Our trip to Bahir Dar seemed like a shedding of layers of civilization. While Evan and I had been talking almost non-stop, we'd left the United States and our native language of English. Then, we'd left Amsterdam, our final link to our familiar Western culture. When we arrived in Nairobi, you couldn't drink the water, but the airport seemed like a normal place - until we walked onto the tarmac to board our next plane. We were surrounded by desert, and a few tall trees in the distance, unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Flying into Addis was another shock; I had never seen an entire area of tin roof shacks. Animals (and people) were wandering through the bumpy streets as we tried to drive around. We stayed with the Daughters of Charity there to recover from traveling for a few days before the final leg of our journey to Bahir Dar.
When we arrived in Bahir Dar, the airport consisted of a small building and a tarmac. We walked into the building, and almost immediately we were at the front door. We were greeted warmly at the airport, our bags were packed up, and we were on our way to the DOC's compound.
When we arrived, we were immediately welcomed to a coffee ceremony - the traditional Ethiopian celebration. Everyone gathers around, the coffee is roasted, and then the guests of honor break the bread to share with everyone gathered. That was my first experience of being present, and I'll never forget the way everyone laughed, told stories, and sat around sipping coffee and eating bread for what seemed like hours. They didn't care that we couldn't speak Amharic (the native language of Ethiopia) or that they couldn't speak English. We laughed and smiled and enjoyed the delicious coffee and bread that had been baked in banana leaves. I wondered if I'd ever seen people that happy before.
Then we started teaching - the first day of school, all of the children greeted us in song, and presented flowers to us they had picked. We held our first "field day," and spent the whole morning laughing, playing clapping and dancing games, and soccer, and attempting to learn a little bit about them while they constantly studied us. That day faded into a normal routine; we'd teach in the morning, have lunch with the Daughters, and then would either spend time with the workers in the compound, work with individual tutoring groups, help the Daughters with various projects, or just spend some leisurely time enjoying a walk, or a coffee ceremony, or a wonderful conversation that would last the whole afternoon without realizing it. Time almost ceased to exist - we were welcomed as part of the family, and simultaneously as honored guests. We came to serve, and were constantly being served. All the while, the language barrier never stopped anyone from just sitting and enjoying each others' company.
My 5th grade students were like any other 5th grade class - boisterous, hormonal, excitable - and yet, there was something so profoundly different. We'd be having a perfectly normal lesson, and a student would be so hungry, they'd try to eat the play-doh. Or, a student would be hiding their leg, only for me to discover it had a large gash that had become infected from lack of care. I began to notice that many students wore the same shirt every single day. Some didn't have shoes. And yet, when the students would receive their lunch, many would inevitably try to offer it to me. One student gave me a very tiny note written on a scrap of paper, carefully folded around her gift - a small red plastic monkey - possibly her only toy in this world. Another student, one of my brightest, wrote a beautiful note asking me to stay in Ethiopia and be her teacher forever, because she loved me. Several girls spent hours one afternoon braiding and re-braiding my hair, all the while giggling about how strange my hair was.
These different ideas constantly wrestled in my soul. How could people who seemed to have nothing by my standards, be showing me joy and me generosity?
It was like a slowly illuminating light bulb had just started to turn on. The St. Vincent quote on many St. John's campus ministry t-shirts, "No one is too rich to receive, or too poor to give," was being lived out, right in front of my eyes. I realized I had seen "the poor" I was serving as separate from myself - when all the while, God was tugging at my heart to see the same-ness. The humanity. Girls my brother's age who gushed over his picture, the handsome American. Boys pulling the hair of the girl in front of them. Children playing games they had invented with no toys. The words "brother" and "sister" and "friend" slowly started coming to mind, instead of "student," "child," or "poor man."
Through these experiences, and through reflection with my community, I slowly started to realize why St. Vincent de Paul is still a big deal, 350 years later. One of my favorite quotes from St. Vincent is, “It is only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give to them.” In our abundant Western culture, it can be easy to feel compelled to reach out to those in need. What I often find harder is to see “the poor” as our brothers and sisters, men and women made in the image and likeness of God – and to see how hard it can be for them to accept our help. To see that a conversation, a friendship, can mean more than a loaf of bread ever could. That being treated with dignity and respect is what makes us feel alive, and feel human.
One thing is for sure; if you run into St. Vincent de Paul's words in action, you can't go back. These experiences captivated me, led me to give a whole year of my life to join the Gateway Vincentian Volunteers, and led to my applying for VLM 2011.
That is the real beginning of this story.
No comments:
Post a Comment