Poverty

So it took me a summer and a half, but I'm finally beginning to understand poverty. Yay! Only, not. See, there isn't much in Lakeview, no grocery store, no school, nothing for the kids or adults to do except fish in the nearby lake. Anyway, I was really excited last year when they started a feeding program at the local abandoned elementary and I figured those kids would be ok and were really getting the nutrition they needed and I didn't have to worry about them. Well, last week we decided to go with the kids to the lunch to hang out with them some more. The entire meal consisted of a scoop of tuna salad, a slice of bread, a half-pint of milk, chips, and cookies. No fruit, no vegetables, not even a full size sandwich. The people in this program are doing what they to keep the kids fed and healthy, but when the poor give to the poor, only so much can be done. I was really discouraged when I realized how little these kids receive daily, especially since that will be the only meal some of those kids will get that day.

My epiphany was still developing until I stepped into the community center in Elaine. This building has been an on-going project by a local pastor that asked for our help in assisting the kids in his area and wants to run a community center out there. We've done everything we can to help while still allowing him to be in charge, but yet again, this man is just as poor as everyone else around. Plumbing was just completed in this building, and as soon as I stepped into the bathrooms I balked because they looked worse than most gas station bathrooms, but he was just so proud of them. To the pastor, this was a huge accomplishment of him giving to his community, but I've been so spoiled that my first thought was to turn my nose up at it. Most, if not all, of these children will never know the lifestyle I've lived, the choice the say no to food I don't like or even the ability to find a better bathroom. These people take what they have, and they're proud of it. I can't help but think of the woman who gave so little to the offering, but it was everything she had a was praised for it.

You know, that all sounds so nice, but there's a nasty side too. Because impoverished people often have no "things" to own, they instead own people. After the picnic last friday we hung out with one of the mothers that had come and her 5 year old son. We played with the little boy mostly and just acted silly with him. Kids camp starts at 6, so we asked how old he would be next year and he wasn't really sure so we tried counting with him and I'm not sure if he was just playing around or not, but he couldn't figure out what came after 5. At that point his mother started yelling at him, like seriously angry. I was shocked at her outburst and didn't know how to respond but the boy finally told us he would be 6 after a minute. What really got me though happened the next week. One of the people in Lakeview told me when you fight with one of his brothers, you fight with the whole family, which didn't mean much to me until he messaged me and told me he was fighting with one of the other kids there. When we went to Lakeview yesterday I was a little wary of what we would find, but everything seemed normal. That is, until, the 6 year old brother of the guy who told me about the fighting refused to go find the kid that his brother had been fighting with and invite him to play with us because he was mad at him. This boy was six, he had no reason to be mad at this other boy, it was simply because his brother told him that's the way it was. It's so frustrating that all these rules start at such a young age, and who knows whether this will all blow over, or if it could develop into a real feud that could prevent us from reaching all of these children. I still don't know where I stand with any of this, or what I'm learning, but I'm beginning to see things that I never noticed before.