World Awareness Week

This past week (Tuesday through Friday) we organized a "World Awareness Week" designed to help participants (and ourselves) understand what a majority of the world lives like. There was a lot of things we did, from turning off all of the water except for a little bit in the early morning and afternoon, giving participants a chance to fill our big water barrel outside and refill buckets in bathrooms, to having them sit on some narrow, wobbly benches (that Ryan and I built from the old fence) during a session one day.

However, the one thing that impacted me the most was the "World Awareness Meal" he did on tuesday. You may be familiar with these, I'd done one before, but the basic concept is that everyone pulls a piece of paper that puts them in categories: The rich, the typical westerner, the not so rich yet not entirely poor (rice and beans), the poor (just rice, with "dirty" water), and the beggars. As you may be able to guess, these categories get fed very different meals. The rich got something, I don't even know what, but it was really nice. The westerners had hamburgers, chips, and fries, followed by brownies and ice cream. The rest were already explained, with the one condition being that you couldn't beg from the rich.

After the meal, we had a short processing time, and I realized there were several things I could learn from it.

1. Whenever I read stories about people who go from rags to riches and are now living a high class life with ten cars, blah, blah, blah, I've always been confused. Did they forget where they came from? Don't they remember all the people they grew up with that are most likely in the same situation the were born into?

Last year, during my training, we did a world awareness meal. I was one of the rice people. We had eaten rice for breakfast and lunch that day, and despite liking rice and liking the way it was made, I certainly wasn't extremely excited about rice again.

This year, I got a lucky draw and was a westerner. After I pulled my slip of paper and saw I was at the westerner's table, I immediately started thinking some things that I'm almost embarrassed, well, I am embarrassed to share. My first thoughts were, "Okay, I'm looking forward to this meal. But what if the beggars don't give me a little space? What if they overstep their boundaries as beggars and become thieves? How will I keep them away and be able to enjoy the meal as well?" Yup, that's pretty embarrassing.

So back to my first thought on rags to riches. Maybe they remember their past all too well. Maybe, the only way to forget (or try to forget) those bad memories is to distance yourself from that situation. I knew all too well what it was like to be a "ricer" and I didn't want anything to do with it again.

2. There were enough hamburgers for each westerner to have two hamburgers each. As the meal progressed, I remember all of us westerners feeling quite generous after giving the beggars (I think there were five of them) a whole burger as well as bits of some people's second burger that was unwanted. I mean, they're just beggars and they got a whole burger! (boy oh boy, this is getting really embarrassing) Then the mathematical venue in my head started to kick in (it didn't really need to work a whole lot) and it calculated: 2 burgers per capita VS 1/4 burgers per capita. Hmmm.

So I thought a little bit. I've always considered myself a generous person. I hope and believe that if God ever asked me to give someone something I had, that I'd be willing to do it. But am I really doing justice to how generous I could be? Am I tearing off a corner of my second burger to give to someone, and puffing myself up for doing so? It's certainly food for thought, pun intended.