How to paint poverty without thinking "ugly"

How to paint poverty without thinking "ugly".
   The doctor and I wandered down the dirt streets with our small group, after we had finished an hour of home visits to treat some ladies, who could not make it to the clinic. All the cases were the same - open sores on feet and legs from diabetes, with many missing toes (amputations).
   I had taken some photos as we walked, then commented, "I only took a few, because every street of poverty seems to look the same."
Doc simply replied, "Yeah, it's all ugly."
   I did not think he was being callous, but it caused me to pause and say, "I don't think that's the right word, but I don't know what the right word is. What does this poverty truly look like?"
   Scores of young men lying around, because there's no work, little girls in pig tails and school uniforms walking home to no running water and possibly no food, widows living in shacks caring for grandchildren, pigs freely grazing the trash in the grass along the roads, animal feces everywhere, and the hardship of this reality played out day after day after day after day after day.
   We had spent all day in the church/clinic, treating and praying over scores of patients. My doctor friend, who with his wife has come twice a year for six years, looks at me and says, "The people seem to be in worse shape than ever. They're not getting better but worse." And we were running out of meds. The truth we knew, we were just scratching the surface, but we still believed that we were making a difference for the Kingdom, one person, one shack, one village at a time.
   Among missionaries and others there is quite a debate about the long-term effectiveness of short-term mission trips, with many thinking they do more harm than good. I really don't know how to delve into that discussion, but I do know that countless lives are changed in the going and by those who come.
  Anyone from America that wades into the muck of poverty in developing nations - we can't say third world anymore, but it truly is a different reality - doesn't (can't?) return with the same perspective that they had before going (unless they're heartless, consumer addicts).
  After over 20 years of going to and even living in the nations, one important thing I know for sure - if we treat, feed, serve, dig wells, train, educate, finance, develop and clothe our "neighbors" but do not lead them to the living water of the kingdom of God, where salvation, miracles and rejoicing flow, then we are truly doing them and us no good.
  But it's not an either or problem, and God's grace is bigger that I can imagine, so who knows what might be transformed by that cup of water and those parasite pills.