Poverty as a Companion

In Asia, there are two types of buses, nice ones and the not so nice ones. Which one you decide to take is dependent on where you’re going or what your budget is.

On this particular day, I found myself on a not so nice bus, traveling with a group of My Farmer’s people (let’s call them the J). By the time we boarded, the seats were already filled up, so we sat on the floor of an extremely tight aisle.

Quick background on the J-- they used to be slaves and are looked down as lowly by most people here and generally regarded as poor. These are the people I now live with.

Looking up, I noticed there were also several foreign backpackers sitting above us—foreigners always get seats.

But I sat on the floor with my new people. For 12 hours, along the bumpy pothole-filled roads we sat, the J and I, on the unforgiving metal floor, knees to knees-elbows to elbows.

This particular group of J’s I was with, I met only a week ago for a trip we took across the border to do medical and translation outreach. They all had known me as the white girl who is marrying one of their own from the jungle (craziness?!). Though we hadn’t known each other before, we bonded extremely quickly from helping the doctors with jungle surgeries, pulling rotten teeth, and treating crazy diseases.

                               

By the end we worked with the doctors on treating over a thousand patients in more ways than one.  

Throughout the few days, I was able spend time with some of the sick people as they waited in the yard for treatment. As I conversed with them, heard their stories, and looked into their eyes; I started to realize how fragile this life really is.

I’ve spent so much time sitting on plush couches of my nice private university talking with friends and classmates about what life is and delving into lofty philosophical conversations on social injustice.

But what I saw in the eyes of these people, where death could be around the corner; and these weren't stranger people to me, these were MY new people My Farmer's kin. I began to see everything in a different way.

As I’ve been living life here, my perspective has completely shifted. I’m learning to see life through the lens of these people who are suffering from real poverty, where death is such a reality.

The sick are many times the more honest of us. They only have time to think of the realities of truth and what actual matters. Their circumstances force them to live and see things differently. They can admit they need help. 

Lately, poverty and I are starting to become intimate friends. I’m starting to see the effects of it in my everyday life, sometimes in good ways and other times in bad ways.

For my closest friends and future family here, poverty isn’t a classroom topic or a charity trip for us to appreciate our lives more, it’s their reality.

Everyday life feels so normal with them; sometimes I forget just how desperate some of their situations can be. And sometimes it smacks me right in the face.

Like when we receive a call and find out my future Mother-in-law is sick and has no money for medicine, so their 14-year-old has to drop out of school to find work in order to afford food and medicine.

That’s when I remember that my people here don’t have bank accounts, insurance, or even guaranteed food all the time. 

    

Sitting on the metal floor of the bus, one of my new J friends turned to me and said, “We are proud you are with us.”

Living here definitely has its challenges. No hot showers, no plumbing, long bumpy bus rides, just to name a few.

But when I hear those words, “we are proud you can eat and sleep with us”, when I realize how much that simple intimacy means to them, all of that gets thrown out the window. Nothing else matters except being close to these people. 

I’m learning how to take the cultural and social issues debate out of the college classroom and into this moment—into this reality. Poverty isn’t an issue for us to muse about, or use to appreciate our lives more. It’s a relationship with PEOPLE that’s broken.

I’m learning how to bridge the gap. It may require sitting on a smelly bus floor, comforting the locals who always get car sick, or relearning to speak, but all that is worth it.

It’s about the trust and love that is built when we realize that we are all impoverished in some way. We all have our own poverties. Sometimes it’s the rich, the privileged, the have’s that are the most poor of all. They are the ones that have a harder time recognizing that they are sick..and they need somebody to save them. 

We need to rethink poverty and realize its not a lack of materials or money, but it’s broken relationship that needs to be restored.

Poverty isn’t an issue, it’s people.

When we start to realize how we are all poor in different ways, but learn how to walk with each other in our own poverties and actually see other’s for who they really are, that is when we begin to rethink poverty, and even our lives.

(Note) please take a moment to read my friend James Lee's blog on poverty, he is somebody who has spent a lot of time studying/experiencing the topic and watching his ideas actually unfold and ring true in my life has influenced this blog.) 

Reference: James Lee- rethinkpoor.wordpress.com