Poverty

I know nothing about poverty! This reality was brought home to me in a real way this week.

During the past couple of weeks I have had moments when I would get a bit grumpy. The baby numbers at Beautiful Gate have been increasing and it is time to bring the second baby house into use. Following the move from the former site, Baby House 2 has been used to store stuff. Getting the house ready included sorting through and moving a lot of donated clothing and toys elsewhere. The sorting was what led me to feeling a bit grumpy.

There were donations of very nice, gently use things. But then there was the less gently used stuff! One of my jobs was sorting though the toys, and that included the broken toys, toys with missing parts, coloring books with most of the pictures colored, children’s books torn and with missing pages. I was just a bit irritated and grumpy with the well meaning folks who would donate such ‘junk’. I was prepared to throw much of it away. However, in a moment of lucidity I did think to get the advice of a Masotho colleague. Maybe my western ideas of what was junk was not applicable in Lesotho. As it turned out, my western ideas were not.

I watched as my Masotho colleague carefully sorted through the stuff I had identified as ‘junk’ and how most of it ended up in the keeper pile; maybe not for the babies at Beautiful Gate but at least to share with local families. The remaining pile of what she considered rubbish was quite small.

One of the local workers at Beautiful Gate, a man, helped haul this rubbish of broken, worn, and soiled toys to the trash bin where it was placed with the kitchen garbage and the volumes of dirty diapers from 20+ babies. The local guy then advised some of the other men on site, those working for the construction company, of the “rubbish” we had just hauled out. On subsequent trips past the trash bin I saw grown men, working men, standing in the smell of a hundred soiled diapers sorting through the cast off toys - salvaging something here, a broken piece or a torn book there; something, anything for their child at home.

I thought, “If this is what working men here will do to secure a toy for their child, I have absolutely no comprehension of what poverty really is, nor the desperation of those who have no job.” In that moment I caught just a glimpse of the desperation of a mother who might leave her baby on a hill, or beside a road, or in a toilet.

Another impact was that I gained a deeper respect for the efforts of agencies like Samaritan's Purse and its oft-criticized Operation Christmas Child program. When I saw what a father would do to provide his child with a toy, I realized that the shoeboxes of Operation Christmas Child provide untold joy and delight to such children and families.

Poverty. I am barely beginning to understand what it really means.

~ Benno ~

(By the way, if you are one who does support efforts like Operation Christmas Child, may I offer one suggestion? Totally unpackage whatever you intend to send. Especially keep all the plastic packaging at home. Where those shoeboxes go, it is most likely that there is no garbage pick-up, so please dispose of whatever would be garbage where you are. Thanks ☺ ☺ ~B )