Sometimes the only thing you can do for people is talk to them.
When I was ten years old, my family lived in Egypt. One of my strongest memories is of a Sudanese man coming up to me after mass, pressing a card with a picture of the Holy Family into my hands, and asking me to pray for him. He spoke to me by name, even though I’d never met him before. What really caught my attention was the fact that he had even spelled my name right on the back of the card, when even my friends can never spell it correctly until I tell them. His name was Chidi and he wanted me to pray for him because in fleeing from the Sudan, he had lost his family. He had no idea where his wife or three young children were, or even if they were still alive. He hoped that he could make enough money to go back and find them and, hopefully, even bring them all to Europe or America to start a new life. I agreed to pray for him and he vanished back into the crowd of people milling around in the court yard.
In Egypt, my family attended a wealthy Catholic church for expatriates in the suburb of Ma’adi. Members of the church had a mission to feed and clothe about two hundred families of the tens of thousands of poor refugees who were fleeing into Egypt from the Sudan. I remember watching as crowds of tall, thin refugees lined up at the gates to receive their food. And their children. I always remember the children. Dirty children in ill-fitting clothing who were my age and younger, with their large dark eyes filled with sadness that had seen more tragedy in their short lives than anyone should see in their whole lifetime. Although the church’s gifts of food and clothing were vital to these refugees, they were just nameless, faceless bodies, “the Sudanese,” to most of the parish.
Once, the church had tried to get to know the Sudanese families. They threw a welcoming party and served food and had music and games. But the Sudanese children ran wild. Instead of lining up in an orderly way, kids jostled and fought for the food, spilling some of it on the ground. As they ran and played in the churchyard, they trampled the priest’s vegetable garden. Many of them just dropped their trash on the ground. Nobody took into consideration that the refugees didn’t know our rules for children’s behavior, any more than we knew theirs. Among some of the Sudanese tribes, everyone in the community is responsible for disciplining children, and as guests they probably expected us to let the children know what they were and weren’t allowed to do. Most Americans and Europeans expect parents to discipline children and would never dream of interfering in the parent’s rights. Nobody took into consideration that some of the refugees might not even know what a garbage can was. Thus, the Parish was insulted, and that was the end of them trying to seek out the refugees and turn them from bodies into people. The priest, an 80 year old Portuguese man, was also worried about the safety of the other communities his parish served. Some Sudanese churches and community centers in Cairo had been attacked by Egyptians, because of resentments and fears that the Sudanese would steal jobs and consume aid money that could be used for Egyptian poor. Father Jose had French, English, Spanish, Korean, and Arabic communities to take care of and he probably feared putting them at risk.
One day my parents took me to visit Sacred Heart Church in Sakakini, an old cathedral that Father Claudio, leader of the Camboni missionaries in Egypt, had turned into a community center for the refugees. When we entered the cathedral we were the only foreigners standing out among 400-500 Sudanese. The first thing I noticed when we got there was the change in atmosphere. At our church, everyone kept their friendly distance, the Sudanese standing over there, while the parish members grouped over here. We didn’t mingle much. But at Sakakini, we were the outsiders. Only we weren’t kept at a distance. I think I received more hugs and kisses from complete strangers that day than I have received in my whole life. Father Claudio introduced us to countless people, all whom he knew by name. During Mass, whenever they passed the collection basket, it would always be overflowing, even though these people were desperately poor. It was usually full with only 25 piaster notes - which is only about 6-7 cents – because that was all they could afford to give. Giving was extremely important to these people because it gave the refugee’s the chance to give back and that provided them the chance to be treated like real people. The problem with the churches in Ma’adi and other parts of Cairo was that we were always the givers, and they were always the receivers. But at Sakakini they had the chance to give, to be “real” people.
My mother is a psychotherapist. Because of the high suicide rates, Father Claudio and the other mission priests were concerned about the mental health of the refugees. These people had seen their whole lives taken away from them. Like Chidi, most of them didn’t even know where all their family members were. Some had seen mothers, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers raped and murdered. They had seen their friends turn on each other and their life’s work burned to the ground. So the mission workers asked my mother, as well as a few other mental health specialists to create a series of workshops to help train the Sudanese to be able to talk and listen to one another. They called it Sadaka.
Some of the Sudanese leaders argued that if they could just get working papers and then jobs and decent housing, they wouldn’t need mental health counseling. But the mission is powerless to giving any of these tangible benefits. They offer free schools, job training, computer training, help with getting refugee status for resettlement abroad, and give jobs to a few hundred. Yet, most Sudanese remain in a legal limbo, not exactly illegal aliens, but not legal residents with work permits, either. Thus, teaching the refugees to reach out to each other was all the mission workers could do.
In addition to their involvement with Sakakini, my parents also got involved with an international group called “Community and Liberation” which brought Sudanese, Egyptians, Europeans, and Americans together to talk about spirituality, community, and social justice. Some weeks this group would meet at our house. I can remember sitting at my dad’s feet after dinner, listening to them all talk. The refugees would tell their stories, often with horrific elements that I didn’t quite understand at that time. Talk would slowly shift to the unfairness of the Egyption government, politics, changes they wanted to make at Sakakini, and money problems. Usually my mother would send me to bed long before they stopped talking and I would be lulled to sleep by their husky voices, coming from the other room.
In the face of all the poverty, hardship, and suffering in the world, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. I know I do. But you can always talk to people. When you talk to someone, and ask their name, and look them in the face, and listen to their story, you treat them like a human being. You let them know that you recognize that at some level they share a common human dignity with you.
When Chidi gave me the card, and asked me to pray for him, he was recognizing this simple profound fact, and taught it to me. I don’t know why he picked me out of the crowd to talk to, but I’m glad he did. Besides the more common conversations, socializing after mass, therapeutic talks, and after-dinner conversations, I have realized that prayer can also be a conversation. Because if you promise someone you will pray for him, whether or not you believe in his God, you are promising to think about him as a person. This is profoundly different then praying for ‘the Sudanese’ or petitioning Congress to do something about ‘the plight of the Sudanese.’ Instead you have that person’s name upon your lips and it becomes something much more personal.
It’s important to write letters to newspapers, to sign petitions, and to vote. But as we have seen in the Darfur crisis, these things don’t always help. For me whenever people talk about the Darfur crisis, the Lost Boys, or the Sudanese refugees, I think of Chidi, and of the other men and women we knew personally. I keep this card with me, not just to remind myself to pray for Chidi, but also to remind me that even if I can’t give someone money or food or a job, I can always ask them their name and listen to their story and let them know I think of them as a person.