The Reality of Poverty

The last couple of weeks the reality of the poverty amongst the people that live here are
overwhelming. Yes, you see people standing at the robots (red lights) begging for money and lots of people looking for work on the sides of the roads and even people standing outside of restaurants saying, “I am hungry could you spare something for me”. This is one of the toughest things to face on a daily basis. We have been told over and over you must not give them anything or they will never learn to quit begging. That is easier said than done. Each week the maintenance man gathers up everyone’s trash and takes it to the bottom of the hill for the trash collectors to pick up early the next morning. Over the past couple of weeks on our way home from work, we started noticing middle aged men walking up and down the streets with raggedy old backpacks. We didn’t realize what they were doing until we reached our place and found a couple of guys rummaging through the bags. At first we wanted to tell them to leave the bags alone, but soon realized that as soon as that one was gone the next guy would be going through them. I was blown away by this and said to Mike, “do you realize the leftovers or things that have gone bad are being gone through?” to us it sounds disgusting to them it is a way of life. We made a decision this week that the things we throw away, will be placed in baggies (could get a little expensive but it is the least we can do) so they don’t have to sort through all the rubbish (trash).
Another reality that set in a couple of days ago is the weather. The poorest of the poor live in tin shacks where all the elements of the weather blow right through their homes.
They have sand that blows all the time and covers their floors and winds that never stop and blow coolness on them at night. 2 days ago, was the first cold, windy, rain we had and driving through the townships the next day we realized how tough it is for them to survive in the winter months. Trees were blown down and tin etc. was not where it had originally been. I can tell you how it sounded outside my concrete house with windows, but I can’t imagine what it sounded like or felt like for them. I had to get up and put a folded piece of paper in our sunroom window to keep it from rocking back and forth in its track making a loud noise. I am sure for them it sounded like a freight train coming through. All we can do is pray for them to have safety and enough cover to keep them warm.
There is yet another reality that we witnessed a couple of years ago when we were here on a short-term trip, and that was a fire in the township. They use paraffin to heat with and negligence or winds will cause fires to break out in the winter months. Because all the shacks are built against each other, it can destroy as many as 400 to 500 homes in no time. Living Hope/Way wants to have a team of volunteers in place, so as soon as a fire happens we can have the necessary supplies available to go over and help them to rebuild their homes. Please pray for us to be able to get this in place and have the volunteers available when disasters like this happen. I wanted to share some of these realities so you would have a better understanding of how to pray for them. Pray for us to continue to find ways to tell them Jesus loves them even when they are going through the toughest times.