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My friend John is leaving on a business trip today. He’s going to ride on the back of a bicycle taxi for a day and a half down a deteriorated, potholed fossil of a highway to reach a village where he will buy 22 bags of unprocessed rice and then load it into a wooden canoe and ride down the river with it for several days back to Kisangani. He’ll take malaria medicine with him and he promises me he’s taking a mosquito net to hang from the trees when he beds down at night. John just completed his university studies in agricultural science. This isn’t exactly the Southern California senior grad cruise to Mazatlan and Cancun. Poverty leaves people with few options.

When I sit and think about my friends in Nairobi, I am amazed at how gifted they are. They are bright, motivated, creative and kind. If I ever had a business in Kenya, I’d beg them to manage it with me, I’d make them partners. These guys are sharp. They look out over a Nairobi metropolis that thrives economically in ways that Congo doesn’t. But even these highly talented youth are left unemployed and on the fringes. There simply aren’t many jobs available to them. They can’t get married and have families until they have work and stable income. These guys are so strong in their faith and friendship, but there is a certain untamable malaise that comes from being stuck in the life-neutral of poverty.

The chasm between the world of wealth and the world of poverty is deep. But wait, let me correct myself: There aren’t two worlds. We all live in but one world. They say that we are all at most six degrees of separation from any other person on earth. Yet we can be pretty good at not noticing or downright avoiding others who are so “other”. There are all kinds of potential risks and barriers of fear, misunderstanding, discomfort, insecurity and fear that come with making friends whose lives are so unknown to us. I’m not out to lay guilt on anyone and I’m certainly nobody special, but by the grace of God and the grace of others I’ve been invited into relationships with a group of people who are tremendously culturally and economically diverse. I can’t help but testify to the blessed goodness of these friendships. They’ve taught me about their lives and they’ve taught me about mine. They help me to recognize my own poverty. And at the end of the day it’s really true: as much as we are different, we are so much more the same.

I’m learning so much and I’m nowhere near a textbook or chalkboard. I learn while sitting on the sofa sharing a snack or catching a bus or walking down the street or talking with the guards behind my building over their cooking fire. Among the lessons: poverty stinks. It’s a reality that can’t be rationalized away or blindly blamed on bad personal choices.

Most of us from the West spend considerable effort in life avoiding poverty or seeking wealth. We work a lot and we are blessed to have the opportunity to do so. Many of us in the USA are even free to choose our career from among any number of potential paths. Maybe that’s the way it should be everywhere, but from where I stand it’s such a luxurious notion. The good lives we work for often leave us with little time to even consider the real and persistent suffering in our world. We do give from our excess, but mostly to charities that alleviate suffering after a loved-one struggles and dies from that ailment- when it “hits home”. It’s the way we tend to behave and see the world and it’s not at all unnatural or malicious. The Indigo Girls put it this way, “It’s a perfect world when we look the other way.” I’m fortunate that I am in a place where it’s not so easy to do.

If you are a person who prays, please pray that John has a safe trip.