Last week I came upon a large billboard advertising vacant flats in a new housing complex called Eden Gardens. Anywhere else, I wouldn’t have given the compound’s name a second glance, but this city has a way of conjuring up thoughts of the many faces it shows you from day to day. One’s eyes can hardly escape the disparity here. Privilege meets you as you lay down to rest on a soft mattress, take out what you consider trash or grab a snack from the small shop across the street. Today I had gone to buy a bit of chocolate and as I approached the shop, noticed an impoverished little girl buying a few essentials for her family. My plans changed. Her presence caused me to quickly turned around and head back to my flat chocolateless.
Eden Gardens is just one of many affluent pockets in this city. The south side literally has a small town within it, surrounded by a twenty foot wall keeping the rest of the world out. If the chasms between the rich and poor weren’t so immense here, I might simply consider that the walls had been erected for security’s sake. But understanding the ways in which I struggle perceiving the differences between myself and the small girl I met today, how I sometimes want to close my eyes to the affluence I’m still married to in this city, I can’t help but wonder if the walls weren’t built with other underlying intentions. I can’t help but compare them to the walls I’ve put up since returning here.
The irony is that “we were meant for the garden,” as I heard a friend recently say. Sometimes it seems we’re a bit confused as to what that garden should look like. This walled in housing complex exemplifies that confusion, but it might be a place from which to begin considering how we’ve gone wrong. This city is one of extremes. Most days I am unwilling to enter the confines of Eden Garden’s compound, which is in some ways similar to the moments I hate myself for hesitating to hold the unwashed hands of God’s beloved on the streets of this city. There are many walls here, seen and unseen, right now I’m just trying to work through the ones I’ve constructed myself.