Invisible People

I just read an article on Love146's blog about the marginalized, forgotten, and the invisible. Certain stories here in the United States are blown completely out of proportion- the arrest of Lindsay Lohan, the affair of Tiger Woods, or even the escape of lions from a local museum. Meanwhile, millions of people elsewhere are suffering.

I just came back from a two-week volunteer trip with Koinonia Collaborative in Venezuela. We stayed at a local church, El Senor es Nuestra Victoria in Maracaibo. The sights I saw and the people I met will never be forgotten. The urbanized downtown looks like any other city in the world. But take a right turn off the highway, drive about 3 minutes, make another turn, and you will find yourself in a completely new environment.

Dirt roads, houses made of trash, barbed wire and broken bottles set on cement walls to protect the family from whatever was outside. I soon learned that there were also internal tragedies that I couldn't tell by the mere exterior. Drugs, alcohol, prostitution, abuse, bestiality.

Children grow up watching their parents have sex- they don't realize the consequences of such actions. When they are teenagers, they experiment with sex (both with other humans and with animals), and when they realize that it's not fulfilling, they try prostitution. When this isn't enough, they turn to drugs and alcohol. Employment is out of question. So begins the downward spiral of their lives.

And yet, no one has heard of El Museo or Los Altos Tres, two villages I visited in Maracaibo. In fact, millions of villages, towns, and cities exist like this all around the world. It's time that we start reporting and sharing important news. It's time that we start putting faces on these invisible children, women, and men, and bringing them into the light.