Injustice

Tuesday morning I meet with the NYM interns for a Bible study. We’re supposed to be looking at poverty and justice but we start off with 1 John 4 talking about love…and 3 hours later we’re still on it! The idea of “agape” unconditional love is quite a tough concept to get your head round as it isn’t really a natural human emotion…so it gave us food for thought. In the evening we had a marathon meeting to talk about the future of NYM and Fuhomi given the past year’s performance and current financial challenges. We made some tough decisions which was good…although hard at the same time. I’m confident about the future if we can get the financial resources we need. I love how passionate the workers are and how committed to these women…it’s kind of novel to see so much love for women who can be, quite frankly, very frustrating and hard to work with. In the evening I was chatting to my host’s house help - I’ve been really moved by her. Her daughter is extremely physically disabled…she had celeberal malaria when she was a baby and now has very little control over her body. She can’t feed herself, walk or go to the toilet. She’s 10 years old. It’s heart wrenching really as she’s a prisoner in her own body but her mum can’t afford a wheelchair for her or to send her to special school so in the mornings, the poor girl is left on the sofa as her mum goes off to work. She’s locked in the house as both parents are out working. In the evening at around 6.30 her mum gets back - and then bathes her as she’s urinated on the sofa. She’s still using baby nappies as they can’t afford adult diapers. That family need some kind of miracle…you can see the love that lady has for her daughter when she talks about her… you see this little lady struggling to lift up her daughter who is now getting quite big and you feel something is wrong with the world. Something is so wrong in a world where an intelligent young girl is forced to lie in her own urine all day whilst her mother is out working hard all day, a mother who cares for her so much - simply because there are no systems to support her. If this isn’t injustice I don’t know what is.