Cell phones incident

The third world is not a reality but an ideology. In 2017, I finished high school, so as gift my family and I traveled for the first time to the USA. We visited Orlando, Florida and had a wonderful time at some of the theme parks there. However, I will never forget the moment that awoke us from our fantasy. The moment that made the differences between a developed country and a third world country painfully obvious.

We had been at Orlando for 4 days visiting Disney’s and Universal’s themed parks. Then, as scheduled by my mom, the last two days were for shopping. On the first day everything went smoothly. Only if you consider running from store to store with big bags relaxing. On the second day, after another hectic morning of shopping, we went to get new cellphones for my sister and me.

After buying the cell phones and a computer for my father, we headed out onto the next store to get my grandma a pink jacket she had previously seen the day before but was unable to get because the store closed. Since it was already lunch time, my father decided to wait outside the store with the bags full of thing we bought that day. After that we had lunch. I ate the most delicious burger I have ever had.

Then, while we were getting ready to head back to our hotel to pack our backpacks, my mom realized the bag that contained the new cell phones was missing. Her face turned blue, and I believe that even her blood pressure went down. Personally, I thought it was pointless to keep looking for the phones because I thought that whoever found them must had left by then. Despite my opposition, we kept looking for the cell phones because my father insisted. After tracing back our steps to the last shops we visited before lunch, we asked some employees if they had seen a plastic bag with 2 brand new cellphones in it. To my surprise, in our first try, an employee told us that he had received a bag with two phones from someone that found them near the chair outside of that store.

Finally, the employee checked our bill to confirm that we were the owners of the phones, and then he returned the bag to us. We had no further inconveniences during the rest of our trip. However, in our way back to Ecuador I could not stop wondering what would have happened if the same thing had occurred in Ecuador. Would have we been able to get the phones back? I do not believe that would be the case most of the times. This taught me that the differences between developed countries and third world countries are deep-rooted, and that the first step towards a more developed Ecuador is changing our individual mentality and values.