Title rewriting and composition techniques

¶ … 2003, I went on a Christmas vacation to Bangladesh, my country of origin. It was my first return since first coming to America at the age of six. I had been very eager to see my relatives, many of whom I didn't even remember. In retrospect, I was in for something of a surprise that would actually change the way I perceive the world. In my early childhood, I had no idea how harsh the world could be in places like Bangladesh

In America, we are rarely exposed directly to overt cruelty such as that to which many people in the Third World are routinely subjected. In Bangladesh, millions of people struggle desperately just to put food on the table or to clothe themselves. By their standards, even ordinary Americans live in incredible luxury. Being re-exposed to my culture of origin at an older age has had a profound effect on the way I view the world.

When I arrived at Zia International Airport in Dhaka, Bangladesh, I expected to the environment to be somewhat similar to my neighborhood in Queens, New York, which is hardly a high-brow area. However, the streets of Dhaka were incredibly filthy; there were people begging for change everywhere, as well as homeless children. The experience left me with profound questions about why people in my country of origin are in such a desperate situation. Prior to this experience, I genuinely had no idea such wide-scale poverty and human misery existed; I thought that the world was more or less a perfect place where the average person could achieve success and happiness in life. I saw hundreds of people in the course of a single day who had obviously not eaten in a long time. In fact, by the standards I saw in Bangladesh, homeless people in New York are blessed with relative good fortune.

I encountered a boy about my age who was selling flowers and water. He had two smaller children with him and it seemed to me that they were his younger siblings and that they had no parents. The twelve-year-old was taking care of his siblings, which I learned is a very common situation in Bangladesh, because the poor often abandon their children. I was touched by the dedication of the eldest brother to feed his siblings and by the way he ate last only after caring for them, and only if there was any food left after they ate. To me, it was depressing just to see; for them, it was their daily life. I gladly gave them two hundreds taka (about 3 dollars).

Even that experienced paled in comparison to what I saw in the homes of the poor. Millions of people in Bangladesh can't afford anything resembling what we here would consider a "house" by any stretch of the imagination. They live in huts made from straw and scraps of wood; there are no floors inside either, just the hard ground with a roof on top. Still, it is a place that provides a sanctuary from the filthy streets. Naturally, these huts are all blown away and flooded during the monsoon season and their inhabitants must start over building another hovel. Inside these homes, there are no televisions, bathroom, tables, sofas, and no electricity. Their inhabitants slept on dirty rags.