Writing to the Far Side of the World

One of my favorite charities is WorldVision, a Christian organization that provides food, medical care, shelter, schooling, and other services to poor children around the world. In all the time I’ve sponsored children through WorldVision, I have never written to any of them. Good intentions never produced an actual letter, even though our sponsored children (or their helpers, if they were too young to write) have lovingly sent us many letters and pictures.

This week I finally started working on a letter. It turned out to be harder than I expected. First of all, some of the children live in areas where English is not the primary language. Even if it is the primary language, the English words I use and the English words they use don’t necessarily mesh exactly. So I tried to simplify my letter to make it easier to read and translate, if necessary.

Second, our world and their world are very different places. I believe all of our current children live in rural areas with mainly agrarian economies. In many of these areas, AIDS has killed a significant portion of the adult population, particularly those in our age group. For the older children, their chores include fetching water from a local river or well, milking the cows, or gathering eggs. In their letters, they often mention the weather since it makes such a huge impact on their lives. For our letter to them, I wanted to tell them about us but struggled to decide which details to include. For example, how could I explain my job to a child who might never have seen an airplane before? Although my hobbies include watching movies, surfing the Internet, and playing on Facebook, have our children ever seen a movie or a computer?

Third, the process made me hugely conscious of the financial gap between us, filling me with feelings of both guilt and gratitude. Like some of the children and helpers did in their letters, I wanted to describe our house for them. Their houses are generally small mud huts or shacks made of wood or metal, with one or maybe two rooms. Many raise animals in the yard to eat or sell later. To describe our house in detail to our children would feel insanely insensitive and arrogant. Not only do we have a car, but we have a covered room to hold it with room for another one. Each child has his/her own bedroom, and there’s even a spare room just in case anyone decides to visit. To us, we aren’t rich by American standards. But to them, even our house probably would seem like a palace. For another perspective, consider the cost of sponsorship, about $1/day per child. In many African countries, the average person might live on $1/day. What’s a small sacrifice for us (for each child, at least) is literally a lifechanging gift for them.

With all this in mind, I tried to focus on the details that we had in common – family, God, weather, things we do for fun (the low-tech ones) – and to communicate how glad we are to be their sponsors. I’d like to include a picture as well, as they do for us. Newbie will have to wait until after he/she is born to get a picture sent overseas. I’m not good enough to explain a sonogram.

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