Easier and Harder

As we are here longer, things are becoming both easier and harder.  One of the things that are easier is that people no longer treat us as such oddities and we actually know a lot of names and faces at the secondary school, the nursery, Palm Beach, Rita’s school and even the vegetable market in town.  (There’s the guy I buy the beans and peanuts from, the gal that sells me potatoes, the tangerine guy, and the guy who sells eggs and salt.  Yesterday, I bought tomatoes and cabbage from the same guy.  He then started selling me carrots from the lady next to him.  “What else do you need”, he asks.  I needed green beans.  He heads down the row of stalls until he finds good green beans and then shows me where I can find them.  They were beautiful, too.) 

 

But, getting to know people here also starts making things a lot harder because everybody (except the rich)  NEEDS something.  A girl needs shoes, one of the teachers at school needs a certain kind of radiological contrast material so that his wife can have a diagnostic procedure.  (The hospital doesn’t have the contrast and told the couple to find it themselves.)  Another guy needs 5000 kwacha to put up a quick roof for a school that has been meeting under a tree.  Another guy tells us that if he had just $200 dollars he could have the operation on his eye that would allow him to place an artificial eye in his socket and relieve his daily pain.  The church choir would like “choir uniforms” for the young people’s choir.  (The uniforms are blue shirts.)  People need rides, babies need medicines, lots of people want us to mail letters once we get out of Malawi because the postal service is so unreliable.  The outreach worker at MCV hasn’t been out to the farther villages for 6 months because there is no petrol for the truck.  You can see that it just goes on and on and on.  And we have it within our power to help almost all of these people.  But what do we do? 

 

There are lots of ways to look at giving, but two ways that I have been thinking of lately is that you can give to an organization because that way more people can be helped, hopefully.  Or you give to an individual, believing that what you are doing for them might be enough to change something.  The trouble with organizations, as we all know, is that there is waste and differences in priorities.  Our money may not go where we would like it to go.  I would like to think that my money would be directly transformed into full tummies for orphans, a non-leaky roof, or an education for bright and committed students.  But, there are administrators and accountants and cleaning people and groundskeepers and security guards and cooks etc. etc. to be paid.  (Of course, every time you employ somebody here, you improve something drastically. 

 

And then sometimes we find individuals who seem to have a special spark or some extra glimmer of promise and we would desperately like to see them succeed.  Does it make the most sense to help those who have the best chance of making it?  Or will they make it anyway, without our help? 

 

Before we came, Ruth and Tom told us to tell everyone that asked for money that all of our money went to MCV and it is certainly a worthy project and organization.  But who is dropping between the cracks?  Who might be also help?  However, if we say yes to one, the news spreads like wild fire and  then we are beset with request after request.  Kids are constantly asking us for a pen or for a biscuit (cookie) and I would desperately like to just give it to them.  I would like to make them a little bit happier, but if I do, literally 100 kids would be down here in our yard clamoring for a biscuit or a pencil.  It is a very difficult position to be in, the constant struggle between wanting to help and not knowing the best way to do that. 

 

Which brings me to the question that Mark and I are constantly asking for both ourselves and for us as a family.  What exactly are we doing here?  When I ask Tim he says that we are here having a part time vacation-mission-teaching English-getting to know people-and whatever.  But, I guess that when I ask that question, what I am really asking is, “Are we making a difference?”  My spirituality tells me that we are definitely making a difference because any time we offer respect, kindness or interest in another we are making a difference.  We make a difference for the other, for ourselves and for the entire world.  Some may make it strange, but I truly believe that every choice to bring positive energy into the world in the form of a smile, a welcome, a blessing or a small kindness shifts the world just a little bit toward the positive side.  I have made the world a better place.  But when faced with the great need here, I feel desperate to do more, to save a life, to be that moment in someone’s life that sets them on a new path that leads to life instead of death, abundance rather than poverty, hope instead of despair.  And every day I wonder if any of the things that we are doing are causing that to happen.  And we must continue to wonder and to ask the questions.