Shepherding Women

Note: This post has been delayed due to my getting permission to post it, and then being a procrastinator. Please read it anyway. It has some stuff to say.

Having two things that I really wanted to write in this newsletter about, and deciding to write on the older, I've decided to maybe write this one here.

Yesterday I stepped into another world. The veil was ripped off the face of the country, and I saw the poverty ridden underbelly of this decievingly glittery "third-world country". It was one of the most troubling things I've seen in a long time, and I want to tell you about it. Perhaps it will let you know how important our Shepherding project is, perhaps it will induce you to pray, for this country, for it's people, and for the sad state of the world as people turn their eyes away from the people God would have them help and governments line their pockets with the pain of their citizens.

When Mira offered to let me visit the Shepherding homes, I had no idea what exactly I was getting myself into. Of course Mira and Milika warned me in advance that they lived in deplorable conditions, and I expected as much. These particular women are, after all, Roma gypsy women, Albania's underclass. Besides which, they wouldn't be in the Shepherding program if they had trouble free lives. Still, these foreshadowing comments were absorbed, but not to the extent they perhaps should have been. The level of living conditions I had in my head had me wondering if it would be at all pleasant should I want to use their bathrooms. Little did I know they wouldn't have them.

We pulled up to a, well I guess a compound might be the best way to describe it. A conglomerated mishmash of "real" buildings and rough wooden structures, seperated by uneven dirt paths, and high wooden fences. Walking through the streets, which were soiled in ways I'm likely don't want to consider, we quickly developed a following of dirty and sometimes barefoot children. Adults on either side watched us with curiosity, suspicion, and hope. A few of them asked why we were there, and supplicated our help, only to be given the answer that, I realize must be given "Our program is only for pregnant women." Still it is hard to hear a woman tell you that her daughter is sick, and she hasn't the money to go to the hospital, and tell her that you can't help her, she isn't pregnant. If you help her, however, how do you keep from helping her neighbor? When presented with a sea of pain, how do you extract one drop? After dealing with that pain, what do you do when you realize you no longer have the resources to complete the mission you originally set out to achieve? I was struck by the immensity of the need, and the seemingly complete hopelessness of the situation.

We visited the first "home", really a one room shed, with a bed, two couches and a cradle. No kitchen, no bathroom. Within lived a woman, two children, and when home her husband. This was the nicest home we went too. They became more sparse from there. The next home had no roof. I'm not even sure it had real walls, it might have been more like an improvised tent, material hung from a wooden skeleton, though without the "inadequate" waterproofing we complain about in our recreational tents at home. Imagine living in one. When we asked the owner, a woman holding her recenetly born infant and cooking rice over a gas burner what had happened during the recent two days of rain, she answered that "everything outside came inside". (Our social worker is looking for a "roof" of sorts to give her.) This room had only a bed, no couches. At least she only had one child. The next building we went in, while at least this was a real building of concrete or another sheltering material, was home to a grandmother, a mother, and perhaps three or four children. It had no bed, only an entertainment center (without the television of course) and a pile of blankets in the corner. The woman asked about pillows, pointing out that the children had none on which to lay their heads. When we approached the final house, I finally felt some relief. This was an established house, a solidly made building with two beds. On the porch, in a crib lay the sleeping infant we'd come to see. A blanket and pillow sat next to him, and the mother was nearby. Relief coursed through me, finally we had a woman who's conditions, while far from amazing, were at least not as deplorable as those of the other women. Then Mira's comments revealed to me how mislaid my relief was. This wasn't her house. This was her porch. She used to have a wooden home but it had been destroyed. The owner of the home was now allowing her and her young child to sleep on her porch. I don't think I'd ever seen homes like these. Only on the way out did I think to ask Mira about the bathroom issue. Where did they go to the bathroom????? "I don't know," she replied, "probably outside". When considering this, the barefoot children flash through my mind.

Mira also explained the relative scarcity of men in the community. They leave, often for months at a time, on "business". Somehow, however, they never seem to reapper with money. When they are home, they may very well be drunken and/or abusive. "At least the women love them, right????? They must have married them for some reason." These women, who live in these situations, may or may not love their husbands, but they often didn't choose them. In this society, arranged marriages still abound.

On our way back to the vehicle, we wintnessed yet another problem, one which will, in my opinion, impede any improvement we might ever foresee to this sad state of affairs. Several boys were fighting on the porch of a nearby business. The owner broke them up, and they stood apart, glowering and blustering in their juvenile anger. The thought which struck me then was no more encouraging really than the others which had preceeded it. These were violent boys, who would grow up to be violent men, who would give birth to violent boys, who would grow up to be violent men, who would give birth to violent men...... How can a monkey wrench be thrown into this vicious cycle???????

The biggest problem, I believe, with this whole situation, is governments and their tendancy towards selective blindness. Jen, Alba and I discussed this while waiting for bad karaoke to begin. We can try to help people, and ever person we help is an achievement. Until the government takes notice, however, and sets up programs to rectify such situations, we are sticking bandages on amputations. This is something I urge you to pray for. That we would work at helping the people God wants us too, and that systems would change. There's no reason in this modern day and age, in a country which can afford cell phones and skyskrapers, for people to live in those conditions. This, in my opinion is a societal change. That is my soapbox for the day. May God forgive me for any way in which I sin against Him by not considering these things, and may He use me to help make His world a better place.