Neighbors

Until last month Masauko worked at the US Embassy as a guard. His company paid him 1250MK a week for 72 hours of work. I never met him until the day he approached me and told me he wanted to go back to school. He said he realized that a better future did not exist for him as a guard. He is 25, married, with two children. He is the oldest of 8. Both parents died and left him responsible for the well being of his younger siblings. On 5,000MK a month he was barely surviving and decided that he should get his MSCE (the equivalent of a high school diploma). He told me about his hopes, about his family, about walking to work in the dark to arrive by 6am and walking home in the dark after 6pm. He told me about meeting hyenas on those walks.

He found a school and I agreed to sponsor him. A couple weeks later he invited me to his home. That day we arrived at an adobe structure no bigger than 8 by 10ft, divided into two small rooms that share one broken window. He lives together with his wife, their children, and her brother. I could see spots of sky through the roof. He said he moved into this bigger home from the smaller one that stood beside it. He said the window was broken by a thief in the night. He showed me his notebooks - line after line of notes copied in his neat crisp handwriting. He showed me the cracks in the soles of his shoes. He apologized for not offering me something saying they had nothing to eat themselves all day. I looked from him to his neighbor, an old woman who now occupied the “old” house. I asked him why he approached me. With a laugh he told me that he heard I helped orphans and thought since he was an orphan, I might help him too.

I thought, “What else can I do?” I desperately refuse to accept the status quo of a world that says this is okay and turns away. So I’ll dig in, one little bite at a time. Then someone needs to help his neighbor, and her family, and their neighbors too.