My family and I are crazy about Planet Earth. I could
probably watch it all day. Seeing our beautiful world so incredibly documented
makes the wheels in my brain start spinning out trips I want to take, stories I
want to tell, sites I want to see, smells I want to breathe. My brain engine is
greased and ready, revving, eager to embark on some new journey, and then I
remember I’m sitting on the couch with my sisters in our house in Ohio. We’re somewhere in the world, and it’s
beautiful, but it’s not like the elephant herd creating a cloud of dust as they
storm across the African plain, or the cave with a 300 ft. tall pile of bat droppings
millions of bats call their home, or the great barrier reef in Australia, or
the artic fox hunting geese in the tundra. Watching from our
plush seats as the smell of mom’s homemade artisan bread makes it’s way into
the room makes what’s on the screen feel so distant...yet so close. Because at
that moment, I do know the world is rotating, tides are sweeping in and out,
and some man is floating down the amazon on his hollowed-tree boat, fishing in
electric eel infested waters. We’re all doing life somewhere.
I always knew these things and imagined how life moves in
another continent and culture. The foreign unknown is nearly always on my mind.
However, there is something so shaking about exposure to a place you’ve only dreamed
of traveling to. Suddenly you’re not just sitting on your nice comfortable
couch staring wide eyed at a screen depicting only a sliver of what a place is like, you’re walking
on the ground of a new-to-you country and seeing strange birds’ nests in the trees, smelling the air at
sunset you can’t even recognize, freaking
out as you make your way through an intersection on the opposite side of
the road than you’re used to, hearing many languages (you don’t know how many,
you just know you can’t understand), and learning when someone looks at you and
says, “you’re big”, not to take it offensively.
Even Planet Earth can’t prepare you for this kind of
experience.
When we went to Winterton in March, a culmination of wonder,
excitement, and heartache hit me. The best pictures and videos don’t ease the
eye opening impact received when you see life in rural mountain villages. It
can’t prepare you to see a 3 year old walking down the highway without shoes,
or when you realize you have more just in your bedroom than these people
probably have in their entire house.
I’m not trying to take you on a guilt trip or make you
wallow in forced sympathy or incite self-deprivation. I am broaching the idea
of poverty porn. The concept that we
are fascinated to see poverty in magazines and advertisements, intrigued that
“wow, that person only makes $1 per day”, and ogling that a woman has to carry
water 5 miles home on her head every day. Gawking, not giving. Concerned, not
convicted. Interested, not impacted. Sympathetic, not empathetic. We’ve been so
bombarded we’ve become desensitized.
This isn’t love. Love is seeing a photo of an impoverished
region and praying for the people. Love is keeping granola bars in your glove
box to hand to the man who always sits on the corner trying to sell newspapers.
Love is building relationships and pouring yourself out onto lonely, desperate
people who need love, too. It’s aching for that face in the picture, not
dismissing it as if the person is only imaginary. Love is grasping that this is
actually real life for people.
Let me change my egotism to compassion. Let me learn from
where I have been.
Don and Cheryl Allen who began Door of Hope also started the
ministry Arise, which built this nursery school. 105 children from the nearby
area were there when we came. They are served a meal and taught during the day
to prepare them for primary school. They jabbered and clicked away in Zulu and
I couldn’t talk back, but we all knew the language of love. They were
delightful, little models in front of the camera, and stared in wonder as I
showed them videos of themselves. We were friends when they left and I am so
fortunate to have met and been so impacted by their young lives.
(school can wear you out)
Pastor M, who generously welcomed us and fed us lunch, with his daughter.
