Africa Part 2

After a good night's rest and a wonderful breakfast the Redeemer's Church Team, Tom and I headed back to the Huruma slum. Today, I learned the difference between abject poverty and relative poverty. Abject poverty is defined as utterly hopeless, miserable, humiliating, or wretched. People who are experiencing abject poverty have no options and therefore have no power to change their situation in life. Relative poverty describes a person as poor in comparison to other members of their society. It is when the vast majority of people in a particular society have access to particular goods and services (ie. telephone, car etc) the minority who are excluded from these goods and services on financial grounds can be said to be poor; however, they still have some options to improve their situation.

Today, I learned that one of the only ways in which children have a glimmer of hope in the slums of Africa is to receive an education. Here's a synopsis of the system here: The children who can afford to go to school have a slight chance of improving their lives. However, affording school is nearly impossible for most of the children here; therefore, no options…If children can make it through primary school, they take a state readiness exam to go to high school. Depending on their scores, they can be placed in a high school, but again the cost of 1. The state placement test, and 2. Attending high school makes it impossible to receive an education. Only a very few of the children can therefore receive a high school education and have the option of college, but again the cost is insurmountable for most. Crazy, right? Here's the real kicker at the Furaha School. Twenty-seven children have the opportunity to take the high school qualification and placement exam. The cost in US dollars per child? You ready…$8…that's right $8!!!! And most will not be able to take the test because that's nearly a month's wage for their care givers. So, to put it into perspective…the entire class could take the test for $200. Now get this…if the entire class passed the exam, they still would probably not go on to high school…why? The cost, right? However, a child could go to high school for about $1,000 a year. We are so blessed in the US. So, Tom and I are meeting tomorrow on strategies for Furaha Community Foundation to get these kids into high school and therefore provide them with at least a fighting chance to overcome their poverty.

We also visited four caretakers of the orphaned children in the school. I have never experienced such horrific living conditions. You and I have probably watched infomercials or specials on TV about these situations in Africa, but a TV program nor any attempt by me to describe it would be inadequate. One heart-wrenching thing I witnessed was this little baby (approximately 18 months) simple sitting and crawling through this slum housing project. One of the leaders of Furaha told me that this was not an unusual site and either the child had been abandoned or the guardian/parents were out trying to find work and simply left the baby there.

We learned about a newborn baby that was pulled out of the "river" by a dog. The "River" is raw sewage and that baby was in a paper bag…newborn…still in the mother's placenta. The dog drug the bag up to a residence and kids noticed movement in the bag, thought it was a snake and opened the bag and took their discovery to a woman. The baby was taken for medical attention and named, "Little Moses." Little Moses is now 8 years old and attends Furaha School.

On one of our home visits, the woman we spoke with ended by saying, "I thank God that you cared enough to come into my house. No one wants to come into my house because of where we live. I thank God for your visit." I thought, "You've got to be kidding me!" All this woman wanted was the presence of someone who cared…"the ministry of presence" is a powerful thing. So, today I've learned. I've grown. I've been challenged and above all, I know that we can make a difference and at least give some in this world an option.