Battery Exhausted

I turned on my camera last night to download photos and the screen read “Battery exhausted”… my next thought was “I am too”.

There are so many things in this world I am living in that trouble me – my internet is constantly up and down and viewing/sharing pictures is just impossible; the electricity flickers a couple of times a night; I’ve had no hot (or even warm) water for four days now… transportation is so difficult and traffic jams eat up literally hours of each day; George and Anne have three little girls and have had no water in their middle class home for the last month; Mary M has malaria and Carol was in the hospital today with another illness they couldn’t really diagnose; Mary O turns off her refrigerator during the day to conserve electricity and thinks she got sick yesterday from spoiled food; a friend from church lost her baby at 7 months – was admitted to the hospital for a c-section to deliver the baby who had died & was sent home the same day with no information about her baby or the baby’s death; this past weekend an angry boyfriend burned down the home of one of the families I had met in Dandora last week… so those who already had nothing, now really have nothing; we think that the headmaster of a school serving special needs children is likely misdirecting or pocketing the government allowance for the children each year; today I watched children no more than 2-3 years old literally playing on (or eating from?) a huge heap of trash… no adults in sight…

Inconveniences, inefficiencies and injustices are everywhere... and yet, I meet people every day who are grateful for what they have and most have a very surrendered attitude toward the lives they are living. There is not a lot of the American-way of asking “why?” or “why not?”…or demanding change or insisting on rights. Perhaps that is why I am exhausted and those who are actually living the lives I am describing are not.

I’m not sure what to think about this – perhaps you who are reading this can help me make sense of it. When it is important to stir up a sense of discontent to bring about change – and when is acceptance the right path? Perhaps it’s the difference between a social vs a personal response.

In a very tender way, most of those women I have found in greatest need, look to God with no bitterness, but for comfort and strength. And today, we visited one of the poorest homes I have found in Dandora (back to levels of poverty… how far is the bottom?)… the father was so thankful we had made the trip to his home (which was quite a distance away and down many steep, narrow, muddy, rocky alleyways almost down to the Nairobi River which is polluted with filth) and that we offered the hope of some support for his family (4 children under 10, a fifth on the way, both parents HIV+) that he insisted we pray together before we left.. and he prayed a prayer of joy & thankfulness. To look at him, I can’t imagine he will be alive this time next year.

So yes, I feel exhausted, but maybe I need to follow the example of the father – and pray prayers of joy & thankfulness…but without forgetting some measure of moral indignation to all I am witnessing. Paul Farmer defines public health as “an applied form of social justice”… I really like that description.

Ok – so one bit of new news from the village below. Came home tonight and found that the market now has a big freezer chest in front with a Coke logo on it! I was really quite excited for the market – but I can’t imagine that they have electricity, so don’t think it could be a cooler… did some Coke distributor put the chest there just to store drinks? or was it salvaged from someone’s trash and will be used for an entirely different purpose? Hope I can figure this out before I leave! I am so impressed with the woman who owns this little market – she works from sun-up to sun-down, looks like she employees at least 2 other women and has a constant stream of customers. You go, little market girl!