Thursday, July 9, 2009

Day 16 Experiences--Friday, July 3

Well, lets get to it. Did some more home visits today for the Heart to Heart organization of the area Lutheran churches providing scholarships for Orphans.

-Things are so slow moving here! My goodness, its like everything is in slow motion, walking places, moving around, checking out, getting things done. No efficiency. Work days are 10-4 and that is on Africa time meaning you can add an hour to lateness many times. I look around the slums and such as we walk and see grown men just standing around doing nothing during the work day. Its terrible and depressing to see.

-There is just filth and grime and trash everywhere in these slums. The smell is overpowering at times, especially near the giant trash piles lining the roads. Disease has to just fill the area, especially in such close quarters. It is no wonder that the average life span is around 45-50 right now. The living conditions are not conducive to a healthy life. If my parents saw this, they would never complain about my room again ;)

-Most of the houses we visit here in the slum speak no English. They know a few words, and can understand a little, but not enough for our purposes. We still pray with them and share the Word of God and that has stepped across all language barriers. So praise God for that.

-I saw some rather interesting sights today. I saw:

A Royal's hat

A Bass Pro Shop's t-shirt

A O'reilly autopart's t-shirt (owning brothers live in Springfield area)

Possibly an MSU shirt. It looked maybe too old to be an MSU shirt (it would've been SMS then) but that may just be do to wear and tear. It was all Maroon sweat shirt, that said, MSU or something like that, definitely written in the college way, and it didn't identify what the M was but I remember knowing that it was a state university because it said something like that on it. I think it was, but no confirmation.

Just a little taste of home over here.

Well, I suppose thats it. Love you all!

1 comment:

  1. Yes, we would complain. Slums start out as messy bedrooms and then the depression of feeling like you can't really make a difference so why pick up the trash sets in and next thing you know......slum.

    I would challenge all those involved in the global warming issue to drop this issue and instead spend all that money, time energy and effort to stablize 3rd world countries and help them build their economy by building infrastructure like sewers, water and electricity (scary bad electricity) so they can really improve the world, not just for polar bears but for real children and people. Living in a country where freedom does not exist....the freedom to work hard and build a business and providing for your own family is not possible, would be very sad. Generations have lived like this and they have no vision of what better can be. Pray that our country doesn't tax us into the same situation for our children and grandchildren. ---your parents

    ReplyDelete