John's company is multi-national, and it's likely that after a few years here he'll get moved somewhere else. Maybe Houston, maybe Oslo. Or maybe Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Or Luanda, Angola.
If it's Angola... well, let me start at the beginning.
My husband works for a big multi-national company with offices all over the place. Some of the places are sufficiently poor and/or dangerous that there are company compounds where the employees and their families live. The compounds are safe - there's a fence, a gate, and a guard or two. You are issued a house and a car. You have a driver to take you out and a housekeeper and perhaps a cook as well. You don't have to drink the water; safe water will be delivered. Your medical, dental and vision care are provided by competent Western personnel. Schooling and care for children is provided. You never have to worry about anything; all of your (mid-to-upper-class Western) expectations are anticipated and met. Otherwise they could never get people to willingly bring their families there. *
The thing is, apparently it's difficult to get fresh food there. I don't know the details of why, but apparently Luanda is among one of the most expensive places to live in the world. That's right. It's as expensive as New York City or a European capital. So as a compound-dweller, you are likely to pay $750-1000 a WEEK on groceries; you can get fresh produce, but it must be flown in from Portugal or even farther-flung places, and so the price is phenomenal.
Meanwhile, beyond your walls and your gates are the people of Angola. They live on $1-2 dollars a day. I don't know what they eat. Apparently there is some kind of subsistence diet based upon a coconut-meal substance.
So of course you want to do something about it. It's not right to be living a lifestyle that out-of-step with your surroundings. The urge to chuck a loaf of bread over the wall - or better yet some fruit or a nice salad - is powerful.
Here's a couple of home-truths, though:
1. You can't afford to. That fresh food is for your family, who you want to feed properly, and it's taking an awful lot of your money just to feed them. So what you have to offer, despite the fact that you live like a king, is not that much.
2. If you do engage in free-lance charity, you set yourself up to experience a whole heapin' bunch of unintended consequences.
Some side-stories might help:
A 'wealthy' western man in a poor country once noticed a little girl who always had a smile on her face. Her delightful, laughing disposition made him so happy that he wanted to do something for her. So he bought her some pretty silver bracelets. Soon after that, the girl was killed and her bracelets stolen. The man paid for her funeral. It was all he could do.
A family moved to India, and there they encountered a family with a very ill child. Moved by compassion, they offered to pay for the hospital care the child needed, and soon the child was healthy again. (It probably was dehydrated due to a water-borne illness, and might well have died without their help.) They were very glad. But soon after that, the father of the child came and told them that his brother had a sick baby too. Could they do the same thing again? And then there was another relative... The Indian father began to get agitated; he was yelling and threatening. The compound guard saw the commotion and threw the man out. They never heard from him again.
When I visited India, I was told to be particularly wary of beggars. So I stood late at night in the Calcutta train station, circled with my travel-companions around our suitcases, and turned our backs on the wheedling children who held out their hands to us. We were supposed to take comfort in the fact that if we gave them money, they would only have to turn it over to their 'handlers.' The gestures the children made to indicate their hunger were only a ruse to arouse our sympathy. American fashion models would have envied these children's lean limbs.
What then shall we do?**
Subverting an unjust system is all fine and good in theory - but it's a little harder in practice when the gap is so very, very large, and the landscape unfamiliar. Who do you share your cloak with? Do you follow every impulse of compassion, or do you try to be as wise as a serpent (Matt 10:16)?
I don't have to make that decision now. Once I figure out what our income and budget are here, we can re-establish our giving to charities. And that makes it all better - until you peek over the wall and see that just on the other side, there's still the poor, and they will always be with us, and there's a gulf between us I may never know how to cross, even with the best of intentions.
* http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/11/09/angola-the-high-cost-of-living-in-luanda/
** Luke 3:10 ff and also the title of a book by Leo Tolstoy (http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/whatthenmustwedo.pdf)
