It is hard to be a voice for the voiceless.....somehow it is eventually drowned out by other dominating or attention-grabbing headlines to the point that I realise it is just a whisper that few will strain to hear.
Sometimes I am discouraged,
Sometimes I am exhausted.....
Sometimes I don't even want to speak any more as I feel like a beggar - Desperate!
I have sat on the streets next to those who live there day and night, watched the cars drive by, the people in a rush, avoiding eye contact because acknowledgement demands a response.
Eventually, you just blend in as part of the background and disappear!
Lost and invisible.
So why am I writing again....??
Because I am so limited...!
If I don't speak up - perhaps I might fade, dissolve and become invisible too!
Confessed not as a threat but a self-aware danger that lurks in the shadows.
If I don't say it how it is, then I have succumbed to my fear...and guilt for not having tried everything I can.
Do I bang the seemingly silent drum again?
How Do You Choose?
After 16 years I am familiar with poverty, it is outside the doorway, next to the mall, beside the bank, in front of the park, down the alley, behind the school wall...in every direction - no escape unless you blink momentarily, or worse; look away!
I can walk, or drive, or ride.....and it's there - in my face...unrelenting.
This week I had to choose..... horrible choices-----Who do you help?
The widowed grandmother supporting 3 abandoned grandchildren in her ramshackle home. She works in a small garden, lives off vegetables and survives on P2000 a month selling what she grows (30 UK pounds or $38 US dollars a month).
The single mother whose husband left.....kids, step-kids, nieces and nephews crammed together in a bamboo hut looking to her to provide, but she doesn't have a job and they are all supposed to go to school next week.
The family who lost everything they owned in a flash flood disaster 6 years ago and have just never recovered and can't make ends meet to feed all the mouths under their one-room roof....children, grandchildren, a baby due next month.
I listen to the stories, swallow my tears, and wonder what I should do?
I just have a limited amount in my hands.....
As much as I pray, or ask, or cry, it hasn't multiplied enough to help each one......
What would YOU do?
