Hope for the Hopeless

It's hard to describe in words how walking through a slum has been for me. I've been filled with so many mixed emotions it has been hard to even decipher what I'm feeling. Waves of putrid smells bombarded my nose as we walked along the sewer lines, which run alongside the streets. There, the plastic garbage, human waste, and rotting food mixed together into a soupy breeding ground for disease. We walked through when it was mostly dry, and I can't even imagine what happens when the rain and sewage would overflow and seep into their homes. I'm flabbergasted with the realization that millions of people walk around in their waste and live crammed in their dark rooms. Movies and tv commercials cannot accurately portray just how sad the living conditions are. It's just something that doesn't strike you unless you're here, since statistics turn into faces and the abstract concept of poverty comes alive when you actually smell the sewage and see the sickness first hand.

Many of them are lucky to get one bowl of food a day, whereas even when I'm visiting Kenya, I eat more in one day than they eat in a week, and the food I eat is probably better than anything that they'll ever get to try. I feel guilty living in such luxury, even in Kenya. Here, I eat better and stay in a nicer hotel than what I eat or where I stay back home. It's a lot easier to visit slums when we're only there for a few hours, and then we can go back to our comfortable beds and eggs, sausage, and pancakes.

What also strikes me is that no matter how bad things get at home, my circumstances will still not even compare to what these people go through. I was amazed at just how joyful the kids were at the Comido and Mcedo schools. Almost all of them would run out yelling "how are you?!?!" with the largest grins on their faces. The mobbed us like celebrities since we had cameras and their faces beamed with ecstacy when they got to pose for a picture and see themselves on the screen. As I was overwhelmed by the deluge of little kids, I couldn't believe how excited they were to reach out and touch my hand. Now I know what it must feel like for Justin Bieber to be swarmed by tweens when he goes on tour.

What I also noticed is that the kids have refuges from their dire circumstances. When I see them singing, dancing, kicking a plastic ball around, laughing with friends, or even reaching out for a high five, I can't even tell that these kids may be starving, sick, orphaned, or going through other hard times. All I see are fellow human beings enjoying life to the fullest, and seeing their joy has empowered me to continue to work on choosing to be joyful in all circumstances.

At the Mcedo school, one image that remains ingrained in my mind is one where the kids were lined up playing tetherball with a plastic ball around a wooden pole. This brought me back to my elementary school days, where my friends and I could have fun during recess using practically anything. We could keep ourselves entertained just with a ball too, and that really hit home for me seeing the similar ingenuity in kids halfway around the world. What breaks my heart is seeing how all of us are human, but I was just fortunate that I was placed in one of the safest, richest communities in the whole world. I could have just as easily ended up in the slums, broken, abandoned, and starving, but instead I was blessed with an ebullience of material wealth and a place where Christianity is readily accepted.

You can tell that as the kids get older, that spark of innocence slowly fades as they lose their hope for a better life and wake up to the realization that their situation probably won't improve. I feel so blessed to have so many opportunities in the United States, and I can't imagine what it must be like to be trapped in the slums, knowing that the chance of escaping to a better life dwindles as time goes on. I think that the hopelessness contributes to the high crime rate and their anger and resentment, so I am really glad that we can aid these organizations here to provide them the hope of eternal life in Heaven through Jesus Christ. I can more fully grasp now how Jesus said that it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go to Heaven. It is a lot harder to praise God when you are starving or your parents have been infected with HIV, and I can see why God has such a heart for the poor. Even though we can't really tell just how much of an impact we are having, only God knows, and that has taught me to be dependent on him and trust that He will continue to work in their hearts once we leave.