Rich

When living as an expatriate in a country such as Indonesia, your life changes dramatically. I’m not just talking about not having a yard and eating a ton of rice, there are other huge differences. Back home we’re just an average family struggling to get by and pay all the bills. Here we are the “rich” folks. On Thursday I had a couple different people at the door trying to sell us stuff. One woman had a very plastic pair of men’s runners, another had a bag of kids clothes. On Saturday when I was out with the girls, we had people come up to our taxi with their hands out, we walked past people sleeping under a bridge while their recently washed clothing was drying on the railing. We had taxi drivers trying to charge us double. Then today again, someone came by selling candy, I politely told her that I don’t “shop” on Sundays, but if she would like to come back tomorrow that would be fine. The funny thing is that this same woman came to us a couple months ago and lied through her teeth to try to get money. We caught her in her lie as she told Hugo that her dad was sick, but she told me that her two year old son was sick in the hospital. I told her that if she came back later in the evening, she was at my door at 5:00, I would go with her to the hospital. Of course she never came back. Pretty bold of her to show up again, but I guess when you’re desperate enough you’ll do anything. Then this evening my neighbour was at the door, Ibu Umi. Her son had come home this evening very upset. He fixes motorbikes for people and he had been driving a motorbike with an engine tied on the back. At some point the engine fell off and he didn’t realize it. So he and his brother-in-law, Ibu Nina’s husband, went back to look for it. They probably won’t find it back as I’m sure it was picked up by someone else. Anyways, he asked his mother if she could ask me to borrow 200,000 rupiahs to buy a new engine. He will pay it back over the remaining three months that we are here. Ibu Umi was rather upset, this is a lot of money for them and they had already discussed among themselves that they didn’t want to borrow any more money from us and then this happens. In this culture, you give so that you can maybe receive more blessings yourself. So they feel this burden that they have to give back to us somehow for all the help we have given them. I recently found out that Ibu Umi was crushing peanuts for sauce using a big stick and a stone bowl. Like how African woman crush maize. So I lent her my mixer and told her to keep it at her house and if I need it I will come and get it. They were very afraid that it might break and they wouldn’t be able to replace it. I reassured them that I had no plans of taking it to Papua as we have a new one in our crate, a gift from friends back home, and that I had been planning to give this one to them anyway. Ibu Umi was so happy as she has been having a lot of trouble with her joints. Every other day she has to crush peanuts by hand and afterwards her daughter, Ibu Nina, has to massage her because she is in so much pain. My blender is just a small thing but it makes her life that much easier. I tried to explain to her that I don’t need anything in return. I have been blessed by God and my responsibility is to share that blessing with those in need. This concept is rather difficult for them to understand but I hope that she will get it and that it can become a way for her to understand our faith better.
Sometimes we feel a little overwhelmed with all the people asking us for help. I have decided that I would like to help our neighbours out. You can’t help everyone and I feel it is best to choose one or two families and help them out in a way that will benefit them for a long time. I also try to make sure that I have coins in my pocket when we go out on the motorbike so I have something to give to the old ladies and disabled who are begging on the roadside. If we allow ourselves to get too involved and think about it all the time, we won’t be able to live normally. I have to admit though, that every time we go out on the bike through Bandung and I see kids basically living on the median in the road, filthy, physically handicapped people, and old people begging by the side of the road, I feel very, very sad and very, very rich. Not only rich in money, but rich because my family and I are a part of the communion of saints.