The other day, when I went into the Mathare slum in another part of Nairobi with staff from Church World Service, a member of my former employer, ACT International, to gather information for a story about the violence that’s been occurring there, I had a strange and unsettling experience.
We were shown a patch of land, almost as big as a city block, that had been completely burned down. I was told that on that spot had stood houses that belonged to about 600 families plus businesses. They were all burned down on December 30 in the violent unrest that erupted immediately following the announcement of the disputed presidential vote. The people who burned the area did it deliberately and maliciously, starting the fires from each of the corners of the lot simultaneously, so that even if the residents had tried to put out the fires – which they did – the area would have burned down anyway.
Then we actually walked across the charred remains of many houses to get to another part of the slum. And as we did this, my cell phone rang. I answered it, and it was the satellite TV company. We had a satellite TV dish installed and got this service soon after we arrived, and the person was calling to find out if we were satisfied with the installation and the service so far.
Only in Africa. What a contrast this was. Here I was, standing on the remains – nothing but ashes, in fact – of a place where 600 families (for the total number of people that is, multiply that by 5 or 6, which is the number of people humanitarian organizations use for the average family in the developing world has) were forced out and who are now homeless. And here I was talking to somebody (who was not aware of where I was standing at the moment) about the absolute luxury I have in my house that’s way too large for my family of three.
Well, it’s enough to make you pause. I can’t say that I will now obey the biblical mandate to go out and sell everything I have and give it to the poor. I’m not sure what exactly I should do, because even if we get rid of the satellite TV, then we’ll still have many luxuries here, and our arrangement to have some of these luxuries is a bit intentional. But incidents like this only make it harder to come to Africa to live as an expatriate and to work for a humanitarian organization where, by design, my job is to come into contact with the poorest of the poor, people who have been through some of the worst experiences of their lives, while having one foot back in the world of absolute comfort, only a few miles away.
We were shown a patch of land, almost as big as a city block, that had been completely burned down. I was told that on that spot had stood houses that belonged to about 600 families plus businesses. They were all burned down on December 30 in the violent unrest that erupted immediately following the announcement of the disputed presidential vote. The people who burned the area did it deliberately and maliciously, starting the fires from each of the corners of the lot simultaneously, so that even if the residents had tried to put out the fires – which they did – the area would have burned down anyway.Then we actually walked across the charred remains of many houses to get to another part of the slum. And as we did this, my cell phone rang. I answered it, and it was the satellite TV company. We had a satellite TV dish installed and got this service soon after we arrived, and the person was calling to find out if we were satisfied with the installation and the service so far.
Only in Africa. What a contrast this was. Here I was, standing on the remains – nothing but ashes, in fact – of a place where 600 families (for the total number of people that is, multiply that by 5 or 6, which is the number of people humanitarian organizations use for the average family in the developing world has) were forced out and who are now homeless. And here I was talking to somebody (who was not aware of where I was standing at the moment) about the absolute luxury I have in my house that’s way too large for my family of three.
Well, it’s enough to make you pause. I can’t say that I will now obey the biblical mandate to go out and sell everything I have and give it to the poor. I’m not sure what exactly I should do, because even if we get rid of the satellite TV, then we’ll still have many luxuries here, and our arrangement to have some of these luxuries is a bit intentional. But incidents like this only make it harder to come to Africa to live as an expatriate and to work for a humanitarian organization where, by design, my job is to come into contact with the poorest of the poor, people who have been through some of the worst experiences of their lives, while having one foot back in the world of absolute comfort, only a few miles away.
See the article I wrote after this visit to this slum in an earlier post on this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment