Slums

On the way to work every morning, I ride my bike over the wooden bridge that crosses this river. BEAUTIFUL!

This weekend we had a group of 5th and 6th graders on campus for a retreat that will finish up their confirmation process. because it rained all night Friday and most of the morning Saturday, the campus was full of mud. All of our scheduled activities Saturday were outside. I could write all day about the ropes course, and other things we did with the kids, but i want to tell you all about the slums.
SIFAT has an area of campus that is built like urban slums. Saturday night we did the "slum experience" with the kids. Basically, this consists of all the staffers hanging out in the slums....there is a slum owner, who takes up rent money from the kids, a man who gives out 'jobs' so that the kids can earn money, a store owner who sells food and other things...she will also buy things off of the kids as another way for them to earn money, there is a police officer who throws kids in jail (often for unreasonable offenses) and several beggars...depending on the size of the group and the amount of staff available this can also expand to include military police, drunks, etc. The object is that the kids find food, water and shelter while they live in these slums, and hopefully along the way realizing that this is life for 924 million people in the world.
Since I am new and not familiar with the process I got the job of the beggar last night. So, after dressing in the trashiest clothes i could find, and spreading mud on my face, I took to the streets (i regret i don't have a pic of this for all of you who care :)...). I decided to only speak in Spanish to the kids...I cried and pleaded for money to buy food for my kids...i told them that my husband left me and I had no way to provide for my children.

I begged.

I cried.

It was hard.

At the end of the night (even though I'd made 500 bolivianos, been given a house, water and 2 bowls of soup....what can I say, I'm a good beggar)...I felt drained. I was constantly having to beg people for help, constantly asking the same people. At times, it just felt like I was a burden to all of the kids around me. I was getting on their nerves, but I had to keep asking.

As I was getting ready for bed, it became real to me that the type of exhaustion I felt (times a million) is the same thing that beggars, or even just people who need help in life, must feel over and over again. For me it was a game. For others it is a way of life that is accompanied by feelings of helplessness that they are not able to provide for themselves or their families.

It was an eye opener.

I often feel like I have a good grasp on the desperate situations in the world, and maybe I do compared to many, but I still have much to learn.

*On a funny note, the middle schoolers got bored after about an hour in the slums. At one point I walked up to a family to beg, and found them all dealing drugs. They made "drugs" out of the leaves, and the slum owner (a missionary from Uganda) was buying it from them. I had to walk away...these little white, church going 6th graders dealing drugs with an African man was too much for me to handle. :)