When Others are not so Blessed

So if you are willing, I'd like to know your thoughts on something. How should we should respond as affluent people in a world of poverty? (This blog does have a comments section after all.) I've never heard a satisfactory answer to this question and it's nagged at me for some time. It's not the kind of nagging that comes with much guilt but the kind that comes from having to live the answer to a question you don't know the answer to.

This question seems more stark since I've been in Africa but I'm not sure nearness or distance should change the answer. We all live out an answer in practice even if we don't have one in theory. Right now, I live in a third world country and I live a life somewhere between the world I came from and the general standard here. In the U.S. I drove a car, lived in a house with heat and a/c, washer and drier, microwave, and dishwasher and I ate out at mid-level restaurants pretty much when I wanted to. When I wanted to go somewhere, I bought an airline ticket and went.

In Malawi most people do not have their own vehicles, they live in thatched houses and cook over a fire. They don't eat much protein and sometimes don't eat much at all. When they do have enough to eat, it is a very monotonous diet. It's a small country but most people -- even in the middle class -- have never traveled to the outside.

In Malawi, I ride a motorcycle and live in a solid house with a refrigerator (a recent addition) and a hotplate. There are electric lights too and clean running water but no hot water. I eat all the protein my body wants but don't have nearly the variety of food I used to eat. I wash my clothes in a tub by hand and hang them out in the sun to dry. After five months of trying and waiting, I'm due to move into a more spacious house with screens (rat-proof and mosquito-resistant) on April 1st. It will have hot water too. I'm really looking forward to that.

So those are the facts of what I have done. On the one hand, I live a very comfortable life here. I look out for myself. I stay comfortable, clean, and well-fed. And I do it all without having to work very hard. This is way beyond what most Malawians will ever have. On the other hand, I could have a lot more if I hung onto my old job, moved up the ladder, and spent it all on myself. For the moment, I'm caught somewhere in the tension between the fabulous world of American luxury and the dire world of African poverty.

I haven't done it much, but today I did the American luxury thing. I drove to the lake with my roommate Dominic. We swam, ate a good meal, drank pop, read, walked on the beech, and rested. We did what tourists do. We packed as if we were driving through a harsh desert, making sure we had everything we'd need to get from this side to the other without having to stop. Then we got on the motorcycle in our comfortable suburban neighborhood and drove through a picturesque country full of the tell-tale signs of poverty and suffering until we reached the resort. Along the way we dodged goats; drove past hundreds of children wearing dirty, ragged clothes; saw picturesque women struggling under balanced loads of wood, water, and food; and men pushing colossal loads up hill on their bicycles then careening down the other side. We drove past bellies bloated from malnutrition and parasites. We just whisked past all the suffering on our way from one pleasant place to another. Going there for our own pleasure.

It is the choice I made. And since it is the best I know, I really don't feel guilty at all. I have been stressed and stir-crazy. I haven't gone outside Lilongwe in three weeks. There is a beautiful lake I haven't seen, so I went. It was a great day.

I think that how we should live as rich people in a world of poverty is an important question. And I don't think there is an obvious answer. As a matter of fact, most of the answers I have heard have some obvious problems. So I'd like to ask, if you're willing to share, what answer do you live in your own life? Are you comfortable with your answer? Do you feel guilty about it? Is there an answer you could live without feeling guilty?

I have a few ideas that inform my choices and I'll share them next week. But I would really like to hear what you think in the mean while.

Thanks a bunch.

Rest

I have worked every day since March 5
Long days
Correspondence, pictures, moving houses, laundry, taking dictation, planning, writing
obsessing over edits, and staying up late to work on the website with friends in the U.S.
Late nights with a rat just out of reach in my kitchen
A dragon fly slobbering around the light
making weird shadows
and mosquitoes that want to eat my feet
The gecko ate a cockroach
It was a fight
and he won
I like my work but even good work wears until you forget that it is good

Today it all waited.
It was the wildlife preserve
where animals are in “enclosures” not “cages”
(Enclosures that look a lot like cages)
A crocodile, a python, a lot of monkeys, and two crows with broken wings
A river I would like to canoe
and lush green paths where you can walk slow and not care
Friends and a playhouse meant for kids
Jazz music afterwards with something to drink

There are a thousand things I could have done
A thousand things I “should have” done
And a thousand things it is good I have not done
Because it is good to rest

Prepared to Fail? II

This week I spoke again with the "good man" from last week's blog entry. He has lived most of his life as a missionary in Africa so I asked him what he sees as Africa's future. How will Africa break it's cycles of oppression and poverty? He really didn't have much of an answer except to say that he has hope that it will happen. He told me a bit of the history and then he said something funny; he said that he tells newcomers not to talk too much to the old guys because he doesn't want them to be discouraged. It was a gentle way of saying that he was telling me discouraging things but didn't want me to be discouraged. He thought I would fail but still wanted me to try. He is hopeful but the facts don't seem to support that hope. His hope has been forced into a deep patience that almost threatens to overwhelm it and yet this kind of patience is the only way for hope to survive decades of discouragement. It is hope buried and stifled under infinite patience like a man hiding under the cold snow to stay warm.

Hope long delayed is a strange thing. I look with admiration on those who have led successful fights for freedom. I know what to make of them. They fit my belief that good men should stand up and that God will bless their efforts to protect the vulnerable and the oppressed. But I don't know what to do with the centuries that preceded these people -- centuries in which the oppressed were not rescued. Centuries in which people lived and died with hope turned to a despair that is more bitter because it comes from crushed hope. I may not belong those who, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., "have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant." But I do resonate with King's impatience toward those who claim to agree with his cause but say the time is not right. Those who pretend that time will heal injustice if we just wait. How can I learn to act on the conviction that now is the time for righteousness and justice knowing that righteousness may not win this battle? Righteousness may not win in my lifetime. This has been the case in the lives of many better men.

I also share MLK's frustration with the sort of person "who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods . . . '; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a 'more convenient season.' Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

That is why I am sometimes offended at the admiration Malawi gets for being a "peaceful," "non-violent" country. Oppression, abuse, and injustice are rife. Rape, taking widows' property, rulers who loot the country's resources for their own benefit, exploiting habitually passive, powerless people. The praise comes from those who prefer "a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice."

So it is also with those who prefer to get along with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Iran, Egypt, Libya, Palestine, Israel, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Kenya . . . fearing to disturb the status quo in favor of a "positive peace which is the presence of justice." Choosing to stay on the side of the powerful and leaving the poor with no advocate. When good people become infinitely patient with the plight of the poor, it is the poor who suffer. They really suffer.

If you have time to read the rest of MLK's Letter From a Birmingham Jail I think you will find it to be time well spent. We could stand to have many more people like that in the world.

Prepared to Fail?

I spoke to a good man today. He is Canadian but has lived most of his life in Africa. He annoyed me a little but that’s because he is a good man. I am in Africa doing the ultimate young idealistic thing. When the man asked what I do, in stead of giving my vague, I-don’t-want-you-think-I’m-a-freak answer, I told him. He asked how long I have been here then nodded knowingly and gently tried to prepare me for failure. He explained that politics is poison in Africa and told of his experiences in Uganda and Kenya. The implication was, of course, that any sensible person would avoid poison and that since politics (mostly) always has been poison in Africa, it always will be and so it is best left alone. It was an imminently sensible thing to say. It was based on experience much deeper than mine and came from what is probably a much wiser person that me. Had I been in his shoes, I probably would have said the same.

You see, seasoned missionaries and aid workers “know the type.” They’re young, they’re idealistic, many of them are talented, and they want to save the world. They know the type because that’s who they were 20, 30, and 40 years ago and they look with concern on people like me because it has been a journey of heart-break and disappointment. Many have tried and the ones who claim success are only those who have taken the approach of blessing a little corner of the world, the ones who have learned not to save the world, not to save Africa, not to save Malawi, not to save a city, not to save a village, but to save a person and then venture to influence a village.

Almost to a person, everyone who has tried to change the system has failed. They’ve tried and failed for decades, hundreds and thousands of people have tried and failed. They’ve tried through force, persuasion, money, industry, and faith – and they have failed. Individuals have changed and gotten better and systems have changed but they have not gotten better. And because these people have tried and failed, they think it cannot be done. They tell me how it is in Africa, they believe it will never change, and history is on their side.

I’m tempted to resent people who try to prepare me for the "inevitable" failure. But I know it comes from concern and evidence. They do it because they care about me, because they see me as they were and they’ve been hurt. And I persist like the child who jumps off the roof onto the trampoline after being told that he’s going to hurt himself. Everyone who does it hurts himself. I did it and I hurt myself. And they cringe like an adult who sees a child who is determined to hurt himself and cannot learn from others’ hard knocks.

They prepare me to fail because they care, and yet, I am not prepared to fail. Because to learn the lesson they are trying to teach is the surest way to fail. And so long as there is a five percent chance of success I will try for it as if I am sure to win and if 19 more people will come behind me with the same attitude the odds are that one of us will win and the efforts of 20 young idealists will have changed the world.

Blessed to Receive

I am not good at receiving gifts. But I am learning. I have had a lot of practice in the past two weeks and it has been refreshing. I know that it is more blessed to give than to receive, that I should love my neighbor as myself, and that money can’t make you happy. But I also know that it can be a wonderful blessing to receive, that I should love myself, and that money is also a blessing.

In the past two weeks I have spent nights in Washington, DC; Raleigh, NC; Paris, TX; Gruver, TX; Greeley, CO; and Alexandria, VA. And I have not spent a cent for housing. I stayed with a generous ministry in Washington, at the Marriott in Raleigh (paid for by someone who supports my boss), with my great aunt in Paris, with my parents in Gruver, with my brother in Greeley, and with my former roommate Evan and his wife in Alexandria. My friends and family have lent me cars and given me rides from NC to TX and then from TX to CO. They have fed me free meals and offered generous amounts of free technical advice and services for my work. My little brother even drove to CO to go skiing with me.

It could seem frivolous but there is something serene about being in the thin air where the chill wind comes over the mountain and no trees can grow, then turning to follow the wind as it sweeps over the snow and down the mountain.

I did something stupid though and tried to ski a black diamond slope that was very steep and shaped like a giant egg carton. It put my bum knee in such serious jeopardy that I minorly damaged it and walked the last bit in my ski boots. By the end I was so tired that I lost a ski when I was racing down a straight stretch. I went into a one-skied skid to slow down and then fell over the edge of the road I was on. I landed in a 5-foot snow drift. It was a serious struggle to get out since my efforts mostly pushed the snow down the mountain instead of pushing me up. It gave a good-natured laugh to my brother and one of medics who had clued into my distress and was following me down the mountain at a respectful distance. I'm glad no one had a camera but it was kind of funny when you get over your pride. The whole day was pure therapy – a gift from God.

I know it is more blessed to give than to receive, but I have no shame in saying it has been a profound blessing to receive as my loved ones wittingly and unwittingly took turns feeding the parts of me that were hungry.

I know that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves but I am also learning to love myself enough to be grateful and think it is worthwhile when someone goes out of his way and gratuitously blesses me.

I know that money can’t by happiness, but I freely admit that I relish and thank God for many expensive things that have refreshed me on this trip. Abundant, nutritious, convenient, food; hot showers; air travel; high speed internet; carpet; good cars and roads; clean air; beautiful landscaping; and thick, soft mattresses – I love these things. They take money, they’re a blessing, and many of my friends have never had them. I’m drinking them in and thanking God.

It’s a change for me because I was raised to pull my own weight and be a burden to no one. I learned to give and expect nothing in return and I prided myself on being independent. I fooled myself into thinking that my happiness was not affected by material things. I thought I was only supposed to give and I never learned the art of gracefully receiving. It made me uncomfortable when people did things for me and I somehow thought it was virtuous to decline or at least protest.

With God’s grace I will continue to give to others and I will pray that they are more gracious receivers than I have been. If they are, the gifts will be more of a blessing and both the giver and receiver more blessed.

It is better to give than to receive because giving is even better than a very good thing. Loving our neighbors as ourselves only means something when we love ourselves very much. And money cannot buy happiness but it can buy something that will bless those who have a need.