A week ago I was trying to stop myself from falling asleep in the supper club after having spent several hours building our lovely home for the weekend. Like Jimmy, I can’t really say that I’m a different person this week - the experience didn’t change who I am, but I learnt a lot.
The Monday before ’stump I was discussing slum survivor with my small group, and someone commented that they already knew that living in a slum would be awful - they didn’t need to spend a weekend doing it to find out. And they were right. In fact, the nature of slum survivor - it being a simulation - meant that the weekend wasn’t awful. The food was decent (Tucker will disagree with me of course) and the community was excellent, and we all got to go home at the end. So the one thing I probably didn’t learn was how hard slum-life can be.
So, what did I learn? I learnt how deeply poverty can affect every part of your life. While the rest of my church group had breakfast prepared for them, we had to cook our own. And cooking on a metho stove is pretty slow, so we ended up late to the gathering on Saturday morning. No one who saw us walk in would have known that it was economics that had made us late, but it was. While other stumpers were enjoying the comedy debate we were working hard to rebuild our road, and while some were making balloon animals, we were selling paper bags. We were dirty and smelly and we were constantly busy, just trying to get by. Our slum kept us separated from the rest of ’stump in more than just geography.
I learnt that there is still “wealth” even in a slum. Our family built the largest house, but we had the smallest stove and no lids for our saucepans. Other families could cook more food, faster. And it bothered me. I didn’t like that other people had “more” than I did, when they hadn’t done anything to deserve it. I didn’t want my family to suffer.
I learnt that the billion people living in slums are real people, with real lives and real families. We try to forget that because it makes it easier for us to go about our comfortable lives without having to worry about them. Lots of people from my church were are stump, and they were all keen to help me out. They offered me food and coffee, and it was greatly appreciated (the offer that is - I didn’t take the food and coffee). They were worried that I would be cold at night. They were uncomfortable with the situation I was in. I had a name and a face and they had to acknowledge my presence. But there are a billion people in exactly that same situation for every day of their life, but they have no name, they have no face, and it’s easy to dismiss them as someone else’s problem.
When the collection was taken for Micah Challenge on Sunday night, it meant something more to me than it had ever done before. This time I was one of those people who needed to see the Millennium Development Goals become a reality. I knew that living in a slum was going to be hard, what I didn’t realise was how personal it would be.
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