Personal Freedom; not everybody wants it!

Out to play Saturday morning at sunrise, home before dark.

Revolution and Freedom: 
 
   Children and dogs run free in some of the places I visit.  It makes you long for childhood again.  Kids are safe, loved, watched over by the adults who shape their world.  Adults make the rules, make the schedule, supply the things that are needed as best they can.  And who watches over the adults?  Communities do, I suppose, and government watches over it all.

Now we arrive at the question of personal freedom.  There are many cultures that want to be closer to the childlike life where they are watched over and cared for.  Then there are countries like my own that are pretty emphatic about government 'of the people', etc.  We presume that our version of freedom is universally desired, but the truth is otherwise.  Many have come and been overwhelmed by the number of choices and decisions required to make it through any given day in  America.  They've been stunned, overloaded, and gone back where they started where rules and choices are more narrowly shaped. 

I'd prefer a safer, more stable and predictable world perhaps, but until mercy and justice reign, I'll stick with democracy and government by the people.  As a form of government, it sucks; it's just better than the alternatives.

Freedom, then, isn't a universal value, as a friend pointed out the other day.  But fairness, justice, mercy, compassion; such things call to us so insistently.

Africa's February, Egypt's Turmoil, Opportunities everywhere to lend a hand.

"We need these people in our lives as much as they need us.  It's a symbiosis."  

It took me a few years to understand that those in sub-Saharan Africa whom I had come to love gave me so much more than I could ever give them.  It's a shattering realization, but sorely needed.

From the far side of the African continent, friends in Egypt report on the revolution when they can.  Internet from Alexandria is intermittent.  Folks there are frightened; men go out at night to help the army protect the communities.  Food is scarce, money is gone.  Many have died, many more injured.  The streets aren't safe.  Journalists have been beaten, cameras smashed.  Suspicion leads repeatedly to government misconduct.  Christian and Muslim protesters unite against the corrupt practices of the government and police.  Today was the big day, but we can't communicate at the moment.  Troubling.

Ah, Saturday morning's news tells of tens of thousands allowed to enter Liberation Square, peaceful demonstrations, protection by the army, ....
ها! وقد نجا مصر يوم آخر ، وربما لبضعة آلاف من بعد سنوات أخرى.

Lending a hand

We got an update from Africa on our friends.  They were in a tough place after dad's traffic accident.  Medical bills and no resources had left them struggling to survive in spite of the fact that they are good, hardworking folks.  Introduced by a mutual friend, they graciously let us lend a hand.  It's been a tough year, but they are courageously moving ahead, and we get to be a small part of their effort.
 
The picture here is the family's Christmas pose; typically formal, only the younger daughter smiles, but the family is together, healthy, and happy, which we all get to share.  What a joy.  Read more of their story HERE  They're great folks.

But do we have to go to Africa to lend a hand?  Is there maybe a similar family just down the street that could use a friend?

Nobility and Poverty

A close tie exists between my friends in
São Tomé and Príncipe and the nearby country of Cabo Verde (Cape Verde).  In the years following independence in 1975, circumstances and economics moved folks around a bit with a mixing of the two populations resulting in family and cultural ties.  Both were Portuguese colonies and busy trading centers for African slaves.  The horror of the slavery era left a difficult legacy.

Unemployment is 20+%, and around 30% of folks live in severe poverty.

This young lady (photo, left) is a street vendor in Cape Verde.

With a population of 500,000 or so, Cape Verde is the larger of the two countries, but they have much in common both in history and in current circumstance.  They share a common poverty, but fortunately, they share a common grace and nobility as they labor to rise above the slavery and colonial impediments of their past.  A lot of really fine folks live in both of these little countries, folks you'd enjoy knowing, living next door to, and having your kids walk to school with theirs.

Want to see the world from a different viewpoint?  Go see for yourself.

Djibouti in January

So what are you supposed to do?  A little girl asked if she could watch our car while we ate lunch.  It's a bit of a scam, of course, but it's an honest attempt to survive.  She couldn't have been more than seven or eight.

So we ate lunch at a Chinese place; sat and talked business for about an hour.  When we came out, our little security guard was there with a smile and a little hand held out.  Her mom and little brother were there, too.  Homeless.  I gave the kid about $12 which is huge, considering.  Without even looking to see what I'd given them, both she and her mom asked for more.  I gave it to them.  They're living on the street, trying to survive.  What am I supposed to do, God?

I sort of understand the kid or her mom.  My discomfort is not their fault.  Their story will be like so many others.  I'm angry, though, that I'm staying in a luxurious hotel with hot and cold running attendants, and three blocks away, this precious mother and her children can barely feed themselves.  It hurts to know.  I'll go by that block again tomorrow.  I hope they're there, and I hope they're not.  If they are, I'll stop.  But what can I do?  This lady and her kids are just like us.

Hand-carried stuff...

My friends have asked me from time to time to bring them things from the States that they can't get locally.  They don't impose; they always ask politely and insist on paying the costs.  It took me awhile to understand the economics.

For instance, The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis costs $20-$30 for the English edition of all 7 books in a collection.  In Portuguese for my friends in Sao Tome, it costs $220 or more for the same small collection.  It has to come from Portugal by air freight or be hand-carried, because there's no book store in the country.

We're so used to finding what we want and buying online.  My friends in Sao Tome can't go online and buy because nobody ships to Sao Tome.  Nobody in Sao Tome has a credit card either; nobody there accepts credit cards except the two big tourist hotels, as far as I've been able to find.  Even the car rental places  expect cash.

If I buy a box of books for the school (8 bibles the principal asked for), it costs $40 to mail it to him, and it takes weeks to get there, and it's not very reliable.

Tennis shoes, dry-erase markers, ballpoint pens, small electrical components.... I've hand-carried a few laptop computers for friends.  Usually young men trying to make the next step up in their education.  Their folks save up for it, and then run into the difficulty of actually buying one.  Local purchase, if what they want is available, will cost twice or more what the European price might be.  Even more if compared to the U.S. prices.  It's a tough problem.  And it changes the way the local economy works.

I usually carry as many books as will fit in my backpack; I buy them at the mall in Lisbon (and don't look at the price), and give them as gifts to my scholarship kids or to the elementary school.  They use the bibles in the classroom.  Encyclopedic texts on science, biology, math, etc., are a big deal.  Bible stories, too.  :)