Drips

September 21, 2008

Sorry I haven’t written for so long. I’ve been unwell for the past two weeks. I thought it was just the ‘flu initially so I just let it go and thought I would get over it. Now, after checking it out with a chest x-ray and a course of antibiotics I’m back to normal. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers.

I’m now about half way through my time here in South Africa.

There’s a story I want to share but I’m struggling to write it down because of the conflict it has caused in my mind and how is has made me seriously reconsider perspectives.

There’s a new Hands at Work video which shows an interview with Gertrude. Gertrude is the head of an orphan-headed household. She is sick and yet must care for her brothers and sisters living with her. I’ll let you watch the video to see for yourself but I don’t think it’s online yet so I’ll post the link when it’s online.

I’d seen many of these videos and stories in my life, on TV and other places, before I came to South Africa. But just because I’m here involved in community development doesn’t mean that my heart and mind was always here. It’s not too difficult to, when I use to see those videos, to harden my heart and ignore them. Worse still I would see these videos and wonder how much the people were paid to act.

Cold hearted bastard.

Now – with that background – let me tell what I’ve seen.

I only saw that video this week here. I recognised Gertrude in the video.

I had met Gertrude about a month ago. She was sick and she could barely get up. She had no food. We visited her on home based care to see how she was doing.

It had been raining. There were a few tubs around to catch the drips coming through the roof. I shuffled positions as a drop fell on my shoulder, and then it would just be the sound of water drops in the tubs. Drip… drip… drip.

I stood inside her house as the nurse spoke to her in SiSwati. You don’t need a gift in languages to be able to listen to pain, struggle and hopelessness.

I stood awkwardly there. I didn’t know where to look.

She was lying on her bed, the look on her face blank except for the tears. The roof had holes where the water drops were forming. I just looked at the ground. The monotony of the water drops falling into the tubs was driving me insane.

The nurse helped her with some medicine and gave her some miele meal and vegetables.
We walked out and closed her door behind us.

As we walked back to our vehicle, I stepped back and took a photo of her home. At the time I’m not sure why I did it but I just had this feeling that I should take a photo:

This is real.

I was there.

I saw her for myself.

I was in her house.

The agony, the difficulty, the water drops coming through the roof, the drops falling into the tubs, the air of hopelessness… the tears.

The same tears that were flowing in the video.

This is real.

I can no longer ignore or separate reality from the pictures I see.

What does that mean 10,000kms away?

My brother sent me a book called “Good News about Injustice” by G.A Haugen, president and CEO of the International Justice Mission. He writes:

Perhaps the next step in our development as children of God is a capacity of compassion permanence – a courageous and generous capacity to remember the needs of an unjust world even when they are out of our immediate sight. Not content with the infant’s out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach, God call us to grown-up capacity to engage a world of oppression with our heart and mind, even though (thankfully) it is not always before our eyes… Christians, of course, are meant to be particularly gifted in sustaining a commitment to what is true and important though unseen…

Some in the westernised church, far away from this kind of raw oppression may dismiss this and say things like ‘there’s not much we can do about it, we live in a fallen world, so we should just focus on ‘evangelism’’.

May you never compartmentalise the good news in this way.

May you have courage to follow Jesus in compassion.

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