message on my cell phone

[Sister Alvear]

Tonight a pastor from a distant state sent me a message on my cell phone. He is opening up a new work in a shanty town. Shanty towns are what we call in Portuguese "favela" IT is an illegal occupation of a terrain in large cities, where dwellers often have to live without any basic infrastructure, such as water, sewage, electricity, garbage collection, mail, etc.
This one is no different. Over the years we have worked in many favelas. The pastor wanted to know if one of our churches could recieve a offering to buy them a car battery so they could hook up lights for services on a regular basis...The cost of a battery is about 80 dollars. Even though we had took up a young peoples offering, a childrens offering and a special offering for a sister and her son that has to travel to another state for a medial exam we were able to raise almost ten dollars on the battery.
I thought as I read his message and begin to weep how blessed we are. How blessed America is...
May our lips shout with praise our hearts bubble over with joy that among earth´s millions we are the BLESSED ONES...

[Sister Alvear]

The theft of life
Fear of a grisly trade in organ transplants stalks the
shanty towns, according to Nancy Scheper-Hughes.

A terrifying rumour surfaced in the shantytowns outside Recife in north-east Brazil in 1987 and has been circulating there ever since. The whisperings concern the abduction and mutilation of young people who, it is said, are eyed greedily as fodder for an international trade in organs for wealthy transplant patients.

Shanty-town residents reported multiple sightings of large blue and yellow vans, usually driven by North American or Japanese agents, who were said to be scouring poor neighbourhoods in search of small stray children they mistakenly believed would never be missed. According to the residents' stories, children would be nabbed and shoved into the trunk of the van. Some were murdered and mutilated for their organs (especially eyes, lungs, hearts and livers), their discarded bodies found by the side of the road or tossed outside the walls of municipal cemeteries. Others were taken and sold directly to hospitals and major medical centres - and their eviscerated bodies were said to turn up in hospital rubbish tips.

'They are looking for "donor organs". You may think that this is just nonsense,' said my friend Little Irene. 'But we have seen things with our own eyes in the hospitals and public morgues, and we know better.'

'These are stories by the poor and illiterate,' offered another of my friends - Casorse, the new Socialist manager of the municipal cemetery of Bom Jesus. 'I have been working here for over a year. I arrive at six in the morning, and I leave at seven at night. Never have I seen anything. Where are the bodies or even the traces of blood left behind?'

The stories reached such proportions that my attempts one morning so rescue little Mercea - in the midst of a severe respiratory attack - backfired. As soon as I gave the order to the taxi-driver - 'To the hospital and quick!' - the already terrified little toddler began to choke, scream and go totally rigid. No amount of coaxing could convince her that her tormented little body was not going to be sold to the doctors by her American madrinha.

Even more children than usual were kept out of school during this period, and others were sent away to live with distant kin. Those who were left at home while their mothers were at work in the sugar-cane fields or in the houses of the wealthy, found themselves virtual prisoners, locked into small, dark huts with even the wooden shutters firmly fastened. On several occasions I had to comfort a sobbing child who, through a crack in a door or shutter, would beg me to liberate her from her dark and lonely cell.

The root of these extravagant fears may lie in an actual and active round-up of little street urchins, called meninos da rua (street children), motivated by angry shopkeepers and supported by local police. Some of these children 'disappear' into Brazilian prisons and correctional institutions that are viewed with horror by shantytown children. Others are assassinated by local 'death squads'. Benedicto Rodrigues dos Santos, head of the Brazilian National Street Children's Movement, says that in the last five years his movement has recorded the violent deaths of 1,397 street children.

But more immediate, perhaps, is the possibility that these seemingly farfetched rumours of body- and organ-snatching have their basis in poor people's perceptions, grounded in a social and medical reality, that their bodies and those of their children might be worth more dead than alive to the rich and powerful. Above all, they fear dying in the charity wards of public hospitals where their remains will be 'donated' to medical students to cancel their accumulated medical debts.

Stories like this one, told by a washerwoman from Recife, confirm some of the suspicions.

'When I was working in Recife,' she began, 'I became the lover of a man who had a huge, ugly ulcer on his leg. I felt sorry for him and so I would go to his house and wash his clothes for him, and he would visit my house from time to time. We were going along like this as lovers for several years when all of a sudden and without warning, he died. The city sent for his body. I decided to follow him to make sure that his body wouldn't be lost. He didn't have a single document, so I was going to serve as his witness and as his identification papers. But by the time I got to the public morgue they had already sent his body to the medical school for the students to practise on. So I followed him there and what I saw happening as the school I could not allow. They had his body hung up and they were already cutting off little pieces of him. I demanded the body back. After a lot of arguing they let me take the body home with me. He was only a beggar, a tirador de esmolas who sometimes did magic tricks on the bridge in Recife to amuse people. But I was the one who washed his clothes and took care of his wound, and so you could say that I was the owner of his body.'

Due to stories and incidents such as these there is a fascination and horror associated with autopsy, plastic surgery and organ transplants. 'So many of the rich are having plastic surgery and organ transplants,' offered one older woman, 'that we really don't know whose body we are talking to anymore.' As they see it the ring of organ exchange proceeds from the bodies of the young, the poor and the beautiful to the bodies of the old, the rich and the ugly, and from Brazilians in the South to North Americans, Germans and Japanese in the North.

Shantytown residents can easily imagine that their bodies might be eyed longingly as a reservoir of spare parts by those with money. We in the rich world are far more comfortable - we think of organ transplants as 'gifts' donated freely by loving and altruistic people. But to the poor living on the edges of affluent society, whose bodies are routinely preyed upon by the wealthy and powerful (in economic and symbolic exchanges that have international dimensions), the organ transplant implies less 'the gift' than 'the commodity'. In place of the 'gift of life' there is a suspicion of a 'theft of life' in which they must serve as the unwilling and unknowing sacrificial lambs.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes is a US anthropologist who has remained in regular contact with the people of the shantytowns near Recife since the mid 1960´s.

copied...

[Sister Alvear]

I know for a fact these things happen...and much more that never reaches the papers. Please pray for our country.

[TalkLady]

Originally Posted by Sister Alvear

I know for a fact these things happen...and much more that never reaches the papers. Please pray for our country.

I will pray, Sis. Alvear. ...I was in a literature class and we saw a video about this. It was horrific. My heart is crying for our world. DO you ever want to say "Even so Lord Jesus, Come Quickly"? .....Just when I think I've seen and heard it all, something else happens that is worse here in America, too.

[Sister Alvear]

Not only do we have this we have child prostution...our beach areas are full of tourist that destroy little girls...

[Sister Alvear]

Yet from these "hellholes" in many areas of Brazil we have won precious souls...

[TalkLady]

I can't imagine what it must be like there. You do deserve double honor, Sis. ...You and your family. We are so blessed in America - much more than we deserve.

[Sister Alvear]

I have lots of patience ( a god given quality) so long lines of people come to talk to me to tell me their needs and try to find ways to help them. Being a missionary for me is not an option it is a divine calling...a noble one at that. I deeply love the people here and go early to church to talk to them, to hug them, to pray with them. I have never lost the wonder that God called me to be a missionary.
These people and their sacrifices amaze me. Northeast Brazil is ver poverty striken. Many people eat from our table everyday. They just "happen" to arrive at mealtime...ha...