The house is small, even by our culture’s new “tiny house” standards. The walls are red mud brick, the roof a mix of palm thatch and scraps of sheet metal. Inside, long pieces of fabric—once brightly colored but now worn, ragged, and splattered with the same red mud as the bricks and the floor—cover the rough-hewn lumber that divides the building into two rooms.
On a rug in the center of the room, a huddle of children sit playing around the sleeping baby, his snot-covered face and soiled clothes revealing the illness, just one of many, that incessantly plagues almost all village children.
His grandparents cannot afford to buy “white man’s” medicine, nor do they particularly trust it, so they get on as best as they can with their local remedies and “charms” which they get from their village guardian, a witch. (For an interesting read on how witchcraft fits into the worldview of the Kwakum, check out this series written by our missionary partners, Dave and Stacey Hare.)
Life in the Kwakum village is a life of poverty.
Very often, multiple families all live together in one or two small rooms. Recently, for instance, one villager’s sister brought her children and came to live with her. Now 14 people are all living in the two rooms of their mud brick hut.
Poverty shows up in many ways: Children die from illnesses that are easily treatable with modern medicine. Villagers are malnourished (because while fruit and starch are readily available, protein is hard to come by). Rampant theft. This poverty also shows up as the strong oppressing the weak.
With pride, one Cameroonian museum guide showed us a sculpted pot which she said depicted the spirit of the people. On the pot people climbed over top of other people, standing not just on the shoulders, but the actual faces of others as they claw toward the rim of the pot. In other words, the strong greedily take all that they can, leaving the poor and the weak to pick through what is left.
As heartbreaking as the effects of physical poverty are, the effect of their spiritual poverty is so much greater.
Because they don’t have the hope of Christ, they fill their needs as best as they can on their own. They consult the village guardian, witchdoctors, and sorcerers. They manipulate and murder and steal.
For many reasons, the Kwakum will likely suffer from physical poverty for many more years. But the good news and hope of the Gospel means that their spiritual poverty need not linger.
You may remember the story the handicapped girl who was baptized on Easter while we were in the village. (If not you can read about it here.) Recently, Stacy shared this beautiful story of how the richness of the Gospel is changing Kwakum lives.
“[T]oday the director of our literacy program, an older man, came and served Maggie food before himself. He then went so far as to essentially cut her food for her while she sat there watching, completely silent. This was the cultural equivalent of him getting out a basin of water and washing her feet in front of everyone. An older, educated, respected male washed the feet of a young, unmarried, uneducated, handicapped girl.”
Stacey Hare
This is what happens when poverty meets the Cross: the Gospel makes the poor rich; it gives them Hope and a future.
This month please join with us in praying:
- That God would continue to bring us financial partners so that we can join full-time into the work of bringing the riches of the Gospel to all the Kwakum. (Find out more about how you can help with that here.)
- That God would continue His good work in the lives of the young couple Mami and Koo (a young vibrant couple whose lives have been transformed as they have learned to love and obey Jesus) They recently began teaching a children’s Sunday School class.
- That God would give strength and unity to the Hares as they continue to faithfully work through the translation process.
