While on a quick tour of Accra today, we—a group of 18 jetlagged Americans—quickly realized that we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Some differences are charming—say, the sheep walking two-by-two on the sidewalk and the God references in all the signage. Others, though, make our complaints about near-100 percent humidity and mosquito bites and weak water pressure seem petty. Because of course they are, compared to the hardship we saw today.

We drove through several slum communities in the heart of Accra. Stacks of bicycles, collected for recycling and reuse, towered over marketgoers selling cassava, motorcycle parts, heavy machinery tires and plastic shopping bags. One entire block was devoted to onions.

Their smell filled the air, mercifully covering the rank odor of a nearby lagoon, used both as a garbage dump and urinal.

We, of course, saw these things from afar. We were cocooned in the comfort of a minivan. We hydrated with bottled water. We were clean. Some of the men, women and children glared as we tooled through the traffic; some shooed us away or slapped the sides of the van.

The excursion felt dangerously close to disaster tourism. That was not the intent of the drive-by visit, though, and I’m glad we didn’t stick only to the postcard-worthy sights. Poverty is ugly, but pretending it doesn’t exist won’t put clean water in children’s cups or sewer systems in poor communities. Knowing that kids are burning our discarded computers for their precious metals, that families have to bathe in the street for lack of space, that waterways are clogged with plastic baggies and human waste—just a few minutes’ drive away from where we sleep—humbles me. I hope the day makes us appreciate what we have, low water pressure and all.

-Catherine Ryan