Each morning we leave our team house around 8:30. By this time we’ve had our cup of coffee, eaten our allotted two eggs and one fruit for breakfast, and packed our two pb&j sandwiches, carrot sticks and one fruit for lunch. With our Nalgenes in toe, we head out into the Nsoko sun beginning our three mile walk.
The sun in Swaziland is unlike any other. It shows its face early and over-stays its welcome well into the night. In the heat of the day it sets a fire on my pale skin, causing sweat to roll from places it’s never touched before. It scorches the red clay, making it unbearable to walk without shoes and yet, all around me I see children laughing and screaming.
They’re playing soccer without their shoes, with a soccer ball made from grocery bags. They’re making toy cars from the mud piles surrounding the well, and they’re walking in and out of the care point gate, sometimes having just walked 4 miles to eat their only meal of the day.
The care point is barren. Three small buildings, providing the only shade within a mile, act as a makeshift school room, latrine, and kitchen. A seesaw made from a stray piece of wood and a swing set, which has seen too many rain storms, provide the only tangible form of entertainment.
One of the community gogos (grandmother) arrives early to begin prepping her ‘kitchen’. She begins by fetching water from a nearby well. With one bucket in her hands and one on her head, she heads back to get a fire started and the water boiling. While this is taking place she’ll sweep and mop the school room and wash dishes, all while taking care of her two children, both under the age of two.
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Everywhere I look I’m overwhelmed with the simple pleasures of life we first-world residents take for granted. I chuckle just thinking about dropping 20 American children off at this care point. They wouldn’t know what to do with themselves. Or about handing a housekeeper a broom with no handle, a dishcloth and a pot and asking her to clean the floor. She’d throw it back in your face and walk out.
We’ve become a culture of convenience, and with that, a culture of ignorance.
People around the world don’t have the option of what they’re going to eat for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. They’re lucky to get rice and beans once a day. They don’t have the option of what outfit they’re going to wear tomorrow: if the holes in their one outfit cover the necessary body parts, it’s a good day. They don’t have a choice on what sheets are going to cover their mattress; some would be happy just to have a mat.
They don’t have the endless possibilities the first world may have, but they don’t need them either. They’re not filling up on the latest fashion trends featured on E News, or what their neighbor down the street just bought. They fill themselves up with the love of the Lord.
When they’re taking care of 20 small children at a local care point, the Lord is radiating through their smile. Or when they’re walking 7 miles to church, the Lord is shining in the sun above them. Because they aren’t being filled with physical cravings, they leave more room to crave the Lord- and that is a lesson we could all learn.
1 John 2:15-16 reminds us, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the world.”
