of the American dream. The Kenyan dream. My only prayer for them is that they get it right. Is it wrong for me to look back at the US, and scoff at how we allow our dependence on the security in the promise of tomorrow to shape our moods. I never saw it before but looking at myself from Kenya I think I live a very disillusioned life. All my tears over spilt milk are suddenly irrelevant here... These people truly live as God asked them to. "Don't worry about tomorrow, you have enough to think about today." Even those considered "upper middle class" have one foot inside the slums. I shake my head at my ignorant folly. I'm ashamed. But then again, how can I avoid it?
So today I see poverty. I also see that the world is horribly unfair. As Casting Crowns put it, I don't think there will be a day when we don't "save the trees and kill the children."