For a long time I knew poverty existed, but I took those ads on tv depicting people living in the trash and wading through heaps of garbage to be nothing more than a ploy to pull at America’s heartstrings to elicit more funding. I never would have imagined them to be true. I never would have guessed that actual conditions were far worse than anything I have ever seen on a TV screen or a billboard for “Feed the Children.” Yesterday, however, all that changed when my team visited a slum a few miles away from the orphanage.
It is a city of trash, an complex system built into and around the city dump. The slum was a collection of tents built around mounds of rubbish. All the tents were connected through a system of ‘houses.’. There is strength in numbers there. It is a community filled with familys, orphans, widows and wild dogs. The children are barefoot, some were not wearing clothes, and all were somehow smiling. Nearby there is a puddle of sedentary water filled with trash and feces of the wild boar that wade through it searching for their next meal. It is a city 100s of people call home.
It left me heartbroken and helpless. What can you do to help them? We brought bananas for the children and our pastor took names of the children to find them sponsors, but something has to be done. There are tent cities like this all over Inida and sadly all over the world. My teammates who worked in a massive dump community in the Philippines assured me that poverty does infact get worse than this. So, what is th solution? I have no idea. For now I guess we raise awareness and we pray for something practical we can do…..
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