September 22, 1996

San Antonio Sur, Nicaragua

A friend of mine, Gilberto, killed himself last night. He got a little drunk and then drank rat poison straight down. It is not unusual for men around here to kill themselves. Not too long ago a man just down the street a little way walked out of his house and hanged himself in the tree.

Gilberto was poor, desperately poor. He didn’t have a house or even a piece of zinc to call his own. All his family is in the area, but they were all poor too.

Gilberto would work when he could—cutting weeds with a machete. That was about all he knew how to do. When he did find work, he could work the whole day for just two dollars. But he seemed to be always looking for work, always on the verge of getting some good job that would change his life—always on the verge, but never getting the job.

Gilberto had a woman, Marta, and a couple of young girls, about six and eight years old. She was a good woman, accepting all that he was, faithful to him, staying with him even when he was drunk and mean, even lying for him to get him money for drink. She is about six months pregnant now.

And Gilberto drank, drank to drown it all out—the hopelessness. And the more he drank the more hopeless it became. Somehow the drink, or the character that resulted from the drinking, would always ruin any good luck they might have. The job or opportunity would be lost. But it really didn’t make much difference. The jobs or opportunities in Managua only allow the poor to hang on a little longer. They could never really get better.

We first met Gilberto and Marta about three years ago when they came to the door at night. They had a long and elaborate story of their hardships. And as if to demonstrate their need, they had a half of cup of beans in a can which they said was all the food they had. They wanted food. We gave them some.

We knew Gilberto’s family. We had given money to his parents to help one of their children in trouble. And we had paid for his sister’s cancer operation in El Salvador.

Gilberto kept coming back, asking us for food or money, and always saying that this would be the last time he would bother us. In a couple of days he would be back with the smell of drink on his breath with another story. At times he would drag his wife, and she would stand there abjectly as if to prove how much they needed the money. Sometimes he would wait down the road and send her alone or with the girls. Sometimes she would write me long letters apologizing for bothering me and explaining exactly what the money was needed for. And there were times when they would just send the girls, asking for food or money.

For a while we had them in our food program. We gave them five pounds of rice and beans, some powdered milk, and some corn flour every week. But when we transferred the program to the church, they wouldn’t keep coming to church, so they were dropped from the program.

Gilberto and Marta always really needed food and money. They were about as poor and hopeless as you can get. But we knew that sometimes Gilberto would sell the food to buy drink. People would come and tell us, and sometimes, when Marta was mad at him, she would tell us how he misspent the money. One time he had asked for some money to buy the girls a little mattress since they were sleeping on the bare ground. Marta said he used the money for drink instead. It was hard to give him the money when we knew that he might use it to buy drink and make everything worse. Many people have come to ask for food and then walked right down the street and sold it for drink. But it was harder not to give it to him when it just may have been that they had not eaten in days. When he just sent to girls to ask for money, we would bring them in and feed them. It was heart-wrenching to watch them eat. They were so very hungry.

They would come and tell their stories, always something different, sometimes something really farfetched, but always swearing that they were telling the truth. I would tell them that they did not need to lie, that they can just come and say that they need a little money. But they never believed me and continued to make up lies.

For a couple of weeks Gilberto or Marta had been coming to ask for money about every other day. I started warning them that they were beginning to abuse my help. The latest need was to have Marta’s belly massaged—a custom here that is supposed to rearrange the fetus and make the pregnancy and delivery easier. I gave him the money. Soon they were back insisting that it needed to be done again. I tried to explain that it is not needed, but they would not listen to me. This time I took a stand and said that I was not going to give them money for something they did not need and would probably be spent on drink. They would not relent. They kept insisting and would not leave. I finally told them to go away and not come back. They waited at the gate for a long time looking in, and finally they faded away like whipped dogs.

The next day Gilberto was back. He said that they were kicked out of the shack they were staying in because they could not pay their share of the water bill. He needed money to pay the bill. I once again tried to explain that we don’t mind helping some, but I was not going to give him money to buy drink. Gilberto was honest this time. He admitted that he did drink some and that sometimes he used the money for things other than what he had said he needed the money for. I gave him the money. After all, he came back. He came back knowing that I would still be there for him.

To get me to come out Gilberto had yelled from the gate that this was the last time he would bother me. He had said this many times. But this really was the last time.

The last words my son and I said to Gilberto were that he must hang onto God--this was his only hope. But the words were empty of meaning. I was like the person in James who says "be warm and be filled" without doing much to clothe and feed.

I realize now that it was I who represented God. All of us Christians represent God in the world. All of us have the responsibility to manifest the love of God. If we don’t do it, it is not God’s fault. It is ours. How many times have we tried to feed and shelter the hungry and homeless with just words?

We had helped Gilberto so many times, but it was never enough. We were already feeding eight families weekly, building our third house, supporting the church, and paying the pastors salary. Every day people like Gilberto came to us asking for help. We paid for births, and burials, and medicine, false teeth, etc. We know that we brought a few families back from the depths of despair, restoring their faith in God and His love. But there were so many that we didn’t have the resources to reach.

I don’t think that Gilberto had planned his death. He was always down and desperate. He was always either trying to escape the present or thinking about how he was going to make it through the next moment. Had he survived, he might have been back today with another story.

Who grieves for Gilberto? There are a million like him in this country. What will happen to Marta, the girls, and the child not yet born? What kind of church do we have where some members of the body of Christ live in abundance while their brothers and sisters in Christ are so hungry and hopeless.

Gilberto’s senseless death has put a hole in my soul. I used to pray for Gilberto every morning. I told him that I would continue to do so. But he knew and I knew that it wasn’t enough. The money was not enough. The prayers were not enough. Gilberto had nothing—no place to live, no work, no hope. The money I gave him would run out in a few days. How could I convince Gilberto that God loved him with a few dollars and a prayer? If we are the instruments by which God’s love is manifested to people, then I didn’t show Gilberto much of the love of God. Oh, I would liked to have said, "Come, Gilberto, I have a place for your family to stay temporarily. We will build you a new house and we have food for your family." But I couldn’t. We were already overwhelmed, stretched so thin, with what we were doing.

As we live in ease and abundance, it is so easy to condemn the Gilberto’s of the world—their drinking and their lying. Christ had no condemnation for the beggar, Lazarus, that lay at the rich man’s gate, but He had for the rich man that ignored the beggar. Who needs my prayers more?

Lots of times I used to hate to see Gilberto coming. I now believe that the reason was not that he was so hopeless, but rather it was because I had no real hope to offer him—just a few dollars and words that he couldn’t eat.

by tp