Dear Friends:

Today we would like to talk about the village adjacent to the hospital. A village here is not really different than a village anywhere in the world in its concept. The difference is only in the economy or, rather, poverty that keeps the village unchanged from centuries ago. A village is a community largely comprised of families that have lived in the same place for centuries. Chief Kamenga, the chief on whose land sits Nancy’s clinic is the eighteenth generation chief of his part of the village. We tend to remember our childhoods as did our parents. We remember moms at home, dads at work, and a neighborhood as a safe environment for children to play and to grow up. We remember several members of a family living on the same street or only a few streets apart. That is a village and it is, in its layout, what we have here except that there are no responsible adults to watch the children during the day.

The villages are a maze of paths connecting houses, "huts," constructed of bamboo, mud brick, or real brick, with thatched or metal roofs. These homes are constructed by the people with materials available. They provide some protection from the elements but no security and no protection from insects and small animals, mice and rats, which are the vectors of disease that cause continual illness in the lives of the villagers. Though we may think of villages as small circles of huts, as pictured often in National Geographic, but our village has about five or six thousand people.

In the village, 25 percent of the people are children under 5; 25 percent are children 5 to 15; the other 50 percent are 16 and older, with only about 3 percent older than 65. This compares to the U.S. population of 7 percent under 5; 13 percent 5 to 15; and 80 percent 15 and older, with 13 percent older than 65. Life expectancy here is 48 compared to our 79.

During the day, one of the most striking things is the absence of adults. The women are working in the fields miles away to grow and gather the food and materials. They also must carry the water from the local river. The men are out hauling heavy loads to markets to sell. In the village one sees children. Five-year-olds carrying their baby brothers and sisters on their backs or playing with them while their older siblings are at school (if they are lucky enough to have enough money to pay for school).

The little children are so happy and lively with their innocence. As they grow older, they become more anxious of a future, seeking a means to survival themselves and gradually losing the sparkle that children have in their eyes. Theirs is a life of day-to-day. They must find food to eat or make something to sell to get money. Or they have to trade to acquire the things not found in nature and to pay for school or medical care and clothes. We speak of saving for a rainy day. Here, when it rains, it pours, and on those days, you can’t go to the fields and find food so you go hungry as there is no way to store foods for that day. Food not consumed quickly by people will be eaten by insects and other animals. With this life, you don’t hear much complaint. In fact, as you move up the economic ladder, you begin to hear more complaint.

Villagers don’t complain that God does not hear them or that their lives are not worth living, even with all of the misery and suffering that abounds. These folks do not doubt God, Nzambi. They live every day in His world still existing as it was created. They call to Him for help when they suffer and thank Him for their daily bread and for the relief from their pain. They celebrate and give thanks for the birth of a child and suffer and pray in the face of death, which is always near at hand.

Remember the statistics? Of the children, 50 percent of the population, half are under 5 and half are from 5 to 15. The second group with a 10 year age span has the same number as the first group with a 5 year ages span. That means that half of the children die before age 16. This is the reality of poverty and it is neither just nor necessary given the riches of our world.

Please read Mark 10:17-22, the rich young ruler, and ask yourself what God demands of us.

Yours,

Mike and Nancy Haninger

The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 29