Herlinda is a charming lady, in her early sixties. She lives with Miguel, her husband in a humble cane/wooden shack, where they have no running water, her bed lies directly on the earthen floor, surrounded by the remnants of a life spent in utter poverty. Last February she was diagnosed with “some” heart defect, (specificity costs money in these here parts) she was prescribed ‘some” form of blood thinner (again speciality drugs cost money in these here parts) which she can barely afford with the help of her extended family and people like you. I left in sadness one day, indeed I do most days, as they relate once again what it feels like to be dependant on a health system (disasterous as it is) that is founded on the principle that only the monied will survive, what it feels like to know that if you were born under a different sky, the treatment you needed would be readily available, what it feels like to read in the face of your doctors, “I’m sorry, but if you had $150, we would do so something”. The pain in her voice as she communicates the helplessness and abandonment she feels as she, from her own Calvary commends her life into the hands of her Maker. “Si Dios quiere” she says, “if God wants”.
Marisol lives in another part of the parish, she is thirty seven years and lives with very severe mental disability. She is immobile due to her weight and as her parents get older and weaker she spends less time in the sunlight and lesser time visiting the medical professionals who could comfort her with empty pronostications while they prescribe the only medicación that her parents can afford, painkillers. When I first met her and her family in their house which resembled a garden shed, I met an exasperated family, weighed down by the cross of their daughters condition and by their inability to improve it in any way. Again, Lady Poverty had eradícated all options. “Si Dios quiere”, they say, “if God wants”. But does He.
I often think that poverty is the lack of choice, you play the hand dealt you by God or those who play God and no other hand is possible. Some would say the real issue in this situacion is becoming increasingly clear today - poverty means death. As Gustavo Gutierrez, the Peruvian theologian once commented “ it means death due to hunger and sickness, or to the repressive methods used by those who see their privileged position being endangered by any effort to liberate the oppressed. It means physical death to which is added cultural death, inasmuch as those in power seek to do away with everything that gives unity and strength to the dispossessed of this world”. I suppose that while it is easy, convenient and and on some level, lazy to say “ sure that’s how God made it”, Gutierrez refers more forcefully to the “institutionalised violence”, a phrase famously promoted by the Medellin conference in 1968. The structures that aggressively seek to perpetuate the poverty and suffering of so many of the world’s population, all the while we guiltily acknowledge, there is enough for everybody (and three billion more). There is no world food shortage, there is a shortage of people willing to train farmers in the developing world modern farming practices, there is a shortage if we greedily continue to build our “butter mountains”, “beef mountains” and “milk lakes” in Belgium’s beautiful capital city.
There is no shortage in our world but in the parish where I have the privilege of working in the slums in the north of Guayaquil, La Parroquia de Los Pastorcitos de Fatima, it is not so obvious. In a parish of 47,000 souls, the vast majority of whom live below the poverty line, some in extreme “absolute” poverty, at times you feel overwhelmed, at times helpless, at times downright angry and at times encouraged, encouraged by the inherent goodness of people and their willingness to stand up, be counted and say, “that’s wrong, what can I do to change it”. It is people like that that make my mission possible here in Ecuador. The Bishop’s Conference in Puebla in 1979 stated that the “ poor are the first ones to whom Jesus’ mission is directed (Luke 4,18-21) and ...the evangelización of the poor is the supreme sign and proof of His mission. (Luke 7, 21-23) To work among the poorest of the poor is a wonderful extraordinary privilege for me, an inadecuate instrument in God’s hand proclaiming His liberating message of Love Justice and Peace, and a channel for the unbounded goodness of my friends and neighbours in my native Erris and beyond.
Herlinda, I know you will want to know, is at present receiving a new treatment which, she says, has improved her quality of life immeasurably enabling her to participate more fully in her family life and Marisol has a new wheelchair (well nearly new) and has literally, taken to the road. She already has 128 penalty poínts. Now she spends much of the day doing things she could never do, either in the sun or visiting her neighbours with her mum or simply a short journey down the street to check up on the goings on. As there is no tarmacadam, I joke with her family that she could have done with a four wheel drive but that is the least of their worríes. They’re not big investments but their effects are in a real and beautiful way, life changing and threaten to loosen, albeit ever so slightly, the grasp of poverty in lives of two very special people.
The life of Reilly, the building projects and these much smaller but no less important interventions are all made possible by the help of people like yourself, totally and utterly. I pray that you will continue to be generous, seek to replace the structures that perpetuate suffering and improve the lives of those who live in extreme poverty in our world.