Strange things—unseen.

I believe pools of people congregating together for a long period of time lose their eyes…lose their awareness for particular things. That’s why it is so necessary that other cultural groups come in and re-see the things they are now blind to. It works like a global self-healing mechanism, which calls all to participate.

There are some very real very shocking things I often see walking down the street. Yet in Uganda more often than not, people avert their eyes and “don’t see it.” Once their was a grown woman walking down the rural road, naked as the day she was born.

It didn’t appear as though anyone was seeing her.

Last month I was on the Jinja-Kampala hi-way. A young man, who looked to be in his twenties was walking down the road, head held high, beaten and bloody from head to toe. Not one inch of his body was untouched by blood. The road was choked with traffic. Scores of pedestrians were on either side of the road.

Yet it appeared as though nobody saw him proudly choking back his sobs as he walked tall, stepping purposefully down the road.

Yesterday as I was in town getting groceries, my daughters and I saw another grown man walking down the side of the road in a complete state of undress. His pants were totally torn. He was walking confidently and with defiance in his nakedness, waving his smartphone as though speaking to someone on it. He was shirtless with buttocks and legs completely exposed but he managed to hold some shreds of his trousers over his privates.

The most unusual thing about the naked man was the crowded streets’ apparent, complete oblivion to his presence among them. Even those who passed by him on either side, with an inch to spare…they demonstrated no sign of having seen him. The passerby’s pace and trajectory was unaltered. Perhaps their eyes averted slightly. But turning the gaze toward him or too harshly away would have been too much. Glory Gracie and I were the only ones on the street gaping at him from a distance.

So it is in my own culture. There are things we are decidedly, completely blind to. We need someone with fresh eyes to come and re-see it for us.

I’m reminded of the story of the Good Samaritan.