Mountains and Hills

Welcome to Day Seven. I have been to the mountain…and it nearly killed me. Seriously. I spent the day at Hogar Miguel (an orphanage) and a village higher up in the mountains. I will start with the mountain, that which nearly killed me.

Anyone who knows me knows I am not in anything that might be considered great shape. It would be safe to say that people don’t pass me in the street and utter words like “cut” or “buff.” Frankly I don’t care, I work full time and do school full time. (sticking tongue out at detractors) Sooo……..

I started up a paved road, probably 60 degree incline, 9k feet elevation; with a fifty something pound on my 40 something body. I knew immediately I was in trouble, that is, as I stepped out of the van I was winded. I made it some 100 yards up the hill when I began to hallucinate that this is the spot archeologist would one day dig me and my cameras up wondering, “I wonder what happened to this poor chap.” I use the word chap believing the future archeologist would be British as they usually are in my favorite movies.

Oddly, an old woman, probably 80 or so, passed me on the hill…twice.

Enough foolishness. It was the most physically challenging thing I have done in many years, far more taxing than sitting in my office or playing Wii on the couch. Go figure.
The village was profoundly poor, in fact I have only seen poorer in Kenya. The people were incredibly tolerant of my shooting in spite of their obvious embarrassment at the conditions in which they live. I have never met a warmer, more inviting people.

I met a very old woman, Maria, living in a shack on the edge of a mountain who walks several miles a day to the orphanage to get a meal daily. The team had poured a concrete floor in her place made of cardboard and metal scraps to help protect her from parasites and lift her above the mud she was living in. What she lives in is filth. Not the kind of filth we claim when our houses need a good cleaning or the kids have cluttered the floor, but the kind of filth grown in the Third World by poverty and despair. I do not mean to take away Maria’s dignity with this description. Given a chance in Hell, she would do anything to escape this. A lifetime, a dozen lifetimes could be spent trying to point the finger at the correct source (s) of blame for world poverty but that is a futile task with no foreseeable end.

Ask yourself this, and I mean really allow yourself to meditate on this…How is that a world filled with the Body of Christ still has room for conditions like this? The Church is helping; perhaps it is all that is really helping, but its offerings pale in comparison to the need. I wish we spent less on buildings and equipment, and entertaining ourselves on Sunday morning and more on freeing millions upon millions of our brothers and sisters from living in filth. I challenge you to meditate on this. Her picture and her home are posted on the right.