When It's Hard To See Their Lives.

"I broke one terrible night when Rufo, Ramén’s young brother, arrived at the house begging me to bring medicine for Ramon and Ester, who were suddenly burning up with fever. Carrying aspirin and a thermometer, I walked up the beach through the waves at high tide, under a billion blazing southern stars, the most furiously beautiful night of my life. But the contrast of that night with the utter squalor of Ramon’s house, the sweating bodies, the babbling delirium, their childlike faith that now that I had come everything would be all right, the pathetic collection of objects they had piled in bed around the...  so knocked me out that walking back along the beach I began to cry as I hadn’t cried since I was six years old. What finally made it funny was that I couldn’t stop and had to stay on the beach for almost an hour, embarrassed to go wailing through the sleeping streets of Rio Verde, announcing the fact that I was cracking up.... and the possibility that they were dieing filled me with terror."
(Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle. Moritz Thomsen)