Walking in whose shoes?

She asked me for help with her school fees. $150,000 shillings…about 75 dollars… I can’t give her money. She was crying, overwhelmed, and afraid that she wouldn’t be able to get the finances to go to school. The very thing that she had been waiting in anticipation for, as it took weeks for her test results to come in letting her know if she was accepted and what level she was eligible for. Now hearing the news that she was accepted, finances were now an issue.


When was the last time that I lost it out of hopelessness of $75.00? When have I felt helpless in a similar situation? I don’t think I really have… If I became broke, I know that I will always be able to call upon my parents or a close friend for a little help or loan. I don’t know what it’s like. I don’t know what it’s like to be faced with such responsibility as her parents were broke and struggling leaving her with no one to lean upon.


Why, when I hear an African asking for money, I only hear a needy cry? How come I only hear? How come it doesn’t lead me to compassion, but to only walk faster away from the begging with an assumption that they are only asking me because I am a ‘mzungu’ (rich white person)? How come I can’t really see? Because of the scales on my eyes I don’t see the tears behind the eyes flowing from a real broken heart… I don’t see the real reason why she was fighting them back hard… trying to remain strong.


A couple years ago I was at the place you go to get your license renewed (don’t remember the name) and I didn’t have the right amount of money for the license renewing. Long story short, I didn’t have enough gas in my car to drive all the way home, grab a dollar that I was short, and all the way back to the license place. And for just a dollar seemed ridiculous. So because of this, I decided to ask some of the people around me if they could spare me some change. At first I thought people wouldn’t mind handing off their loose change…especially it only being a dollar that I needed. However, I was wrong. Walking around the parking lot asking a few people sitting in their cars if they had a little bit of loose change to spare instantly aroused different emotions within me. The way they looked at me, and the tone of their voices as they told me no made me instantly feel looked down upon. And it didn’t help to have the ones who overheard me asking quickly roll up their windows to save themselves from this “little begger”. At that moment I so badly wanted to just explain myself. I wanted to shout out, “Hey, look I am not poor and I am usually not one to ask people like this…but this is my situation…” I wanted them to see me as an equal to them, who was just in a sticky situation. But no. I was humiliated and brought to tears when I ended up having to walk to a nearby thrift shop and ask the lady at the front desk for the dollar. If you wanted to know, I did end up getting the dollar… it just took a few seconds of crying and then fumbling over the words, “Mam, …um…this is my situation..and…can I pleeaassee borrow a dollar?” She smiled at me, got me some tissues and then compassionately handed me over the dollar. (The best dollar received in my life :)).

Being reminded of how I felt that day, I am reminded of what my friend Nester must have felt. When I was treated as “one of those beggers”, and looked upon as an object rather than Megan Hall with a real story and a real sticky situation I felt the realness of it. How did Nester feel today? The humiliation in the need to ask for help, and to talk to a counselor about not having the finances. Could she have felt the same way and I missed it? Forgive me God for looking at her as an object like the people in the cars looked down upon me. Forgive me for not really seeing her tears, feeling her pain and actually putting myself in her shoes. I have tasted what that feels like. Probably only in the smallest amount…but I remember how not fun and uncomfortable it was. And if I really am not allowed to give her any money as a USP student…How can I adequately say, “How can I be praying for you?”


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The above thoughts and events ties in pretty adequately with the material we have been reading out of our current book titled Compassion by Henri Nouwen. Although the first 3 chapters that we have read line up with the topic of having compassion and living in solidarity with others, specifically what happened reminds me of what Nouwen writes on page 29:

“When we begin to see God, the source of all our comfort and consolation, in the center of servanthood, compassion becomes much more than doing good for unfortunate people. Radical servanthood, as the encounter with the compassionate God, takes us beyond the distinctions between wealth and poverty, success and failure, fortune and bad luck.”

The label “Unfortunate people” reminded me how my first reaction to Nester asking me for money was viewing her as an object and as much as I wouldn’t want to be quick to admit it, another needy African asking a mzungu for money. In class today, I was reminded further of how white people are viewed in Africa and the reason behind Ugandans asking whites for money for school fees. Mark Bartels quoted:

“10% of school children are sponsored by some white in the states or even elsewhere, so why wouldn’t they be drawn to ask you for money? They are “magically” receiving funds from the west and only know that a stranger white person who has money is providing the funds.”

Hopefully I don’t just take what happened today, and the remembrance of how I actually felt in the same situation and leave it as an experience. Is it possible to allow it to change my perception of people not just in Uganda but with people back home as well? With this question on mind, I am also learning that compassion is living in solidarity with others, and constantly putting yourself in others shoes. Nouwen would say that you can’t have compassion without community as all of chapter 4 is dedicated to this convincing point. Through this experience, I am reminded that compassion isn’t solving ones problems, but treating others how I would want to be treated, living in solidarity with others, and being moved to hearing them out and simply being present on an equal level vs. some sort of hierarchy level of greater power than others.


Henri J. M. Nouwen. Compassion A Reflection on the Christian LIfe. (2008)

Mark Bartels in Faith and Action class. (3/15/10) Class discussion on Compassion book chapter 4.