What I Want

I wrote this on July 29, 2011. I just found it and I decided to post it because it really showcases what I went through as I was studying CD and one of the stories that really stood out for me. This course was taught by Dave Andrews, who has his own website and a Wikipedia entry! I love this guy SO MUCH and I wish he was here so that I could go to him for guidance. I believe he introduced me to the tradition of the radical hospitality of Jesus Christ and his life and work are just so inspiring.

July 29, 2011

Today was my first day in a course called Community Development in International Contexts.

I chose this course, which is only offered every other year, because I was hoping for more coursework that could involve researching PNG and ways to promote development.

The course seems to be more focused on South Asia and Africa, which is an entirely different scenario, I think, than PNG, but was insightful nonetheless.

The professor recounted his experience of choosing community development as a profession.  He spoke about travelling to India, at 20, with his new wife, to go to the very end of the line, the bottom, and experience the life of the poorest of the poor.

He found himself hours from boarding a plane in a slum in Delhi, where lived 1,000 people in abject poverty. They didn't even have a tap among them to share. There were 200 families, each with 4-5 family members, who couldn't afford to survive on the meagre incomes they received from the little wrk they could find.  Parents scavenged in garbage heaps for produce that was not completely rotten and waited outside of butchers to rescue intestines, heads and legs that were discarded.

The children would get sick, from diarrhoea and dehydration, and in desperation the families would go to the wealthier neighbourhoods to beg for water.  But people shunned them, because they were dirty and smelled bad from lack of water to bathe.  The water they could get was often polluted, and every night he would hear parents crying as their children slipped away.

He cried as he recounted these memories of hearing the anguish of his neighbours in their powerless cycle of poverty.

I know this is what life is like for at least a billion people in the world.  At least a billion people in the world live in poverty, dying from preventable diseases and lack of basic necessities like water.  Moving from rural areas to cities only to be stripped of their limited funds by crooks who they don't imagine not to trust because they have come from small villages where people were accountable to each other, to massive cities rampant with crime and its partner anonymity.

Hearing these stories didn't make me cry, in my privileged life I have the opportunity to take medication to help me survive despite being fully able to count on clean water to drink and food whenever I need it. I am privileged to have an education that enables me to use a credit card should I ever find myself out of work, until I can find a job that offers security and incredible benefits, where I have the ability to take leave if I'm sick or even just if I am not feeling up to work that day and still receive my full pay. I can take leave to study and still receive my full pay.  The government will pay my school fees and let me pay them back every week through my pay.

Not even in America did I have these luxuries.

And yet like many others I still find myself wishing I had more - so I could travel whenever I wanted, wherever I wanted, and not face any barrier to what I want.

What I WANT. I live in a world where I can actually feel that somehow I deserve what I want.

I digress.