It’s been a long time since we explained our lives here. Peregrine, Shakeenah, and I live in a one-room concrete-and-brick home in an average basti slum in north India. We’re lucky enough to have our own tap and no shared toilet (for just the second time in a decade), though of course we still take …
Shakeenah and Shadia Our first day back to the slum I was days behind on sleep after too many plane and train legs. Thankfully there was an empty room waiting for us. After a frantic morning clearing out grime and cobwebs, we unpacked just enough to attempt a 2pm nap in 90-degree weather....when the power …
“When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For …
A scooter jolts over a distant curb and peels off. As I hurry to see what it's fleeing, a man steps into view with an enormous red stain on his shirt. "Dear God, let that not be blood." In the minute it takes to reach him I change my mind three times on whether it's …
If you've been reading this blog more than a year (or any other blog I've authored) you know I think American Christmas is a flashpoint for our greatest societal dilemmas. Will we put our faith in God, or will we trust in wealth and possessions? Which one do we celebrate? If an alien being observed …
As I've shared about life in the slum, I've focused on material things: homes, electricity, water, etc. With that stuff it's relatively simple to measure the differences between life here and in the West. But as you may have discerned from the incident with Alia as well as the boys on the train, there are …
Continue reading Capital matters. Social capital matters more.
Four years ago I met a young girl named Alia. Alia was 13 the first time she came to our literacy lab. She was mentally disabled and had been attending a special school for the disabled for four years. Though she was not literate and in fact could only recognize a few letters, it was a …
I would have found out sooner if I hadn't been out all day. Turning down the alley I could see that something was up. People were out of their homes, disturbed, grouping. I started towards them but then they rushed to me instead. "Four boys! They've been missing since 3pm yesterday! It is your kids …
Most folk don't want to hear me talk about slums. I once thought that slum life would make this blog unique. The internet is saturated with almost everything, but there aren't many English-speaking slum bloggers. Maybe people wouldn't want to hear what I had to say about money, power, or nonviolence, but at least they'd …
A post by Peregrine Occasionally something happens in the basti that just so encourages and delights me as a picture of God's dream for the world, already happening in a place of "poverty". I was visiting a Muslim neighbor in her mud-floor hut, one of the poorest that I know well. She was having stomach …
Stranger in a Slum 