War and Peace

I realised that I don't often write about the realities and day-on-day activities of what I do here (mostly because it's pretty much the same all the time and would be incredulously dull) but yesterday something very real happened.

It began a pretty normal, and in fact, wonderful Saturday morning. I was awoken by my boss on our day off at 8.30am (thanks Di) who had panicked about something the night before. Annoyingly the thing she was panicking about was neither necessary nor was it even about me. It was about Jonno. So while Jonno slept serenely across the room, I was awake on my only lie-in day.

However I thought I'd make the most of time alone so headed off to the internet room to finish my tala blog entry and begin writing another piece on my other blog. After a couple of hours there was a build of people on the site, but I didn't think much of it because Pastor Samson often has gatherings of his refugee church on site on a Saturday. About an hour or so later, Jonno walks in and says that Samson has told him that 900 refugees are expected today because they're giving out food.

About 12 midday I head out to find some breakfast / lunch and there is a LOT of people there. And I feel somewhat convicted that I am walking through them all with my nice-ish clothes (they weren't especially but still nicer than theirs), ipod and mobile phone, and having just sat in a comfy room for 3hours on the internet. So I went to find Samson to see if he needed any help. He said he did. So I was like 'oh ok, I'll just go shower and eat something quick then I'll come help'.

I went off to shower thinking that this would be just like the other feeding scheme I do. It would be very simple and everyone would be polite and we'd all clap our hands and sing happy songs etc. etc. Oh how wrong was I.

I wandered back and found Jonno already there. He'd obviously asked Samson to help independantly of me. I was ushered through the crowd of Africans and into the middle section with the mountain of beans and maize. By the time I'd got there Samson had already got 900 people silent to pray, something Jonno says was a sight to see, and seperated them all into their respective nations. It seems relatively civil when I arrived and I set about opening up all the packets and sorting them for the people handing them out. Each person was allowed one bag of beans and one pack of maize. They were supposed to wait for their names to be called. Sounds very organised, no?

I think it took maybe 10 minutes for the first fighting to break out. And then it pretty much repeated every 20mins or so. Unfortunately it is fair to say that it was most the Zimbabweans who were being so disruptive. I was working on the South African line and Jonno the Zimbabweans. I know Jonno on more than one occasion genuinely feared for himself because being surrounded by big, hungry and angry African men is not the best place to be.

One more than one occasion Samson had to stop the food giving to try to get everyone to stop fighting and sort themselves out. Unfortunately this usually came when the people stormed the tables and began to try to steal the food in whatever quantity they could get.

I can't explain to you how it feels to be sat on a large pile of food and surrounded by hundreds of people who are desperate and who don't want to line up and wait their turn. It wasn't so much fear for me - I actually really enjoyed getting involved and stopping fights starting - but rather disbelief and dismay.

There were three things I think that struck me most, and when I say struck, I guess I mean it in the damaging sense.

First, and something Jonno said to me, was the transformation of the news from abstract to reality. Both in the UK and over here there is a lot of talk about what is going on in Zimbabwe and all the refugees. At one point when Jonno and I were sat in the internet room and he was reading on BBC News about the refugee situation in SA. He goes 'I'm just reading about the refugees and I look out the window and there they are'. He was so right.

Second was the xenophobia. If you hadn't known, there is a lot of xenophobia over here at the moment. It's not as bad as it was a few weeks back but its still there.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7455061.stm

I suppose I neither understood why this would happen nor thought it would ever happen near me. I didn't understand how you could turn on someone just because they are from another country. Especially if they've fled their country for fear of their lives. Once again I was wrong.

Samson had asked me to bring my camera so that I could take photos for him. However this turned out to be a poisoned chalice. Each time the Zimbabweans stormed their food area, the South Africans would cry out and shout anger at them, and these three guys would say to me 'take a photo, take a photo! Look what the Zimbabweans are doing!' They also said 'Zenophobia is going to break out soon'. Thankfully nothing actually did, but I could very much now see how it happens. That article I linked says that a lot of it is due to scare resources and I can very much vouch for that. As the food went down, the anger and tension rose. And as the tension rose, people first looked to blame and fight groups of others i.e. other nationalities, and towards the end they just blame and fight anyone who isn't them. It was pretty depressing really, while at the same time very understandable. Desperation leads to poor judgement in all walks of life, hunger must be one of the worst.

The final thing was just this cavernous contrast between the peace, good fight and love within Samson who was trying to serve and help all these people, and the war, violence and hate that was being handed back by the people gathered. I don't quite know how Samson keeps going when people are trying to cheat and steal whatever they can. It's not that I can criticising the people. I am sure that if I was in that situation i would do precisely the same. And I mean that. I was just completely dismayed by the depths of corruption within the human heart. These people are just like you and me, except that their situations are a million miles away from ours.

I said to Jonno, why is it that when desperation and need sets in, the human heart turns straight to selfishness, and to the point of violence and stealing? Few times before have I more seen the need for a new human heart.

I would however like to include a more positive note and say that I am well aware that there is hope. There was one guy who was there all day, waiting patiently, helping out stop fights, taking things back off people who had stolen and giving it back to us. He constantly encouraged us and prayed, looking to help out wherever. Towards the end he had not actually got any food, but all he said was this, 'It's better to be a beggar than a thief'.

Right at the end there was enough left over from the staffs materials to give him food.

In the Bible the Pslamist prays 'Create in me a clean heart, O God'. Until I can say 'it's better to be a beggar than a thief' in the face of life threatening need, I will sure be praying that prayer over and over.