Physical Hope
Part 1: Historyby Scott Bessenecker
Excerpted from forthcoming The Quest for Hope in Slum Communities,
Reprinted with permission ISBN 1932805-192 World Vision Press in partnership with Authentic Media
expected publication date Summer 2005
Part 1: History
Part 2: Health
Part 3: Property
It might have been the packs of stray dogs that made me think of it. Living for a month in the garbage village, I could not avoid them. There must have been hundreds, traveling in packs of ten or so, mangy, snarling, and fighting with other dogs. Although this was twenty-first-century Egypt, it was the dogs that made me feel that I was living in some sort of medieval time warp. Dogs were the first domesticated animal and have only recently been spayed or neutered by the rich. Packs of wild dogs have long been part of human settlements. Scenes like the ones I experienced above were part of the seventh circle of hell in Dante’s fourteenth-century Divine Comedy. So watching that pack of skinny dogs scampering along crowded, dirt streets was like watching pieces of the history of human settlements.
In the garbage village—this little corner of the so-called modern world—dead rats line the streets. The smell of animal and human waste mixes with smells of baking pita bread, cooked lamb, and rotting garbage. Donkeys haul carts of trash or goods for sale. Pigs, goats, and chickens bustle about as if on a mission. Half-naked children run laughing through muddy streets. These sights and smells have been experienced time and again throughout history. I imagine the streets of any town of medieval Europe, Africa, or Asia to be nearly identical to this twenty-first-century garbage village, complete with the teeming packs of dogs. These scenes seem strange to me only because I have lived such an infinitesimally short time on a tiny, economically affluent island.
We are chained to a window that looks out on a tiny speck of humanity for only a moment in history. We can read a little about people and times that have passed into obscurity, but any available information could only have been recorded by the handful of literate people who have populated history. Of that handful of literate people who have ever lived, only a fraction of them chose to write something about their world. Of all that has ever been written, next to nothing has survived that is more than two hundred years old. Still less has been written or translated into the only language I can read: English. And yet without some basic understanding of history, we are doomed to affect little real, lasting change.
“History is more than entertainment, more than instruction, more than an enjoyable avocation. It is also a compass for voyagers in a storm-tossed sea.”1 Even though the story of slums has just begun to be written, we must learn what we can about how they have evolved and how cities and towns have operated before the advent of the modern slum community. Winston Churchill said that the farther back we look, the farther ahead we can see. If we are trying to look into the future of urban poor communities, then we need to take time to look back at their development.
After World War II a number of things happened in a short period of time throughout the developing world. First, over one hundred countries gained independence from colonial powers. Second, the medical revolution put a serious dent in global mortality rates. Third, the industrialization process went into full swing. And fourth, agricultural productivity increased dramatically. The results were wonderful and horrific. The book A History of World Societies chronicles the head-spinning changes of the past one hundred years that have given rise to our impoverished urban reality today.
In his book The Urban Transformation of the Developing World, Josef Gugler briefly scans the urban centers in the Asian, Latin American, and African landscapes, noting the similarities and differences in how urban issues have played themselves out. Both of these readings survey the evolution of the urban world and give us important building blocks as we seek to understand how to pursue renewal and restoration for the millions who live in the global slum community.
Notes
1. Michael Bauman, Historians of the Christian Tradition: Their Methodology and Influence on Western Thought (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995), p. 5.
Part 1: History
Part 2: Health
Part 3: Property
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
Print
Email
Comments
Be the first one to add a comment.
To post a comment, please login or register