June 18, 2007

jarring moments

I was sitting in the Java House, this very western café in downtown Nairobi where Americans, Europeans and wealthy Kenyans drink the brewed coffee (as opposed to the instant Nescaf that the majority poor drink, if they drink coffee at all); so I’m siting there with Mary who runs a school in one of the slums (Mathare). We’re discussing doing the Children in Crisis training for her teachers and social workers. I was enjoying my coffee, the atmosphere. It was a moment of semi-normalcy in my estimation – a flash back to the life-i-used-to-live before following my sometimes radical and extreme Lord. So there I was – good coffee, good planning – and out onto the street walks a stark-raving, head-to-toe naked woman. Walking the crowded downtown streets with a vacant look on her face, the Nairobi business class stopping to stare.

It was a jarring moment. I remembered where I was.

Sometimes, I’d like to forget for longer than 10 minutes.

hard questions

God took me into the slums of Mathare again. I was there in 2005. I remember being touched by the people I met and the work that was being done there – micro enterprise (equipping the poor to start small businesses with small loans), education, counseling/social work, etc. I ran a condensed version of the Children in Crisis training with the Hope Centre leaders. I was so blessed by this group. Forty-five of them packed into one room, spending their entire Saturday learning about the cycle of violence, a child’s basic needs, and how to plan effective intervention.

How do you help a child recover from a trauma such as victimization, loss, family problems, or natural disasters?

These teachers, social workers, and volunteers serve the urban poor – their student population includes orphans and abandoned children, street children, Somali refugees, victims of domestic violence, children of drunkards and drug-users. You name the social problem, they’ve got it.

At the end of one of the sessions on the stages of grief, teacher Raphael raised his hand and asked the hardest, heart-breaking, reality-check question:

How do you help a child process and deal with the trauma when it’s not in the past – it’s ongoing?

I stood there, in the reality of their situation, like a deer in headlights. Humbled. Saddened. No pat answer. Nothing easy-breezy brilliant to say because the reality is – their trauma is ongoing.

I looked at Raphael and said, Gosh – I don’t know. Does anyone have thoughts on that question? Blank stares. I went on to answer another question that I could answer and prayed to God for wisdom. Then came back to Raphael with this – We may not be able to change their home-lives (their shack-lives), but we can provide a place of refuge and respite away from home. When they are with us, they can know that they are safe, that no one will hurt them. When they are with us, they can know that they are loved.

But it’s not enough. As I think about that answer, I am frustrated by its limitations. God is a God of justice. Yes, He sees the reality of these children’s situations and I am convinced that He is grieved by it and wants more to be done.

The questions are –
What?
and How?
and Who?

“He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy;
He will crush the oppressor.

He will endure as long as the sun, as long as the moon,
through all generations.”

Psalm 72:4-5

slum water tea

Slum water tea. That’s what they offered me to drink during the training in Mathare slums. No other option. You just have to boil the slum water and hope that it’s killed the unmentionables in the water…

Slum water tea is disgusting.

And after ingesting it, you begin wondering – What’s happening in my body? All that water slumming around in my intestines? But you can’t dwell on it.

And drinking that tea in the middle of discussing psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of basic needs – things a child needs in order to develop (or self-actualize) into the person who God created them to be. The foundation of a child’s needs? Physiological needs such as food, medical care, access to clean water… These things are necessary for simple survival. And all of these beautiful children – thousands upon thousands – in these slum communities are denied these basic necessities, these basic rights – by the people in power.

But – I wonder – Are the people with true power those in government or those in the Body?

trauma

It’s so ironic that I go into these places and teach about trauma’s impact on children and I leave such places feeling traumatized myself. I go home and cry. Or watch a movie I’ve seen a thousand times so that I don’t have to think about it.

I’ll never accept it! God’s people, God’s children living in deplorable, sub-human conditions.

We must do something! We must take care of “the least of these” (the children, the vulnerable, the marginalized) in the name of Jesus. We’re no longer ignorant of these things – and we’re His Body – His broken heart and strong hands, His voice in the world.

“Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless,
maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed.”

Psalm 82:3