There’s a show on MTV called the “Real World” that has as much to do with the “Real World” as Reality TV does with reality.
THE Real World just assaulted my daughter. This summer our High School students went to Nairobi, Kenya, to work with a great church called the International Christian Center. ICC is a relatively “wealthy” white collar church in the middle of a world of stark contrasts. A Mercedes limousine pulls out of the ICC church parking lot with a bride and groom inside, and on their way to their honeymoon they’ll pass some of the largest slums in the world–200,000 people with no running water, no sewer, little electricity and the various abuses and despair that accompany that way of life.
My daughter, Delaney, experienced that surreal world of contradictions firsthand as the group worked to share the gospel with children in the Makuru slum and build a roof structure for a new church plant a town called Kiserian. While they were there, they worked side by side with students and young adults from our new sister church, ICC. One of them was a tall, lanky, pleasant guy named James. His friends called him Jimmy. Delaney and the other Rio kids spent all day, everyday laughing, working, playing and sharing life with Jimmy and the rest of the ICC crew, and in a very short time they came to know and love each other. As friends. As brothers and sisters. They said goodbye and planned to see each other again.
A few nights ago I walked in the house from a meeting. Delaney was sitting there in the front room staring vacantly at a laptop screen. She was looking at her Facebook page. She looked up at me and said “Jimmy died.” He’d gotten meningitis, a bacterial infection that causes swelling around the brain and spinal cord. In the United States a few hundred people a year die from it. In Africa (and many other places in the world) 50% of those who get it are permanently brain damaged, paralyzed or die. This is the “Real World,” in which most people live. This is the world that needs to be reborn.
Next year’s Rio focus: The World.
I guess there should be a television show called the “surreal life”. Oh, I just reaized every show is like that.