Callous

I no longer flinch when I see a woman begging. Her bone-thin hand outstretched, fabric across her shoulder making a homemade sling for her sleeping child. Her child's hair matted wet from sweating in the midday heat. The woman who walks on all fours, like a gorilla, her back twisted and useless, forever bent forward. The children who play barefoot in the streets and wade in the gutter water. I look at them and feel sad, but the rawness of the sight is gone. The tears that once stung my eyes during our first months here, are dry.

They are part of the infrastructure, part of the scenery, part of Indonesia. Like the high cement, fortress-like walls that separate homes, covered in graffiti only as tall as someone can reach. Like the rusted barbed wire that coils along the fence tops. The poverty is here. I see it everyday. But I no longer flinch.

And that makes me so sad.Why does this happen? It is as though my soul has become callous through the repetitious sight.

I remember the year I was first married, my husband and I had no money to pay for cable television. And we rarely had time to watch what few channels we could get with our rabbit ear antenna. The result was almost a year with no tv. When we finally invested in a better television and started watching programs again, we were shocked by what we saw. A year of not seeing made the sights fresh again – and in this case shocking. Words, violence, vulgarity, innuendos, outright immorality. We actually turned off shows before they were finished. Then slowly after a few months of watching, keeping the tv on a little longer each time, the shock wore off, and those things that had shocked us, became commonplace again.

Here, daily poverty is commonplace. And because it is commonplace, it has become less shocking. And while the poverty here is heartbreaking, the fact that my shock at the poverty has lessened, hurts my heart terribly.

So to the woman with her child, to the woman who travels the streets of Jakarta like a gorilla, and to the barefoot children. I will try to keep seeing you. I will not look away. I will open my heart to you and remember you. I will roll down my window when you approach. And although my heart does not prick with the sharp pain the way it did the first time I saw you, I will give each time you ask.

And because I believe we are more alike than we are different,

I will always,

always

look you in the eye.