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University Student Mission with Slum Communities: Reflections After-the-Fact

By Scott Bessenecker

I was confused. Exploring the depths of poverty can do that to a person. We were coming to the end of our time in the Egyptian garbage community in Cairo. Living in this community for over a month had given us new eyes. What at first was repulsive, was now quite normal. The hot, passionate desperation we felt regarding the conditions in the garbage village during the first few days had cooled to a settled comfortableness.

 
Then I felt the Lord speaking to me: “As their father, are you
satisfied? Even if they are satisfied, are you satisfied?”

A Paradigm Shift?
Was that okay? Maybe the life of a garbage collector wasn’t all that bad. The people seemed pretty content with life. The conditions are likely not much different from life in medieval Europe—probably better. Should I really be encouraging foreigners to come into such places as agents of change, especially rich, North American college students?

To be perfectly honest, despite the sights and smells of the garbage village, there are actually multiple classes of people there. There are the rich poor, the middle-class poor, and the poorer poor: people who live on a dollar or two a day. Some Egyptians even believe that there are fabulously wealthy individuals who hide in the garbage village, pretending to be poor and hoarding their wealth.

While this is probably a lie perpetrated to help salve the conscience of the rich, it is true that some of the living quarters are somewhat nice inside. You might walk into a garbage-strewn, rough-brick entryway and ascend a rat-infested, narrow stairway, passing farm animals on your way up. But when you walk through the doorway of the landlord’s apartment, you enter a nicely tiled room with a television and new furniture. Granted, these conditions are in the minority; most of the dwellings are quite deplorable. But that such places exist in slum communities can throw your understanding of poverty into a tailspin.

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Scott Bessenecker is director of global projects with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA. Each year, he helps send over seven hundred college students to slum communities on nearly every continent in the world.