Blog Action Day: Poverty
October 15, 2008 | ministries
It was dark and we bumped down the street in a hot bus. “Look the other way,” someone called and several guys turned their heads. A woman stood with bare breasts and a leg pushed out at an angle.
I didn’t look away. I couldn’t. Because not far from her were three little children crouched under a bush. The harsh street light brushed their faces.
The next day the same hot bus stalled in traffic. A little guy raced toward us, dirty water sloshing in a tin bucket. He stretched to reach the lower half of the bus windows. “Get away,” the driver called. I pulled out a few dollars and held it out the window. The boy grabbed it and ran.
A girl, no more than 11, stood on the corner. “A prostitute,” said one of the native team members.
“That can’t be,” I said. “How can that be? Oh, God.”
“Her father or mother is on drugs. They sell their children’s bodies. The boy who washes the windows? Did you see him race away with the money? He must get it to his father or mother before it is taken from him. He could be beaten for having that cash. You can’t be so obvious when you give money. There is a proper way,” my friend instructed.
I’ve seen poverty. I’ve traveled around the world. I’ve seen people living in shacks with tin roofs. I’ve ate in refugee camps, watching women pound precious coffee beans and straining it to share their precious food and drink with me. I’ve eaten fish heads, drank milk out of a coconut, sipped on Mannish water, slept on a boat, in a hammock, played cricket on the mountains with barefoot children, and sat with families sitting around a table talking, or on the floor. I’ve watched children playing in the jungle, canoeing the Amazon, climbing trees and calling out as our boats slid by. I’ve seen mothers nursing babies, the joy of motherhood and contentment on their faces.
On this trip, however, this was a different kind of poverty. It was a poverty of nurturing children. Civil war had split families, leaving children to fend for themselves. Some children were missing limbs. Drugs had infilitrated the city, pushing children in the street while mom or dad injected the next hit in their veins, skeletal, addicted, depending upon their child to wash windows, steal, beg, or prostitute their little bodies.
It was too much. I saw too much. One night I rested in my hard little bed, thankful for the shelter over my head and the gentle snores of the twentysomethings all around me. But my sobs were so deep, I pushed a pillow over my head as I cried out to God. “Why???? Why don’t you do something?”
I visited the King’s Castle the next day with the team. Set in the mountains it was a refuge for children. They ate three meals a day. They swam and tubed behind a boat in a lava crater surrounded by nonactive volcanoes (though smoke drifted from one volcano throughout our stay). They had flesh on their bones. They smiled, they laughed. They played. They were educated. The people who worked there, who volunteered, the teams from all over the world that came to minister and to paint and build, and those who donated were the hands and feet of Christ to these children.
Today I am joining 8,000 other bloggers on Blog Action Day to talk about poverty, but also to draw awareness that there are organizations that aren’t content to leave children standing beside the road, or begging for food, or growing up without an education.
I may never walk the streets of San Salvador again, but I’ll always remember it. What can I do? Compassion Intl. gives you and me the opportunity to make a difference for one child, multiplied thousands of times over when we all choose a child.
Compassion International
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Suzie, What descriptive images this brings to mind. It always breaks my heart that anyone, especially the children, must suffer this lifestyle. Hopefully, prayerfully, all the posts this day will help to raise awareness. Thank you for being a part of it.
October 15th, 2008 at 4:24 pmCompassion International is a wonderful organization, Suzie. Thanks for featuring them.
October 15th, 2008 at 6:49 pmThank you for reminding us, Suzie, of true pain and what we can do to elevate it.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:16 amWow, Suzie, this is intense. I’m going to have to bookmark this post and come back to it when I’m able to process it a bit more. I have such a heart for children in need. Your shared experience is so powerful. Thanks for sharing. I pray that many are encouraged by your words to open their eyes, open their hearts and ACT. Blessings to you, Sweet Friend! Amy
October 16th, 2008 at 12:48 pmI also have a heart to help children in need and this post absolutely broke my heart. Just two days ago after seeing some disturbing, yet all too familiar, pictures online I cried out to God through my tears as you did in San Salvador.
We can become so comfortable and secure and forget about the hurting people around us here and abroad. Thank you for the reality check!
October 16th, 2008 at 2:19 pmWow. I wish we all were able to make these visits. How impactful. And what a blessing to be able to love in truth and action.
We have sponsored children for many, many years and even more when we were blessed with two of our own children. It’s one way we can take care of orphans and widows, as the Word commands. What a privilege and responsibility to help the least of these. What precious, precious children.
Thank you, Suzie! This was a moving and meaningful post.
October 16th, 2008 at 9:22 pmSuzanne: that was a very interesting story. When I was in sixth grade, my two brothers were Altar Servers and we traveled to Dominican Republic for a weekend. There I saw poverty in a way I never seen before. I was only a child but it was hard for me to understand what was going on. I also wanted to give them money or my food but I was not allow. However, your tour guide, had some extra foof and he gave it to the youngest one. He sat the kids near to him and guarded them so the big ones didn’t steal the food from them. My heart was aching and there was nothing I could do about it.
I was so traumatized that I have never visited the Dominican Republic again. I heard is a tourist paradise, but still a living hell for the poors.
Keep up the good work and God will continue to bless you.
October 26th, 2008 at 10:05 am