I think I always knew I should give to “the poor.” But, never really took the time to pursue actually doing it. Since moving to South Africa, I’ve been confronted with the extreme contrasts of the haves and the have nots. Poverty is not hard to find here. Children in tattered clothes begging at the stop lights and in parking lots, men standing on neighborhood street corners with their paintbrushes or saws advertising their trade. Men and women of every age selling items like cell phone chargers or sun shades for your car, bags, sunglasses, watches, cheap children’s toys, steak knife sets, hats, fruit, plastic shoe racks, hangers, I could go on. As they approach your car at the stop light and ask if you would like to buy, as you give them eye contact they come closer, if you say “no, thank you,” they ask for any change, just for some bread, they haven’t eaten all day… Sometimes, I give some small change, or say “not today,” sometimes I lie and say “I don’t have any money.” Sometimes I ignore them completely.
It’s “the poor” who are my friends that require a different response. Moses, the gardener at Pangani (the name of our NieuCommunities site) who has been making bricks on the weekends for over ten years so that he can finally build a brick house- an upgrade from the house of tin he and his extended family have been living in. Jostinah cleans both at Pangani and at our home. What does she think when she spends her days cleaning tile floored rooms with ceiling fans and plastered walls when her home is made of tin that leaks when it rains, is unbearably hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter?
Or Jonas, Valrey and Motlope’s two room tin house that is also home for a neice whose single mom can’t take care of her after school because she is still working and a nephew who is an orphan and has been poorly cared for by other family members in the past. Their home is in a newly established area with no electricity. They walk each day to the spigot to fill up plastic containers and use a wheel barrow to transport the water back to their home to use for drinking, cooking and bathing.
I have friends who are poor, I’ve been in their homes, I’ve seen first hand how much I have and how little they have. I am compelled to give. How can I not? How can I go out to a nice dinner with my husband knowing that my friends have never, and likely will never, enjoy a meal that cost more than a single day’s pay…$24! When my friend tells me her daughter is struggling at school because she is having trouble with her vision, my only response can be to take her daughter to the optometrist and pay the $32 for her eye exam. When it’s been raining all week and my friend can’t get her baby’s cloth diapers to dry, I give her the $14 she asks me to loan her so she can buy a package of disposable diapers. When a young boy who begs on the street asks me for money for bread, I buy him a meal at KFC and go without my cappuccino that day. When I look at my home and all of the redecorating and upgrading I dream of, I can’t help but remember my friends and ask myself, “does my kitchen really need to look like the photo I saw in House and Garden magazine?” and then I stop and thank God that I have electricity, a sink with running water, and appliances that work.
There are many excellent organizations where you can send your money. Find one you believe in and make a significant monthly commitment or one time gift. But, don’t stop there, reach out to those you pass in the store or at the gas station or at your child’s school. Ask God to open your eyes to those in need around you. If you don’t see them, go find them. Make a friend. Giving is a necessary response when you are face to face with “the poor.”
