Admit One

Written a few weeks back:

When I was in Phoenix after I returned from Mozambique in 2009 I went to a World Vision exhibit to bring awareness of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Yesterday, I was in the exact exhibit I toured through in the States. Unfortunately, these people don’t have a ticket that allows them to just walk through and browse.

As we drove into Inchope Carlos told me we would be stopping there for breakfast. Inchope is the town better known as the “Crossroads.” It’s the place where the 2 highways meet- the Beira Corridor which runs from Beira, the port city on the coast, to Zimbabwe. The other runs from the capital, Maputo, to Northern Moz. Due to the nature of this environment and the frequency of truck drivers at the Crossroads Inchope has quite a reputation for prostitution. Knowing this, and perhaps the sensitivity in my spirit, my soul is restless each time I travel through this impoverished place. With poverty, prostitution often goes hand in hand. Where there is hunger, there is desperation, with this desperation comes prostitution and, with prostitution, comes HIV.  

As I sat eating my “bread with egg” and “coffee” (a can of instant “Ricoffe” set before us on the table) I watched as men and woman came staggering out of the rooms of this “guest house.” Fortunately my naive mind can’t even imagine what happened the night before in the rooms of these broken men and women. I believe this is part of God’s mercy on me. If I fully understood the culture and happenings of such a place I would likely not be able to cope.

I felt very uncomfortable as I sat in this environment. I didn’t even feel like it was me sitting there. How could I, Dara, be in such a place as this? --somewhere so uncomfortable and strange.  I sat there and actually thought, “Oh, yes, I have seen this before. I have been here before.” But no, I haven’t ever been in this situation. I’ve seen it in an exhibit.

Part of me feels really grateful. Really happy that after I finish eating my bread we’ll just get in the car and I'll go home and make a real cup of coffee in a French press. I can cook dinner tonight and I have NEVER had to contemplate what I would be willing to do to have food on the table for myself or my family. Part of me just wants to praise God that I am not “them.”

When I have these thoughts, I feel terribly guilty. What if I was “them?” What if that was me staggering out of a room with some stranger who just took advantage of my body for only a few dollars? Like walking through a World Vision exhibit, what if my ticket that read “Admit One” didn’t actually include a flight out of this broken, desperate, hurting place. This is NO exhibit for these people. What if I was trapped in this exhibit? What if this was my life?

Only by God’s grace do I hold a ticket that is so simple that all I have to do is send an email and I’ll fly back to a place where I paid money to “experience” exactly this.

There’s nothing just about this.

I am not worthy of this life I was given.

It’s not right that I can continue to walk through as if this were just another exhibit- another ticket that reads, “admit one” and I keep walking on…