I first met Clementine on Sunday evening at a church service in a slum of Kigali. She walked up to us with a group of other children, but there was something that caught my attention about her. I’m not sure if it was the baby on her back, or the tattered clothes she was wearing, but God placed this little girl on my heart. I asked a teacher nearby if she was in school, and he told me no, that she lived here in the slum and didn’t go to school. I immediately wanted to do something, but I also knew I couldn’t just fix this. It’s more complicated than that. So I went home that night, and Clementine stayed on my mind.
Fast forward to Monday morning. I woke up to a new day, and I realized my USB had caught a virus and none of my photos or videos would pull up. Then, I noticed that my wallet was missing (there was only a small amount of cash, but numerous credit cards and my driver’s license were in there). For the time being, I forgot about the Clementine situation as I stressed over the situation and my bad luck.
You might be sensing where I am going with this blog. How am I concerned about my wallet and broken USB when I have just met a little girl who doesn’t even know if she will have food to eat for the next meal? Obviously my situation was not just a case of bad luck, and I began to realize Monday evening that God was trying to teach me something through all of this- both through introducing me to Clementine and through the whole wallet/ USB situation.
On Tuesday, I discovered that my USB could fairly easily be fixed with just a bit of time. While that situation seemed to be working itself out, come midweek, I still hadn’t found my wallet. I didn’t want to cancel my cards, as I sensed that I would get them back. By this point I had already wrestled through some of this with God. He reminded me that pictures and videos on my USB are not all that important- that the memories will stay with me no matter what. And for whatever reason I had this peace about the wallet… God had showed me that nothing of real importance was missing, so I placed my cards on a temporary hold, and I just kept sensing that I would somehow get them back, even though by now I had cleaned out my room, and I was sure I had dropped my wallet in the street outside the house (and it was definitely not still there).
Wednesday night, I walked into the house where we were living and sat down for some hang out time with our “little brothers” for the month. After an hour or so I heard some laughter and people shouting outside. Some of my teammates had just come home and were saying something about finding my cards. Apparently whoever had found my wallet a few nights before, had decided on Wednesday night to bring back all my cards. They laid out my credit card, my license, debit card, student id and even some old receipts in a line on my Pastor’s driveway. My teammates found them as they walked into the house. Timing was absolutely perfect, especially considering we were leaving for Ethiopia on Friday morning!
On Thursday, I went back to the slum where Clementine lives. She came right up to me, taking my hand. We danced and sang together for a while, and then I went into the ministry’s school for the end of the year celebration. Clementine tried to come in with me and they would not let her, since she didn’t go to school there. After the ceremony I went to the one twin bed room where she lives with her aunt and two cousins. There were little benches for us to squeeze on, even though the room was not much bigger than a closet in the States. Clementine had changed into a red and white polka dot dress for our visit. We found out that her dad is in jail and her mom is remarried and doesn’t want her.
There is some good news from this situation. Next year Clementine will be able to attend the end of the year ceremony. Her school fees have been paid for a year, and at ten years old she will attend school for the first time. While I feel better knowing that, I also have seen that there is a lot we can’t do. Clementine still lives in a mud room, she doesn’t have shoes to wear, and her cousins won’t have school fees. They still struggle to get food on the table. Clementine will still be far behind in school than where she should be. These are worries that Clementine and so many other kids face everyday.
And so, during this last week here in Kigali, God taught me two things.
One- Perspective. I don’t know why I was born in middle class America and Clementine will grow up in the slums of Rwanda. But I do know that meeting this little girl will change the way I look at life forever. I knew there was poverty before- I’d seen it from a bit of a distance. It was always across the street, down the road, on the other side of town. But walking into Clementine’s “house” and hearing a bit of her story has changed that. I saw poverty head on, right in front of me. And all of a sudden that lost wallet and broken USB seemed like the smallest, silliest, saddest worries in the world.
Two- I am not here to fix things. We live in a broken world, and until Jesus comes back, it will remain broken. However, God did show me that I can bring light to the darkness and joy to the broken-hearted. I can’t single handedly bring Clementine out of poverty, and even if I could, I can’t help all the other kids who live in poverty every day. But what I can do is show Jesus’s love to whoever comes my way. And in the end, that is enough 🙂
