Tag: Living With (But Not In) Poverty Page 1 of 8

Savior Complex: Thoughts on Renee Bach

On November 26, 2023

In How Americans Think, Poverty, Thoughts on Missions

This piece assumes you are familiar with the story of Renee Bach, which was recently depicted in the documentary Savior Complex on HBO, but also in the 2020 podcast series called The Missionary.

I have a lot of sympathy for Renee Bach because I could have been her.

I remember questioning whether a college education was worth the price when so many in Africa urgently needed that money and my help. If I had gotten the notion in my idealistic head that it was possible to go to Africa at age 19 and start a charity, I might have jumped on the next plane.

Did Renee Bach have a Savior Complex? Absolutely. So did I. So do a lot of young people. It might not be about missions for all of them – it might be climate change or racial reconciliation or anti-sex trafficking or gender equality or whatever is the current hot-button topic – but young people are known for their passion and idealism. Renee’s intentions were noble, and she helped to save babies’ lives. Isn’t this a good thing? It sure is a lot more inspiring than playing video games in the basement.

But young people don’t know what they don’t know, and this is what the adults in their lives need to help them see. So when I consider Renee’s story, that’s the part that strikes me as the avoidable tragedy.

I’m not sure what was in the water in Jinja, Uganda, that caused dozens of young American women to zip over and start charities all by themselves. (We never saw this trend in Tanzania.) Renee moved to Uganda the same year that Katie Davis published her New York Times bestseller Kisses from Katie about doing the exact thing. Katie was the darling of the evangelical world that year, so why would Renee question if this was a wise move?

Better Than a Target Run

By Amy Medina

On April 3, 2023

In How Americans Think, What I'm Learning

I’ve always been a fan of yard sales and thrift stores, but a couple of years ago I discovered something truly marvelous: estate sales.

Are you familiar with estate sales? This isn’t your ordinary yard sale where you’ll find mostly junk and the occasional treasure. An estate sale is when the entire contents of a house is for sale. Like, the door is open and you go into the rooms, the closets, and cupboards. You can buy anything that isn’t nailed down.

I find these sales using EstateSales.net, and there are sales posted in my area every month – sometimes every week.

Estate sales have taken the palace of Target runs for me. I barely ever use Amazon either.

Gil and I keep a joint running list on our phones of things we are looking for. Buying things this way means that we often have to wait a while before we find it. But if we’re patient, we can find almost anything. Here are a few examples of recent purchases:

Paper shredder
Trifle bowl
Beach towels
Deck box
Shoe organizer
Waffle iron
Dog harness
Mini crock pot
Suitcase & duffle bags
Flatware utensil set (an extra set for hosting large groups = no more plastic forks!)
Whirley Pop Popcorn pan (I was so excited to find this – I had been looking for over a year!)

All of these things were purchased in excellent condition and at a fraction of the original cost. Almost every item in our home was pre-owned, and we have saved thousands of dollars this way.

Plus, it’s fun! Our city has lots of old Victorian homes, so even if I don’t end up buying anything, I enjoy getting a peek into these exquisite houses.

But there’s one more reason why I’m a fan of shopping this way: Estate sales provide me with a built-in caution against buying things I don’t need.

Swimming in the Stuff of America

By Amy Medina

On December 6, 2022

In How Americans Think, Living Like a Missionary, Poverty

I spent my first years of life in suburban California, and I assumed every person on earth had a TV and a bike and a refrigerator that magically produced food. As a fish doesn’t know anything besides water, I couldn’t conceive of anything besides middle-class.

I moved to Liberia when I was six years old, and the boy on the other side of our fence ate frogs out of the swamp when his family ran out of food. I met girls who walked miles to haul water while I walked to my privileged international school. I later lived 16 of my adult years in Tanzania, where my rickety van and millepede-infested house felt like luxury. I didn’t have a dishwasher, a dryer or central air conditioning, but I had electricity and plumbing, and that lifted me above most Tanzanians.

I was a fish out of water, gasping for breath at the dichotomy between my life and theirs.

Now I’ve been back in America for two years, and I find myself slowly captivated by the middle-class ocean. The voices calling me from billboards and magazines and screens are persistent: You need more. You deserve more. It’s your right. I don’t want to listen, but I do.

Americans make up only 4 percent of the world’s population yet hold 31 percent of the world’s wealth. As a little girl, I dreamed of being a princess, and then living in Africa revealed to me that I already had royal status. How Rich Am I? tells me that even on my ministry income, I am richer than 94% of the world’s population. That can only be defined as aristocracy. 

Americans spent over 10 billion dollars on Halloween this year, which is more than the entire GDP of 60 countries. Americans will spend around 900 billion dollars for Christmas, which is more than the GDP of 173 countries – all but 17. Just Christmas. Scientists estimate that if everyone on earth lived the lifestyle of Americans, it would take five planet Earths to support them all. Guess that means I should be “glad” most people are poorer than Americans.

Yet when I drive through neighborhoods of houses that look just like mine with a Starbucks and a Panera on every corner, when everyone around me goes to Disneyland and Outback Steakhouse, I struggle to put my head above the water and remember how most of the world lives. It’s easy to fool myself into believing that just about everyone has what I have, that I am in the majority. Or perhaps I’m poorer than the majority since I can’t afford pedicures, cruises and designer purses.

A friend in Tanzania wrote to tell us that he hasn’t had a job for a year, so could we front him the money to start a new business? And my immediate thought was no, because I just found out this morning that my child needs braces.

And my next thought was that I just chose braces over my friend’s desperation to put food on the table and pay school fees for his kids. 

I like to pretend I’m not wealthy. Jesus said that to whom much has been given, much will be required, so if I’m not rich, He can’t require much of me. I can hunker down and pay for braces and not worry about people who need the money more than I do.

Read the rest at the EFCA blog.

You Are Not Allowed to Think We Are Poor

By Amy Medina

On December 11, 2020

In Poverty

I can hear that edge in your voices, my children. What is it? Self-pity? Envy? You mention the kid at school who gets picked up in a Lamborghini. Or the friend who has a vacation house in Mexico.

You spend the night at a friend’s beautiful, large house and tell me in shocked amazement how decorations are changed for every season. “Even the soaps in the bathroom!” you exclaim. Your camera roll syncs with mine, so I see how you took pictures of your friend’s walk-in closet, rows of shoes and clothes.

I overhear another one of you talking to your friend in the backseat about the cars passing by. You like cool cars. Fancy cars. You know they are expensive, so you tell your friend that we can’t buy one.

“We’re kinda poor, aren’t we, Mom?” you ask.

This did not happen in Tanzania.

This Pandemic Can Help Us to Identify With the World’s Poor

By Amy Medina

On December 10, 2020

In A Life Overseas, Poverty

I was always blown away by the number of funerals. During the years our househelper in Tanzania worked for us, I lost count of how many times she asked for time off to attend a funeral for a family member. She was my age, but during those years she lost her mother. Her mother-in-law. A sister. More than one uncle. Several cousins. What was the cause? I would always ask. Malaria, typhoid, or many times, no one knew why. Disease and death were far too common.

Experts will probably be asking it for years: Why are some developing countries seemingly less impacted from COVID-19 than more developed countries? Is it because they just are testing less? Have a younger population, get more sunlight, have more built up immunity? I’m certain some of those factors are true, but I also wonder if a central reason is because the effects of this pandemic haven’t changed much about regular life for the poor in developing countries. What feels shocking and abnormal to us is simply the way they have always lived.

I’m listing some of these ways below, and I want to be clear that this is not about inducing guilt in those of us from affluent nations. I’m not trying to minimize the grief and loss so many of us have experienced this year. Instead, my purpose is to help us have greater compassion and empathy with the world’s poor. This pandemic can help us to identify with them in ways we had never been able to before.

What’s new for us is normal for them. Here’s how:

Normalcy of deadly diseases

Yes, COVID-19 is a new virus, but for many in the world, they are already dealing with much worse. Statistics tell us that one and a half million people worldwide have died from COVID. Yet that same number of people die every year from tuberculosis, most of them from India, other parts of Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Like COVID, tuberculosis is also an airborne virus. It may not be a pandemic, but it is most certainly an epidemic.

In addition, malaria kills over 400,000 people each year, the vast majority in sub-Saharan Africa (and some in South East Asia). Most of them are young children. There’s also HIV, dengue, typhoid, and rotavirus. For many people in the world, having deadly viruses lurk around every corner, in every cough, in households and churches, is normal life.