It is difficult, near impossible, to write about poverty witnessed in another country. I haven’t lived it, only witnessed the surface of it. And try as I might, I cannot fully understand it.
From my eleven years of traveling to Africa and other developing countries, I’ve come to see my own helplessness in these situations. I’ve had to look hard at my own assertions of, “I want to help”….which translated into, “I have the answers and this is how it’s going to be done”. And finally, coming to that place of my own poverty, and being able to simply utter, “Teach me”.
A photo from 2011 is the inspiration for this piece. It was taken during a trek through the rural hillsides of Kisii, Kenya. I write in response to the lingering questions and doubts, and the desire to continue serving and learning from these people I’ve grown to call my family.
The Girl in the Yellow Dress
She stands on the threshold, silent and solemn, in her tattered yellow dress.
The inky void at her back whispers his darkness in her ear and grips her hand in his fierceness.
She straddles the barrenness, longing to enter the bright vastness before her.
Orange blossoms give off the scent of possibilities. She clutches this fragility as proof of dreams not yet realized.
The voices of her mother, her grandmother, begin to speak in rhythm with the passing footsteps. These voices speak quietly, soothingly, confidently; creating a longing that is at once foreign and completely at home in her small body.
Her steady gaze reveals nothing, except to the chosen few who look past the tattered dress, the missing shoe, the dust covered limbs, and their own poverty-evoked pity and see themselves in her beauty.
Always Mercy,
Pamela
