Real poverty smells like burning dogs

By Seth Bracken

October 10, 2008 | Poverty exists. I had the same conversation time after time with the people I met in the ghettos of Argentina, many of them American Mormon missionaries, like myself at the time.

How could we ever explain this poverty to the rest of the world?

There is no trash service and it's impossible to explain the smell of the burning dogs. When a dog dies, they heave an old tire on top and light it on fire, like they do to their trash.

We would talk about how you really can't understand poverty until you see it. You can't understand what it's like to live in the ghetto until you are awoken in the middle of the night because there is a gang war going on right outside your window. You can't really understand what it's like until you see the dead bodies that have been shot in the park about a block from your apartment.

The Benitez family understood it. They rented a small two room shack. I saw their struggles, many were very similar to any one else's struggles. The teenage daughters wanted to stay out later with their friends, the kids wanted more sweets, just like anyone else, right?

It was something else when I went to visit the family and interrupted a heated argument between the mother and her oldest daughter, Dianna, who was 16 years old. You see, Dianna had a job offer and wanted to drop out of school and start immediately. This was her big chance for her to make it out of the ghetto, she felt like she had to get out. Her mother strongly opposed, due to the nature of the job. Her job offer was prostitution; a man that ran a brothel saw her on the street and offered this innocent 16 year old girl a job in a brothel. I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to scream at the man. It was an outrage against all that was moral and right. But then I remembered, it wasn't me. I had never had to skip dinner because I couldn't afford a loaf of bread. I didn't sleep in the same room as my 11 brothers and sisters. She cried herself to sleep that night. I listened to her sobs; it was easy to hear because the walls were made from a very thin wood, the type that you make model airplanes out of. I don't think that she actually wanted to do it; she was too scared, and she just had no other choice.

For the Benitez family there was an opportunity of a lifetime, a supposed government project that was providing land and small houses on a new field that was slowly being developed. There were no public facilities, no running water, no bathrooms, no electricity, but the price was low and there was a promise of development, they just had to act quickly.

The amount was a mere 1,000 pesos, or $330 American -- about the amount that they would make in two years.

They started scraping; they didn't eat dinner or breakfast for months. They went on a once a day eating schedule and the amount of food that they had was about as meager as a prison camp diet. They saved and they scraped and took out a loan based off the in-law's shoe-making business. They bought the house, without ever checking the credentials of the buyer.

The house was tiny wooden house with two rooms, but it was more secure and they were no longer renting, it was a dream come true. It was one of a few hundred new homes in the area.

One winter morning as I was walking along the road toward the field where the brand new Benitez house was I encountered a problem. The problem was, I didn't see it. All I saw, instead of houses, was about 100 cop cars. I couldn't understand it; my mind just didn't take it in. I thought that I had made a mistake in arriving. Surely I took a wrong turn! The houses were gone. The field was empty. I was just there the day before and everything seemed normal.

I spoke with some of the people around and they said the police came in the night with no warning. They were in full SWAT gear, bullet proof vests and high powered rifles. They gave no time, they wanted everyone out and they wanted it done as fast as possible.

My mind immediately went to Bruno Benitez, the youngest. He was just learning to walk. I was there when he took his first wobbly steps. I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be woken in the middle of the night and evicted from the house that you fought so hard to get.

I stood in shock wondering how such a thing could happen, when a family that had obviously been evicted the night before with all of their belongings, asked me a question.

"Have you ever had this happen to you?"

"No," I replied, wearing my cleanly pressed white shirt and brand name tie.

"Then how can you preach to us about God?"

I didn't respond. I was just beginning to understand it. I was just starting to grasp what it all meant. I walked away to find the Benitez family. They had to be out there somewhere, and they needed help.

I later found out that the lady who was selling this property never owned it in the first place and she was just doing it as a scam to exploit. She was never prosecuted and no one ever got their money back

I wish that you could understand it all. If I could bleed the pain that I felt that day onto this page so that you could pick it up and experience it even for just a moment, I would. I want you to try to feel the real pain; I want you to try to understand that it exists. It's not just something that we see on the National Geographic Channel and then go back to dinner.

There are millions of people out there, just like you and me, and they hurt. They hurt more than we can possibly understand.

NW
MS