As we walked up through the uneven rocky gravel path to the small village, sweat pouring down my face, grasping so tightly on my fellow Limb Kind volunteer's shoulders, I stared at the ground to avoid tripping. When we reached the end of the path, I looked up and saw the young girl Mytha, who we casted a few days earlier for a new prosthetic leg. Peaking her head out of an opening of her small concrete house, we made eye contact. When she realized it was me, she smiled with a smile that could light up an entire world of darkness. She invited us into her home, which was an experience that will be engraved in my heart and mind forever. I witnessed conditions one could not even fathom, and yet she was so excited to show me her "room". I put "room" in quotes as it was not just her room, it was one of 2 rooms the size of coat closets that 3 people slept in each room on plywood boards with barely a blanket. It was incredible, in that moment I wanted to cry, but I couldn't because Mytha's face was staring up at me, so proud that I was in her home. We went outside and all the kids near her home flooded her porch and surrounded us; each one so curious and wanting to touch my prosthetic legs. "Showing your Metal" is not really a thing in Haiti like here in the USA, as it is not accepted nor understood. In that moment on the porch of this young girl's home, a life changing moment happened. As Mytha watched all the kids touch and play with my prostheses, she looked at me with those big beautiful eyes and hopped inside to get her old prosthesis, and ripped off the cosmetic cover and showed all the kids in her village her prosthesis. I was wondering if this was the first time she had felt accepted. I was forever changed from this, Haiti changed me, and Limb Kind changed that little girl's life, and helped her to walk proudly in her metal.
