It was the barren dirt yards dotted with small patches of flowers that brought Dorothy Graham back to the Delta of her youth. Mozambique is more than 9,000 miles away from her childhood home in Marvell, Arkansas, yet the living conditions brought back a flood of memories and established for her an instant connection with the people and the land.
“They use hoes to cut their grass, so their yards are nothing but dirt because they cut all the grass out plus the children playing in it,” she said. “And I can remember growing up, that’s the way my mother did our yard.” Dorothy Graham, the planned charitable giving officer for the nonprofit organization Heifer Foundation, had traveled to Mozambique in October of 2008 to take part in a study tour of the projects of Heifer International, an organization dedicated to ending hunger and poverty through education and livestock.
Finding home an ocean away
“I was thinking about my childhood a lot when I was traveling in Africa because I’m from the Delta,” she said. “Anyone familiar with the Delta knows that it is poor. Growing up, I realized I was poor, but it wasn’t until after I graduated and moved to Little Rock that I realized how poor I actually was.”
Dorothy was quick to point out that while she was considered poor growing up, it was still nothing like the challenges and conditions faced by many of the people she visited on her journey. “Poverty is different here in the United States than it is in the third world countries,” she said. “Even with the poorest people here, it’s just not the same. They have nothing. We at least have the government to assist us. They don’t have that because their governments are so poor.”