The dilemma living here and being white is you are looked
upon as rich. And we are when it is
measured financially. So being white and
being rich we are asked for money. When
I am on the street and beggars come I keep g-nuts in my purse and share. Or, if the person has leprosy and no fingers
and legs are deformed and he or she are in the market begging, I try to find a
street vendor and get them a meal. When
they ask for sende (Shillings) I say no, but offer a food item instead. Why? For me this is how I see to help without
hurting a person’s dignity and my vulnerability. Food I will give if you are hungry but money
I am not sure what it goes for. So I
guess, it is a control issue, in many ways.
Well, meet Christine
and her family. She came to me in
October of last year having nothing in her home to feed her children because
she could not get work. Her husband is
dead and she digs gardens for people or does laundry or whatever they need to
get some $ to get by She had burnt her hand on the palm and couldn’t hold a hoe. I gave her some money ($2.40) to buy some
food. Next she came to me about a
month later, early in the morning, crying. Asking for some help to pay for
gas. Her daughter who was 16 was in the
hospital and had died last night and she needed $ for gas to transport her body
to the home burial ground. I told her I
would meet them at the gas station when they got to town, the hospital she died
at was the one outside of town. She died of liver cirrhosis. (Probably from hepatitis or shistosamiasis.)
In 2 hours she came back to tell me, 2 ladies at the hospital, had paid for the
transport and were helping her with the food for the funeral. Always, she asks God to bless me
for being kind to her. She said she came at Christmas but we were away and she
had only cassava and lemons so she made porridge for their Christmas meal. She came again last week with her youngest
son who is 6, Patrick. He was not in the free school offered by government
because she had no money for a uniform and small processing fees for school. $8
covered that. Her oldest son James, 14,
is in boarding school and she has paid $32. Of the $144 needed to send her son
to this cheap boarding school. Primary
school is free secondary cost money for uniform, fee’s and supplies. Today she brought both sons here and I had
some small work for them to do. The
young boys picked rocks out of the grass and made a heap by a water tank in the
hot sun. Christine, the mom scrubbed on
hands and knees my house as I swept in front of here. We are having tea here, which is what
breakfast at 11 everyday is called. I
explained that the work they all did today would pay back the loan of $8 for
school fees. She was disappointed. You are probably now asking why I didn’t just
give her some money since I am “rich”? The woman is very willing to work as is
her oldest son. To maintain that sense
of fulfillment is what I strive for. I am trying to not become the ATM. There
is an Independent Baptist mission here called Grace and Peace that allowed some
of the boys at the Nursing school to work their during Christmas break to pay
down some of their school fees. So when
James has a break from school, he met Pastor Wright and he will go work there
too. I need some feedback on this.
Please comment but do so after you read When Helping Hurts. Now for the other story
A 17 year lad was
riding a lorry into town when he fell off and landed on his head in June. This
picture shows you a lorry full of wood, usually from the villages it is full of
grain or produce stacked just as high and then the people from the village ride
on top. You can see you would be quite high up.
This young man fell in June 2012.
His mother Janette with her youngest son Joel have been doing his daily
care. He requires a feeding tube and a
foley (tube in bladder). Mom needs to
buy the millet and grind it and put through the feeding tube every day. The bleeding in his brain has left him
helpless. But he did not die so he has
been existing in the hospital and waiting to see if the bleeding recedes what
ability’s will come back or if pneumonia will take his life. Since I am in the wards I stop and pray with
Denis that he would have a peaceful death.
The lorry driver has been giving mom some money every month for the millet
but has started to refuse since Denis condition is not changing. Mom has no recourse and since she has been in
the hospital caring for Denis, her 3 goats are gone and no one in the village she
lives in knows where they are. Her
cassava that she gardens as a cash crop was all stolen. Thieves are very common here and police don’t
do much about it. If the village people
catch a thief they beat them, some times to death, because of no justice in the
justice system. She came to me on Saturday also and knelt down at my feet when
I came out to greet her and wanted to talk to me. She refused to get up. So, I refused to talk
to her until she sat in the chair next to me.
She was asking me for 2000 (80cents) shillings to buy millet for Denis.
She talked about the path of hope she still had. Denis now has a fever and looks like
pneumonia and has been getting antibiotics.
I patiently explained that Denis was not going to improve any further
then lying in the bed and she would continue to care for him. I suggested that we talk to the Dr. and have
Denis moved home so she could again have her other sons in the house and be
able to dig and feed herself and children again. We talked about Denis faith
and his future being with Jesus.
 |
| Denis being given physical therapy |
She was
going to think about taking him from the hospital. I could see she still believed
that he would fully recover. (I asked
about Denis father, she was rather disgusted, and said he is a drunkard and
does not want to take any responsibility) The other children’s father is a thief
and doesn’t work. She did say that she
has a hut with some land to dig. This is more than a lot of women have because
when they marry they move to the husband’s village and share in his
family. If he dies the woman is put out
often so that the land can be divided between other relatives. It is sadddd, and a reality! So Monday, I
will go to the hospital find Dr. Amando and have a conversation… Please
pray. So, even in Africa one sick child,
is given the resources and the others are denied. The other boys are not in
school because of $ too.
Pray,
because is my view the right one? I don’t know, I just know that no one has
told her that Denis will not fully recover.
These are 2 of the people who ask for help. I try very hard to listen to God about what
help is. I may write about 2 people who
asked for help and how and what help looked like. Just thought you might want
to know what my biggest challenge is. How to minister to those in need. DO I LOOK LIKE JESUS ONLY WHEN I GIVE $? AM I FOLLOWING YOUR VOICE JESUS?
Phillip Yancy wrote a
book about Grace and in it is a chapter about the language of ungratefulness expressed
by the poor. The words remind me of how
poor I am before Jesus and how extravagant He is with His possessions to me AND
HOW UNGRATEFUL I CAN BE. This is my Africa today. Happy snow and cold, think of me and send
some. I did get a fan and
it is wonderful…Marc
