Giving ≠ Higher Living Standards

A few days ago, I went with our pastors to a retreat home in Goa to have a time of learning and relaxation.  At the retreat home, I went into the bathroom and just filled a bucket.  I marvelled at the fact that I could fill a bucket for my shower directly inside the bathroom & I didn’t have to carry it from a water tank outside.  In the middle of my bucket-and-pail shower, I turn the shower head’s knob and to my surprise, a constant stream of water flows out.  I have been so used to showering with pail and bucket, and no working shower head for the past 5 months that I didn’t even SEE the shower head until halfway through my shower.  The next morning, I walked into the bathroom and filled a bucket.  I only remembered the working shower head after my shower.

This experience got me reflecting on the challenges of bringing higher living standards to underprivileged individuals.  When I was living in the outskirts of Bangalore for my DTS, my friends and I became quite close to some neighbouring kids that live in poverty.  We had fun with them, took them to Sunday School, treated them to snacks, and met some of their needs.  They had no underwear and slippers.  A few days after we bought it for them, we asked where their slippers were, as we saw them running around barefooted.  They had left their slippers at home because they weren’t used to wearing them.  The rest of the 2 months my friends and I were there, they only wore the slippers for special occasions when we went to town.  They also didn’t always wear their underwear & lost them 1 by 1.  Apparently the 4-year-old boy would throw his underwear over the fence.

I’ve seen a group of boys at a children’s home blessed with a tiled floor.  They had a concrete floor before.  What’s sad was that after some time, their white tiled floor became dirty.  They swept it every day, but a lot of the dust and garbage was swept into the corner of the room.  Apparently, this is common.  I’ve seen dirty corners in a lot of homes.

Out of our concern for children who lack nutritious meals, my friends and I have cooked meals with lots of fibre and vegetables.  The kids looked at the big chunks of vegetables & wondered what they were.  Seriously.  They didn’t even recognize the vegetables on their plates.  They were used to vegetables cut into tiny pieces and cooked so long in spices that the individual pieces were indistinguishable and the colour of the vegetables took on the colour of the sauce.  While they gingerly chewed the vegetables, their faces registered shock and then disgust.  How do you introduce a fibrous and nutritious diet to people who are used to eating mounds of white rice to satiate their hunger?  How do you begin to teach them to savour a healthy serving of crunchy vegetables when they’re used to 2 bites of soft vegetable—sometimes even put through the blender—for each meal?

A sad insight I have gained is that you can give people the best facilities and various gifts to raise their living standards, but sometimes it’s done in vain.  What they need simultaneously is someone to live with them and teach them how to use and maintain the facilities as well as the gifted items.  Raising the living standards of those who are underprivileged or uneducated is not as simple as giving a few hundred dollars or building a children’s home.  It’s not as simple as cooking a balanced meal for the malnourished.  It takes unconditional love, unlimited patience, and constant education.  It takes diligent surveillance and a healthy dose of nagging. 

“Where are your chapels (sandals)?  You need to go and get them from the back porch now.”

“Come on, I know you don’t like beans, but you can’t eat all the rice with sauce and leave the vegetables on your plate.”

“Don’t put your wet towel back on the shelf even if it’s folded nicely!  Hang it outside if it’s sunny and inside the laundry room if it’s not.”

“Stop!  This scrub is used for the shower floor, and that one for the toilet.  If you use 1 scrub for everything there’ll be cross contamination. (like they know what that means.  I usually just say “chi chi” to indicate that it’s dirty)”

“Who swept the room?  How come all the dirt and candy wrappers got swept onto the back veranda?  And how come the corner is so dusty?”

“No, don’t dump the pants you peed in into the laundry basket.  Put it onto the back veranda so we can wash it.”

I know there are common frustrations of mothers, but the challenge increases exponentially when you have 17 children as well as a huge language barrier between you and them.  What makes it more fun is no running water and fantastic inventions like vacuum cleaners and washing machines.  Yes, there is still value in gifts to raise one’s living standards.  At the same time, acquiring a vacuum cleaner and a washing machine will require more teaching and training and close supervision.  In short, we need more staff!