Yesterday was supposed to be more of the same. We on the medical team have a good routine – we get on the bus, the bus travels for an hour or so, we get off the bus, we do our work and then we get back on the bus and go home. We don’t know were we are going, but we all trust that the magic bus will get us there.
Yesterday was different. We got on the bus, and about fifteen minutes we got off the bus. We were not in a batay, but in a barrio. Here is the difference: a batay is surrounded by sugar cane and is very rural. It is a small village. A barrio is in a city, is not quite a village, but is more a neighborhood. We had to set up in a small, dimly lit house and work there.
Once the work started it was the same as every other day. People are sick, people need medicine, and we were there to help. At the end of the day the leader of an community organization (a community organizer, if you will), asked me via interpreter what the experience was like serving the poor in a Latin American country. I gave two answers.
1) I wish we could do more. This church has been coming here for ten years and doing more or less the same thing. I don’t know if conditions have improved, but my assumption is that they did not. It feels like we are just putting a band-aid on a gaping wound. The leader of the organizer went on for a while about the lack of interest and concern that the government showed. The system is broken, and I wonder if we are enabling its brokenness.
2) The poor are the poor here, in Mexico, in Providence, in Boston, in Europe, and elsewhere. Suffering is suffering, and we (Christians) are called to reach out to those who are suffering. I remember one funeral I did last year where the deceased was remembered with this line: see a need, fill a need.
In the end, I am glad I got to go on this trip. I don’t think I would say it was life changing, but I would say that it is life enriching and fulfilling. On this trip I was reminded of the suffering of the cross and the glory of the resurrection in a real and tangible way. God is good, all the time, we just need to show people that goodness.
Oh, I also had the opportunity to hold a 2 month old girl for a while. As a father of four boys, that was a wonderful experience. Pics of that to follow.
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