Today a boy came to the mission. Several weeks ago, the inner part of his leg from his thigh to his ankle was burned in a fire. He comes to us for the cleaning and care of his wound. I am the one who cleans and cares for him.
He screams and cries as I wash the burn and apply the Silvadene cream a kind doctor left for me to give to burn patients who cannot access or afford hospital care.
I have heard people say, “Africans are so poor, but they are so happy.” The liberation theologian Gustavo Guttirrrez teaches us that the word ‘poverty’ has three meanings: solidarity with the poor, along with protest against the conditions under which they suffer; spiritual poverty, in the sense of a readiness to do God’s will; and real poverty as an evil - that is something that God does not want. My small friend is living in real poverty and it is evil. As tears roll down my cheeks as I see his pain and hear his cries, I know his poverty is something God does not want. There is no happiness in that kind of poverty.
I make a promise to the small boy to work against that kind of poverty in the world for the rest of my life.
“What can I do to help him?” I thought.
After the treatment was done and he was resting beneath the thatched roof of the bamboo shelter, I went to my house and got a baseball cap for him, my favorite old, battered Detroit Tigers cap that I have had since I was his age. That cap has been all over the world with me.
“I’ll give my favorite hat to my small friend.”
We know the mustard seed, when it is planted, becomes the largest of all plants. It’s branches become so big, well, the birds can sit in the shade on it’s branches.
Giving my favorite cap to my small friend is a small thing. It’s just an old, battered cap. But it was my favorite cap. And I gave it him because I love him.
I will always remember his smile when he put on that Detroit Tiger’s baseball cap.
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