Charles Ndeki, Bourama Seydi and Lamine Fati all stepped on land mines on their plantations in Senegal, West Africa. In his interview with Brinegar, Bourama said, "Journalists, they come and they ask us questions, take our picture and they write and then they leave and nothing happens." (©Felipe Jacome)

Seeing poverty and seeking to change the world, word by word

Editor’s note: This blog is part of a series of first person essays about identity written by UTEP Liberal Arts Honors students during the spring 2013 semester. EL PASO – Last summer I was standing in front of the Martyr’s Monument in Dhaka, Bangladesh.  There was this being, an old man, lying on a thin mat. He looked like he was dying there as people walked around him, unchanged. One, two, three…I could count his ribs. His arms and legs were as thin as a broomstick, bones jutting out like knobs in wood.