Another World Outside Your Door

This is a follow-up story to our previous blog posting earlier today. 

Living in Cairo, we become so used to the fast-pace of life and tall buildings blocking the sun, that we forget there is another world outside our door.  Global Health Facts says that 57% of Egypt’s population lives outside urban areas.  Much of Egypt is a great and sprawling desert punctuated with tiny islands of humanity living in villages.  I recently visited some of these villages with Healing Grace Ministries and I will never be the same.  Life in the village has a decidedly different pace and flavor governed more by the calendar than the clock.

These villages are like villages in other parts of the world: narrow dirt streets shared with goats, cows, donkeys, and chickens.  Not a tree or blade of grass such as grace the garden suburbs in Maadi are to be found in these villages.  The buildings are two-story plain block of the same gray-brown color.  Multiple generations live in one and two room flats with cement floors and open windows that do little to keep out the cold or heat or the constant flies.  Occupants sleep on the floor or on wooden benches covered with a thin cushion, if they are fortunate.  One two-year old naps during our visit while flies crawl on his head, yet he doesn’t stir.  (I wonder how does your body learn to do that?  If a mosquito even so much as buzzes my ear in the middle of the night, I bolt up and turn on the light to begin a battle for survival!)  For those raised in a higher standard of living, the sights, sounds, and smells are startling.  But if you were to only look on the surface, you would miss the true heart of these villages.

We sit and talk with these families about their lives.  Some are seasonal farm laborers, others work in quarries, and still others have no job.  Many of them have little education because they had to go to work to help the family survive.  We meet teenagers who are only now going back to school to pick up where they left off years ago.  An older widow tells of begging for food after the family stopped providing for her.  She is slowly going blind, as she has been told it is too late to remove the cataracts robbing her sight.  One man tells the tragic story of his life of many years ago.  He was a highly-skilled tailor until the day a group of men assaulted him and broke his hands and beat his head.  He could no longer work and had to beg, but his now disfigured appearance frightened people away.  His head trauma altered his behavior and he began beating his wife who then began beating the children.  The word desperation doesn’t even begin to describe their situation.  How does a family even begin to recover from such misfortune??

Yet the mother telling this story smiled and talked with remarkable hope and joy, while her husband worked at the sewing machine making a galabeya, running the machine with a chain between two toes.  The difference was that a pastor in the village cared enough to reach out to her traumatized husband and take him to a doctor to receive treatment.  Healing Grace (a local Egyptian ministry that works with and through local Egyptian village churches) came to the village and began to help, giving food so some would not have to beg.  The older widow danced with giddy joy when she received her food bag.  (I recalled with shame my irritation last summer when my new laptop did not arrive on time before I was to return to Egypt.  My attitude had an adjustment after witnessing this scene!)  The local village church and Healing Grace also offered classes on mothering so she could learn how to balance love and discipline instead of beating her children.  Her husband was taught how to be a good husband and father.  He received a loan to purchase a sewing machine so he could begin making a living again with his partially functioning hands.  The village churches and Healing Grace also work to encourage families to keep their children in school.  In some villages they have even provided water filtration systems so the whole village can have clean water and not fall victim to the constant diseases from contaminated water.

When I live in isolated affluence, I need my eyes opened to the rest of the world.  I can share my physical resources, but I also need to share my heart.  I need to see others with less material goods as valuable human beings who have something to offer me.  If I only come to share my resources as a “benevolent” gesture to “those people” so I can feel good about myself, then I miss a greater blessing.  I need to come with humility and see how needy my own heart is.  These people encouraged me and made me feel valued.  They reminded me that an abundance of material goods does not bring happiness.  There is an inexpressible joy and warmth when a little girl sings a song to you that she learned in school.  It puts a new perspective on love—something my hurried world needs much more of!