The End is Near

Five minutes ago, I turned in my last paper to finish this quarter’s academic work. I’m done with my junior year and 5 days from the end of my time in Cape Town. I don’t know if words can describe what my time here has been like. I hope that this blog has given you a window into my experiences and that you have learned through them. I don’t know quite how to debrief my experiences other than to keep building on what I see and hear these last few days. Here it goes…

For the first time in weeks, I was actually distressed by a malnourished child. At the same time, my feelings were much different than they were with the first underweight children I saw here. This little girl was probably the worst I have seen in my life. Ever. She was 4 years and 9 months old and yet weighed just 6.1 kg. That’s just about 13.5 pounds. The child had fetal alcohol syndrome, a heart problem, a burn mark all down her chest probably from boiling water, and several other conditions that I couldn’t catch from the community health workers from Philani. It was a heartbreaking scene to watch as this little girl, not much bigger than many babies in the US, walked around gingerly and looked as if she would just fall over. I found my thoughts moving away from hope, rather than towards it. This little girl has very little hope of success in life. Her growth was stunted very young and with that she undoubtedly has many developmental issues. She will likely live out the rest of her life sick without the ability to have an education. She is stuck. Not by her own choice, but by choices outside her control. Seeing this picture unfold before my eyes made me realize that I have come to view this as the norm in these communities. I’m no longer surprised by stories like this; I get surprised when I see a healthy child. I automatically assume that if the child is healthy then the parents must be wealthy. The child must not live in a township, or if they do they must be in a nice home. I have spent my time here trying to see that everyone is equal and should have an equal right to work and health and everything, but I have ended up with an attitude that makes harsh assumptions based on the wellbeing of the child. I guess this has happened because most of the time, I’m right.

Life is not equal and it is certainly not fair. Money does matter here. There are no easy fixes. You cannot donate $50 to an organization and expect to change anything substantial. If you want to get into this, you have to dive in head first willing to give up far more than your money, or your time. You have to lose a part of yourself to this work, but mostly to the people. It is the people who matter in all of this. We get so caught up in the circumstances that we don’t stop to hear the stories along the way. So often we actually find that the stories actually show us the way. This little girl is a person who is worth caring for, not just a disappointing, hopeless project. Everything has hope, even if life isn’t fair and money matters. For people there is always hope. For this little girl, there is a life that is worth living.