Kalantha Brewis walks barefoot for fistula

In the UK, Kalantha Brewis is walking to raise money for the Hamlin Fistula Foundation–barefoot.  Here’s her story of faith in action:

It seems to me that sometimes you get an idea so odd that only the Holy Spirit could have given it to you.  Why else would I find myself training for a 35 mile barefoot walk? “Take no sandals” said Jesus (Luke 10:4)

A couple of years back I first heard about Fistula- and the ruin it brings to the lives of young women- only girls really, in many instances. At the time our small, rural church was considering which charities to support for the coming year and I decided to suggest the Hamlin Fistula Hosptial in Addis Ababa. But before I could do that, I felt I needed to find out  more about it, so I bought a copy of “A Walk to Beautiful.”

As I watched it I was struck- by the intense beauty of the young women with this awful condition, by their long, lonely journeys to the hospital, and by the fact that many of them seemed to be travelling barefoot.
I don’t know how, but I felt connected to them- though as a white lawyer in a Western democracy I could hardly have had a life more different to theirs- but the idea came to me that I would walk for these women, just as they had to walk. Barefoot.

As a Christian I take seriously the transformative work Jesus did by embracing the lepers, the madmen and the unclean women of his day. It seems to me that as Christians we are called, in each generation, to find those at the margins of our societies and, by the grace of God, to love them.  I’m not pretending that I normally achieve this- far from it- but I do believe that it should be my goal and my intention, in all I do, to bring comfort and love to the unloved and the unlovely.

I wanted to give these women a voice by entering what they did, if only in a small way- my walk will be 35 miles, with friends alongside to support me- they walk alone, rejected, and with no promise that they will meet anything but hostility and disgust as they travel.

The business of being barefoot slows you down- you have to watch where you’re stepping. It makes you vulnerable and it stigmatises you- in the UK  (unless you’re on the beach) being barefoot is normally seen as a sign that you are either very poor indeed or- more likely- mentally unstable.

Entering even a tiny way into this vulnerability is my way of attempting to share Christ’s suffering in these women – as well as a way of challenging those around me- why do they find it odd or upsetting for me to be barefoot when the thought of women in underdeveloped countries going barefoot is brushed away as “foreign culture” or “hotter climate”?

A fistula sufferer is a victim in so many ways-usually denied education, married  whether she consents or not, physically devastated through childbirth, often bereft of the child who dies during her long labour, and then rejected by her community. If Jesus calls us to bring consolation and hope to anyone, it must be to a woman such as this.

To support Kalantha’s barefoot walk, please visit: www.justgiving.com/walkingbarefoot