It’s with tears in my eyes that I write this post. I will never forget the children we met it the villages of Soweto and Monde. Watching them play in the dirty water, wearing filthy clothes and no shoes, I can’t help but compare their childhood to how our kids are growing up…or how I grew up for that matter. You can see in their sparkling eyes and glowing smiles that they don’t know how tough their life is. For now, they’re just kids kicking around a deflated ball or playing with sticks and mud.
I wonder if the boy we saw (couldn’t have been any older than Trevor) wrestling a bull to save his families water supply knows how rough his life is. Such a young kid with such a dangerous task. The adults know how rough their lives are. They know how much the drought is effecting their food supply and how the unsanitary living conditions are causing disease. They know the risks of washing their cloths in crocodile infested water because their village has to water resource. They just don’t know how to better their lives. I don’t know if there’s a way out for them either. That’s something Americans just can’t understand. In America, if you choose to use the resources available to you, you CAN better your life. No one HAS to live without electricity, water, food, or shelter their entire lives with no hope for change.
We have such short memories in our culture. I never want to forget how blessed I am. I never want to catch myself complaining about my house when they live in mud huts that wash away in the rain. I am so thankful for clothes to launder and food to buy and prepare and clean up from…the boring tasks we sometimes hate to have to do at home. I hope theses memories will stay with our kids their entire lives. As corrupt as our government is, we’ve got nothin on them. They receive no electricity or water from their government, they must pay for schooling, there are no roads yet they live in a land of abundant resources.
It felt strange taking pictures of their homes and their families in horror at the conditions they live in. They actually urged us to take as many pictures as we could to get the word out about how they’re living. They’re depending on us for school sponsorships, help with housing and building wells. In the Monde village it seems they rely on tourists coming through bringing cooking supplies and clothing. The Lord gave us a world with plenty of food and resources for everyone to live and eat. How in 2016 are these people still living like this? I pray for a change in their government that will clean up the mess their histories have created.
I love the safari pic so cute.