Why Does She Sweep?

Sex, Not Words

Hers was the first cabin on the right down the most desperate street I have ever walked. Like her neighbors, she hurried onto her “porch” at the sound of men’s voices. And, like her neighbors, the hard eyes in her young face stared disappointment when she recognized our missionaries.

In the few weeks she had occupied her shack of a bungalow on this lonely island in a forgotten corner of Lake Victoria, she had learned from her “coworkers” that these missionaries only wanted to talk. She didn’t come here to make conversation with men. This was a street where lonely fishermen with fast money came to pay for sex, not for words.

Just One More Whore

As our friends who had dedicated their lives to the hopeless citizens of these island fishing villages described the deep injustice of the place, she reached back into her one-bed-room for something—a straw broom. Slow mechanical strokes brushed cigarette butts, candy wrappers, and small wads of filth into the street. She never looked up; never spoke. Just one more whore living on a street of whores until the aids virus erases her from the scene.

And then, in the cruel rhythm of life on this exploited frontier, her brutalized replacement will take up housekeeping.

When we came to the end of the street, I wondered aloud for our group, “Why was she sweeping?”

Someone’s Little Girl

On the long boat ride back to our missionary’s home in Kahunda, Tanzania on the southern shore of Lake Victoria, I thought about when and where the little girl-turned prostitute learned to sweep.

Who taught her? Was it her mother, her grandmother?

What were they imagining for her when her little hands grasped the handle for the first time?

What pictures came to her little mind as she swept the dirt floor of the little house she grew up in?

What ordinary innocent dreams of husband, home, and children?

Hate Sin; Beg God

I hated sin more than ever before, begged God for her soul, and asked Him to please break the cycle of generational sin in that evil place.

And I thanked God for the privilege of sending Andy and Margaret Anderson to her world.

“But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest’” (Matthew 9:36-38).