This is the question that I have to ask my self over and over again. How do you take control and bring order to chaos? How do you allow chaos to surround you without becoming angry and frustrated yourself? What do you do when chaos is in control?
I took a team of Americans to Nsoko on Friday. It was a Seattle sort of day, gray clouds covering the mountains and drizzling rain falling steadily. The red dirt of Nsoko just formed a mud that caked the bottom of our shoes (when we left I had orange peels hidden in the middle of the mud on the bottom of my flip flops).
When we arrive the team lets me know that they brought things that they want to hand out to the children. We all went under the only bit of cover that there was. While we waited for the gogos (grandmothers) to arrive I sang a couple of songs with the children, asked them what they remembered from last week (the Christmas party – that we talked about Jesus), and told them that the team was here to bless them because the Lord wanted to bless them. Only one of the gogos who works at the care point was able to come, but it was good to have her with crowd control. So we decided to line the children up and hand out little bags of sweets and toys that the team had brought. We started with the little ones first, boys and girls and then got ready to hand stuff out to the bigger kids. . .
There was some of the team who decided to start handing out stuff to the children who were still waiting in line and even to children who had already gone through the line. Now I understand that people have a lot of compassion for the children and people here, I do too. But things have to be done a little differently when you are working with people who have a poverty mentality. Because what happened is what happens every time, chaos took over. All of a sudden we had all of the guys that we had asked to wait outside until the children received something rushing in once the children were done trying to get anything that they could reach. There were people everywhere, and I think there were four times as many hands as there were people! I saw some with three or four of the same item while others had none. There was just a loud hum of noise as people were asking for stuff. I did the only thing I knew to do, I asked everyone to be quiet (which you must first raise your voice so that they can hear you). I then told all of the adults that this wasn’t working! That I can’t bring teams to hand out things if they are going to act this way, I need them to be the example for the children. We knew that everyone had already received at least one item so we packed everything else away to bring back another day.
It’s hard to explain all that goes through your head on days like this. There is a part of me that says I don’t want to give things out anymore, I am tired of watching the older children and adults take the things that we give to the little ones and eat or play with it themselves. I am tired of people always begging and asking even when I know that they already have one, or when they know I don’t have what they are asking for. I am tired of the noise that takes over, of little children being knocked over and stepped on because the children and youth are pushing to get whatever we are passing out. But I know that these children and even the adults only get what we give them. I know that I am not giving out for my own pleasure, but because we are blessing the people of Nsoko. I am beginning to see more and more that we should not just want to bless and hold the little ones, but that the older kids and the youth need our attention just as much if not more! I can’t expect them to go out and ‘get a job’, because there are no jobs for them to get. They act the way that they do because they are not expected to ever act any differently, no one expects any better from them, no one affirms them when they do right, and no one has shown them how to act.
We will wait awhile before we hand things out at the care point again. Not because I don’t want to or because I am angry with the people down there. But because I don’t want them to start to think that every time we come down we are going to bring toys, sweets, or clothes. We will keep bringing fruit down, but it will be a couple of months before we take anything else down. I am really praying that God will provide so that I can get a vehicle to be able to go down more often. Because at this point the only way I can see the chaos disappearing is by building relationships with the children and community members around the care point. Without them knowing me and being able to trust what I say they have no reason to listen to anything that I say. I will keep praying and asking that the Lord will show me how to build these relationships and show the children and adults that they are princes and princesses, which don’t need to beg anymore. And that the Lord to bring people who are ready to make the commitment to Nsoko- who have a desire and passion to sit in the dirt in order to love those that the world has forgotten.
