A Home Visit with Eli and Rebecca

Rebecca, Eli, and I went on an adventure to Client X’s house last night. Client X is one of Bread for the City’s legal clients, and Client X lives in the Northeast section of the city. As we drove from our Southeast office across the Anacostia and back into Northeast, the area looked familiar. My roommate Jordan and I had biked to that very intersection during one of our biking expeditions a few weeks prior and had commented on the presence of stores, chain stores, etc… in an area we might not have expected them.

Perhaps one block from this area, an area whose façade looks like chain stores and development is the house of client X. From the outside façade of the client’s building, life looked normal and average – nothing out of the ordinary. As Eli opened the door of the apartment building, I was transported into another world – trash was the first thing I saw in the hallways of the building… cigarette butts lined the floors… We arrived at the top of the stairs to meet Client X, who told Eli to walk around back to meet. We walked back into the sunshine, around the building, and up a flight of stairs.

This morning I was fishing for a word to describe walking up those back stairs. I think eerie describes the way I felt walking into a home that had large holes in the walls… that was dark and messy. The doors had violent images of death and corpses graffitied on them. We stepped through a large pile of garbage as we walked in – that garbage could have been the home to rats and bed bugs for all I know. We handed Client X a bag of food, chatted for a second, and said goodbye.

This is the aspect of poverty I don’t have to see at Bread for the Cit. The image of Client X’s house is imprinted in my mind as a sign of mental illness, the effects of drugs and prostitution, lack of opportunity, hopelessness… the effects of the poverty cycle that is present in our society.

The funny part is that I was more struck here than I was in Zambia. Zambia, an African nation, a nation full of the images of absolute world poverty. Walking along the dirt streets of Zambezi, glances at homes with thatch roofs and no running water, with children wearing second or third hand clothing from America, with the people staring at the white outsiders. That is an image of poverty too, an image of some of the world’s most absolute poverty.

I think as Americans, with our media coverage, we’ve been conditioned to know that to be Africa. That is the African poverty we expect when we travel there. It is no surprise to us when we see it. Though it tugs at our hearts and we grapple with the site of the poverty, it is exactly what we expected to see.

I live in Washington, DC. The capital of the United States of America, the “richest country in the world.” I live in the same city as the U.S. Capitol building, the White House, the Smithsonian Institution Museums, the Memorials, and the National Monument. But I also live in a city where Client X lives perhaps worse than the people of Zambia. Client X’s home is just hidden by the brick exterior. Bricks are hard and sturdy. Bricks don’t reveal what is inside.

To borrow a phrase from Norman Maclean and adapt it to my own experience, I am haunted by the image of Client X’s house. I have not lost hope, however. Instead, my experience with Client X makes clear my vocation to act with justice, to love tenderly, to serve one another, and to walk humbly with God.