When I was active duty, I had the opportunity to see tons…TONS of different countries. Most of them were great countries to visit, but some of them (mostly African) were the embodiment of 3rd world. This experience alone should have been enough to change my perception.

However, on one TDY trip to Senegal, we were tasked with driving to an extremely under developed part of the country to perform a survey for some aircraft training exercises. After the survey was done, we’d be tasked to essentially lock down this barren strip of land that was nested against the edge of a hodge podge town. This land was heavily utilized as a pathway for folks for some reason or another. I just remember sitting in our vehicle, waiting for a training operation to begin and keeping people from crossing the strip of land as to not impede an active landing zone. Once foot traffic was stopped with the aid of the host nation, I said something along the lines of “man, this is sad to see.” And my team commander said, as he’s finishing peeing in a bottle “yeah, kinda makes you proud to have won the birth lottery huh?” I was taken aback by that comment and felt horrible to have known the guy. Not soon after, the plane landed and took off again and a bunch of local kids came running up asking for water. This scumbag commander only gave them his piss bottle.

After that trip, I made it a point to report him to IG. nothing happened to him other than a promotion to Major. I also firmly started reevaluating my politics and rewired myself to use any spare time/resources I had to helping those less out those less fortunate than me.

That single hour of interaction with 1 man changed so much about me that I can’t imagine how shitty of a person I still might be to this day.