Medical Teams International - Real.Life.Exhibit - R.E.

Every 3.6 seconds, a child dies from a preventable illness. This was one of the first things I learned at the Real.Life.Exhibit. I also got to learn about natural disaster, man made disaster, epidemic disaster, and what Medical Teams International does to help places like Haiti, Afghanistan, Indonesia, and many more. I learned that when disaster strikes, like a tsunami or an earthquake or a breakout of disease, Medical Teams International goes in and helps, whether that means rebuilding houses, shipping in medicines, or trauma counselling. There were a few things in particular that I learned about in the Exhibit that really got to me. One of them was learning about how the LRA takes children and forces them to be soldiers or slaves. These kids were in the age range of 7-13... and they were forced to kill their friends and families. I could never imagine what kind of pain that must be. Another section of the exhibit taught about children “hospitals” with outdated methods of medicine. Small children were tied to beds and left crying in pain, with little medicine to relieve them. Many of them were covered in burns from cooking fires. The last exhibit that really got to me was the one about the tsunami in Indonesia. They had a 25 foot high wall and told about how the waves in Indonesia were over three times high (90 feet tall)! I could never really imagine how tall a tsunami would be until I saw that wall, and I thought how scary it would be to see such a huge wave coming to crush everything. But thankfully, in the end we learned how we can help all these situations, and that there is hope, and that anyone can make a difference.