Each day when I walk the streets of Jinja I am confronted with poverty. Unlike Greensboro, NC, it is inescapable here – it smacks you in the face at every corner. In my day to day life in the states, I can simply choose to escape confrontation with the poor unless someone holding a sign asks me for money at a traffic signal. Recently, a boy of about the age of ten has been coming up to me daily with his hopeless, pleading, eyes and saying this simple statement to me: “I am hungry.” He then explains that he is not asking for money, but he wants me to go and buy him something at the store to eat. Sometimes, I give him food. Other times I choose to say: “not today.” We are discouraged here and told not to give these children money and food, but all I can hear is Jesus say: “When I was hungry…”
At the end of this story in the Christian Scriptures, Jesus says: “As you have done to the least of these my brothers you have done this unto me.” This haunts me. I have confronted this same dilemma dozens, if not hundreds, of times in my life in different places in the world, but I find myself in the same confused state and a paralyzation of what to do. I know Jesus said, “the poor you will have with you always,” but living here is a daily, haunting, reminder of this and it makes me want to be a part of bringing God's kingdom to bear here on the kingdom of earth all the more.
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