Playing with Poverty.

Playing with Poverty
I love good titles. I like them to be strong words that deliver a powerful message in hopes of capturing an audience. As hard as it was for me to use this title; I thought it was the most appropriate. Now please hear my heart when I say and truly believe that I was called to be apart of this team and to do ministry here in Zambia. I honestly and truly believe this and have seen God’s workings already.

I really enjoy graphic design and photography. I love to have in my grips a camera on me at all times. So it was quite an easy decision to bring it to Africa with me. I have brought a camera on every other trip I have been on which include Albania, London, Israel, Mexico, and Canada. But this time bringing my camera had a whole different meaning.

The 2008 Jeremy Dennis Pedron thought he had seen and experienced true poverty before but to the true sense of that word he hadn’t seen anything yet. I started snapping right off of the plan. The Lusaka airport was located in a more upper-class area of Zambia in which I was unaware. So I figured the majority of Zambia would look as the place of my entrance. I presupposed that everyone in Zambia had somewhat of a roof over their heads.

As days progressed we ventured further and further away from our guest house and deeper and deeper into slums and into the forgotten areas of Zambia. The deeper we plunged into poverty the harder it was for me to take pictures. The eyes of the children in the slums looked nothing like the eyes of the children outside of the airport. Their eyes looked back at me with a story, a story that I have never experienced nor could relate to. These eyes captured me and were so deep and emotional that it was convicting trying to snap a quick photo. These eyes deserved more than that, theses eyes woke me up.

To us (in our western mindset) we have come to do ministry. We came to pray for Zambia, help the needy and orphaned, be open to do God’s work, and to love the Zambian people unconditionally. Which is good and true in every one of our team’s hearts. And we also know that these people are thankful for what we are able to offer and do. In fact they light up when we are around and they smile when the unloved feel loved and focused on. The fact that we came from our castles (to their standards) in America to the slums of Zambia completely makes their day!

But there is something that doesn’t still doesn’t settle well with me. When the day is over we go back to our expensive ($10 a night) guest house, eat an expensive ($5) meal at a westernized food place for lunch and dinner, we drive back in a van in which many of them have never got to ride in, while I sit hovering above them with a lens looking for a good picture, then we leave them in dust and exhaust as we head home. Although we are very careful in the way we talk and the way we present ourselves so that we don’t look like white skinned Kings ruling over them. We have made it our goal to serve them and go beyond ourselves.

Yet have we really left our castles in their eyes or just ours? What are my real intentions for taking the pictures I am taking? To be able to show people at home who just want to see what I have done over summer break?

No.

I am no longer taking pictures just to collect and showcase like I have on many other trips. I am taking these pictures of these beautiful people so that they would active and call others to this ministry. We are only one team, with a certain amount of time, and with only so much to give. I want these photographs to have an external impact that will activate and inspire others to go beyond themselves and become a servant of the forgotten. We need to stop looking at the eyes of a photograph and look into the eyes of these children face to face. We need to wake up and feel called.



(This isn't the picture I was thinking of when I wrote this in my journal. I haven't had time to upload my current pictures. But this one will do.)

In His Grip,
Jeremy Dennis Pedron