"i close my eyes and try to see the world unbroken underneath"

Being in Ghana is hard because you are not sheltered from the seemingly never-ending physical hardships present in the world. In many ways, I feel like it is easier to distance yourself from the problems of the world when in America (NOT that America doesn’t have its issues, but just that poverty is often more easily hidden there, especially in the circles I usually travel in). Every day here, you will see or walk past people begging for food, malnourished children, and row after row of shacks. I have seen people bathing in the sewers and eating out of the garbage.

Seeing things like this so often has made me really question what is wrong with the world today. One day, one of my professors remarked about the fact that famine is not a physical issue of not having enough food, but rather a STRUCTURAL issue -- there is enough food on the planet, it's just not being distributed fairly. Evidence points to this unequal distribution present in many other areas of life – clean water, housing, and health care, just to name a few.

The title of this post is from a Jars of Clay song called ‘Waiting for the World to Fall.’ That line – “I close my eyes and try to see the world unbroken underneath” always REALLY hits me. This is what I so desperately want to do -- see the world unbroken…without poverty, without injustice, without sin. In conversations with people here, I am often told (from my self-proclaimed pessimist and realist friends) “Amanda that sounds nice, but it will never happen.” Even though I know that is true, it is just so difficult to know about and see such horrible things and to feel as if things will never change. God has been teaching me something important lately – that it is necessary to enter into the suffering and brokenness of the world in order to be a transformational agent in the world. That, yes, it is important to be hopeful, and I am hopeful that things will change because I believe in a God who is over the whole world. However, to always be optimistic and not see the world in its true state – brokenness – does not allow us to truly understand the reality of the state of our world.

Throughout my time here there have been specific points where I think God has given me eyes to view the world the way He does. One such time was when a girl Ayisha left Street Girls Aid. She is from Cote d’Ivoire, and I spent more than a month teaching her how to read and write in French. Along the way, I gained her trust and started learning more of her story. She grew up in the slums of Abidjan, the former capital of Cote d’Ivoire and the current largest city, located along the coast. She went to a few years of school, but then was not allowed to go anymore because her mom needed her to help her with her market stand. For reasons that I am still unsure of – all she would tell me is that she didn’t want to be around her mother – Ayisha ran away at the age of 16 and crossed the border into Ghana without any identification by telling them she was 12 years old and forgot her identification papers. She worked for several years there before she got sick, was taken to a hospital, and due to being unable to pay hospital bills, ran away to Accra to try and find a new job there. She got pregnant and had her baby on the streets of Accra, and was later referred to the Street Girls Aid refuge house after some agency worker had found her and her malnourished baby on the streets. When I said goodbye to her, I gave her my contact information but received nothing in return, because as a slum-dweller, Ayisha has no address. She also does not have money to buy a cell phone and has no email address or access to a computer.

The day after saying goodbye to Ayisha, I sat in my room at the university and cried for hours. She is a beautiful woman who has been trapped by the cycle of poverty. She is incredibly intelligent – she speaks four languages and is somewhat literate in English and now French. Her dreams included finishing school and being a seamstress -- but Ayisha knows, just as I do, that the possibility of these dreams being fulfilled is slim to none unless she has outside assistance. She will most likely always be poor.

I am not trying to condemn her to a life of poverty, but to open my eyes - and yours - to the reality of the situation of many of the poor throughout the world. Ayisha will sell items at a market stand, which will probably earn her the bare minimum needed to feed herself and her baby Christiana. I cried because I would most likely never see or hear from her again. I cried because I wanted a life for her where her and her child could be adequately fed, where Ayisha would be able to pay the school fees needed for Christiana to go to school, and where Ayisha would be able to finish school and learn how to be a seamstress. I cried because it is unfair that I grew up and have always had a wealth of opportunities at my feet while Ayisha grew up in a slum with little to no opportunities. I cried because I was angry at globalization and international policies that have, in part, created or exacerbated poverty in the world. I cried because some have more than enough food to feed their families and Ayisha didn't. I cried because the world is broken. And I cried because it is hard to face reality and see the world as broken as it is.

Yes, I cried for Ayisha and I know will continue to cry for her and the plight of the poor and disadvantaged in the world. But I am thankful that God has taught me the importance of facing reality, the necessity of calling sin for what it is, and the value of being broken for the things that also break His heart. And though I know I will continue to cry for the broken state of our world, I know that there is a God who is big enough to still be good even in the face of all that is bad. I also know that there are still glimmers of hope that illuminate the darkness -- and that I have the ability to choose to be one of those glimmers of hope every day.

Ayisha & Christiana