Spanning the Divide

Today there was a moment when I found myself sitting on top of a mountain in Colorado thinking about Tukano, a 12 year old boy who I met in Ethiopia just over a week ago.

Tukano has moderate cerebral palsy. He can walk, but unsteadily, and needs assistance coping with steps and uneven ground. He also has considerable associated learning difficulties, but is always smiling and keen to be involved in everything going on.

Tukano’s mum was a prostitute and, through the Women At Risk programme, has now found a new way of life and a new means of earning income by making jewellery beads from rolled up paper.

Tukano’s home consists of a tiny, single-room dwelling, with just enough room for a bed, a couple of stools and a set of drawers. With no electricity the light comes from a single candle, and the cooking is done on a charcoal stove; the toilet is the local river.

They still live in great poverty, but at least the mum doesn’t have the shame of being a prostitute on top of everything else. She does have two disabled sons however, as Tukano’s younger brother is Aob who is 1 ½ yrs old and has Down’s Syndrome.

I found Tukano’s story very challenging on many levels – the simple fact of someone living in such appalling poverty was bad enough, but to have to manage two disabled children in those conditions was an extra layer of pain. And then there is the knowledge that in another society the boys could have so much support and provision – items reasonably considered to be basic human rights for those children, and yet largely denied them.

As I sat atop the mountain today, it seemed slightly surreal that only a week ago I was in Ethiopia, hearing stories of such pain and heart-ache, working with such inspiring organisations as Women at Risk, and meeting incredible people who are turning despair into hope, and bringing smiles and futures to those who struggled to find anything like that before.

That was a week ago, and now I’m in one of the richest countries in the world – rubbing shoulders with a nation of people, many of whom have big houses, and big cars, and drive to big shops. We are staying with wonderful friends here, and I’m getting the chance to tell some of the stories, which is great, but I’m also a little alarmed at how comfortable I feel here.

How does that work, that I can span the massive divide between Ethiopia and USA so relatively easily? Should I be feeling more uncomfortable here, more frustrated with the materialism and big-ness of everything?

I wrestled with these thoughts for quite a while today, and have concluded that it’s OK to be able to span the divide like this. It’s the way I am made – to be as comfortable here as in Ethiopia, and as a result I can tell the stories and raise awareness here just as well as I can gather the stories in Ethiopia. My role is one of spanning the divide, of helping people from one nation interact with, and start to understand, people from another; of raising awareness of the issues in one place, through being able to go to the heart of the issues in another place.

And I guess that is partly what CRED is about – spanning the divide. We engage with schools, churches and other team members from the UK, and facilitate the trips that allow them to discover more about the issues that our partners face in other countries. And in so doing we help to span the divide between team members and the overseas partners; which in turn gives a voice to a range of global issues amongst our next generation of decision makers. I guess that isn’t such a bad role!