Freedom Cry travel

‘WORDS’ / By Wendell Phillips Berwick

By Wendell Phillips Berwick

Gulshan is being informed about her coming freedom, by a local villager.

I continued down south on 55 with the windows open, “JOY FM’ radio streamin’, acceleration, and wide open road, exhilaration. I was swooshing down a highway on Sunday morning, hardly anyone here, and feeling fortunate. Minority Christians, in the Pakistan brickyards don’t get their Sunday Sabbath off. They still must make bricks, hundreds of thousands of bricks on thousands of the holy days of their lives, from the dusty dawn to dirty dusk. The only relaxation they have the entire week, apart from sleep, when they’re ready to drop anyway, is Friday afternoon, the Brick Master’s own holy day. I shut off the Christian pop chiming on my pick up truck radio.

I’m driving south out of The city, into the country of Jefferson County, to an artful small church on a beautiful hill of a 40 acre property with a small seminary, the very reason Tree (Theresa) and I had moved to Hillsboro Missouri, from Chicago land in 1988 in the first place. I never did finish seminary. I bartered with the trailer court landlord, removing dead trees from over trailers for our pad rent. God had ‘called’ me back to trees. I’m pretty sure it was Him. It didn’t make any sense though. At least my wife got the name in a dream; “living Tree”. I had thought I was to be saving men. Now, almost three decades later, I’ve just saved a woman and her two little girls. They won’t grow old in that brick yard. They will get to go to school.

“Life and death are in the power of
the tongue”, I said.
They’re just words”, he answered.

I am called down to look at the Christian Outreach Church’s Sweet Gum trees and I’m going to catch church first. I stop for fuel, and sounds are assaulting me, as I step out of my pick up. I can tell it’s a sick song, blasting from another pick up truck. First the road-rager in north St Louis, and now this air-rager in the country. All I could think about was American privilege. Red, white, black and blue, fast and furious American privilege. “What’s the name of the band”, I shouted. “A bullet for my Valentine”, he loudly answered. “Life and death is in the power of the tongue”, I said. “They’re just words”, he said.

Fifteen minutes later I was standing in church ‘mouthing’ a worship song; “Redeemer, Deliverer, God sets the captives free.” Just words, I thought…until I get to Pakistan. Right then I decided I wouldn’t just free Gulshan, I’d free them all; Thirteen families, ten Christian, and three lower caste Muslim. I will have to knock out more than my normal amount of tree jobs between now and then. I could sell the second truck and chipper. The church service ended, and I walked out to look at the trees.

Muhammed Ramzan received ransom payment for the first family to be freed from his brick yard.
Gulshan and girls wave goodby to the other brick yard families.
Notice their few possessions. Also noticed her left foot, it had been fractured from a falling brick, yet she was still expected to continue working.
Freedom Cry travel

‘A Puff of Smoke’ / By Wendell Phillips Berwick

GULSHAN / It was the day before I would be paying the debt of my first brick yard family. Gulshan, with her daughters, Saba and Samra, were making 400-500 bricks a day, trapped in debt bondage. Gulshan had labored hard, eleven years, as good as widowed by her husband, who had fled the brick yard. I was pondering how much we’ve been given on ‘our’ side of the world, as I drove along. For the first time on this familiar stretch of lawless highway 70, in north St. Louis, I found myself going with the ‘flow’ of traffic”, way over the 55 mph limit. Out of the corner of my left eye, there came erratic motions in the left lane, a young man pounding on his steering wheel, angry because he was boxed in and couldn’t pass. The family in the van was unaware of the temper tantrum being had in a car mere inches from their bumper At 75 american miles an hour. Our eyes met and I shrugged at him in a gesture, of “WHAT”S THE MATTER?” He pointed his finger, back and forth, hard at the van, pounding with his hand, mouthing his torment to me, that they would not move out of his way. I flashed back to the brick yard families. They have no road ragers. The lucky ones have cheap motorbikes and bicycles, rickshaws, and the wealthier in the cities do have cars. Those in bondage labor, do however have cruel brick masters. And yet their lives have meaning, they must. I snapped back to my world, the tormented first world young man, and realizing I was boxing him in. I braked, and slowed down so he could swing around the family’s van, into my lane and speed his hasty life on. In an burst of good riddance he gunned his engine, and a large black puff of smoke spewed from his shining bright black car. It was Sunday morning, on my way to church, and here I was sinning, gleeful that he had just blown his motor. I muttered “I’m sorry” to the Lord, and thought back to Gulshan, and the brick yard furnaces of Pakistan, that spew a puff of the amount of smoke of a blown engine, every second of almost every day.

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Some Pakistan (minority) families have a debt of as little as $400.00 and some three times that much. But either way, they remain in ‘debt bondage’ for years, and decades. There are many reasons why they fell into or were forced into this debt. In Pakistan, the minimum wage is $6.50 a day, six 8 hourdays a week or $150 a month. An entire family working 8-10 hours a day makes half or less than hald of that. It does not go well for humanitarians in Pakistan. Money must be borrowed for midwives, medicine, and electricity. So there is a debt that never ends. I visited Pakistan for the first time mid August, 2020, and purchased the freedom of the remaining families in a certain Brickyard. The Brick Master was OK with this, although he received a lot of oppostions from other brick masters and kiln owners. They did not want an American coming there and making a spectacle. I came there to set ALL the families free, but am glad it made a ‘spectacle’.

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