I wanted to meet with the widows right away.
Balla, Diram and Madina (left to right) are three of the women whose husbands were killed in July’s attack. (Two others have moved away to live with relatives, and the sixth is out of the area right now.)
In GHNI we bring help to the most hurting. Well, in poor villages of poor societies there’s no one more hurting than the widows. What do they do for income? Who will take care of them? How do they raise their children all alone now… with nothing?
Balla, Diram and Madina each have 4 children. Balla just delivered her fourth last week. Do the math. Her husband was killed when she was five weeks pregnant.
I sat with them for nearly an hour, and Habiba translated. I talked some. Mostly I just held their hands and hugged their children and cried with them. I gave them my heart. I gave them some money. We promised we’d stand with them.
This idea of standing with oppressed people is more powerful than I’ve ever realized. This tribe we’re working with is among the lowest class in Kenya. They don’t hold imporant positions, they are constantly taken advantage of in business dealings, they are attacked by other tribes.
We held a “hope dinner” with the village last night (I bought the food… $150 fed the village). I spoke to everyone and Wubshet translated. I poured out my heart to them. I told them how Mary and I and many others had grieved with them ever since the day we learned of the attack. I shared my anger that what they experienced should NEVER happen to ANY village ANYWHERE in the world. I begged them to not give up, to not take revenge, and to begin dreaming dreams again for their lives and village.
And then I PROMISED them we’d stand with them. That’s when THEY cried.
Poor villages in the lowest class of poor societies feel like no one stands with them.
One of the chief elders spoke after me and said thru his own tears, “We are the abandoned ones. We wonder if anyone sees us. Our own fellow Kenyans even kill us. But we thank God that Wubshet and Habiba and people from across the world care. They are the ones who stand with us.”
Villages like Gambella keep changing me. And I believe it’s for the good. There’s way too much in me, just as in all of us, that wants to be included with those at the “top”: the successful, well-connected, attractive and desirable. But I’m finding more and more that what the wise sages thru history have said is true: there’s actually more life found thu standing with those at the bottom.
I think… without realizing it… that I’ve chosen where my feet will be planted.
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