Hard Things, Happy Things

Hard things…
Today I went with Rita to take in one of our little HIV + kids to the clinic. She is beautiful and happy and sometimes calls me Auntie Kwassi which makes me smile A LOT. They had to take some blood to run some tests and I went in the room with her. She did fine when the nurses were looking for veins on her arms but not as well when they made her lay down so they could look for veins on her neck. She started crying and big tears rolled all the way to the floor. It only got worse from there. It was close to impossible to stand there listening to her scream as the nurses held her down and took blood from her neck. The honest truth is that I could not even look and had to cry about it a little bit. There’s just such a huge difference between the cry that comes after a fall or a stolen toy and the cry that comes with true pain and fear. She got some Jellybeans for being such a good girl and all was right with the world soon after but even though she gave me some of her Jellybeans part of my heart is still broken about it a little bit. There are so many times when I notice something or think of something from my childhood and can’t help but think in my head “Every child should get/be able to ______” The blank is usually filled with things like ‘have one adult holding hands on each side and get to fly on the count of three’ or ‘be taught to ride a bike’ or simple things that you could do with one or two kids that you just can’t do with 28. Today I decided that every child deserves to be cried over when they have to have blood taken out of their neck and I was incredibly thankful for Open Arms. I will only be here for 4 months but I can rest assured knowing that there will always be someone here loving on, caring for and crying over these beautiful kids. I have always had a spark in me about it, but I feel a little bit more confident that I will not be able to spend the rest of my life doing typical life things. Something about children crying alone, taking care of other children, living with and dying from untreated treatable diseases, never feeling safe, never being safe, never knowing what it is to just be a kid, seeing and experiencing unspeakable things is wrong. There is something wrong with the way things are. I just don’t understand how I could go back to the day before I realized that and live my life as if I never had. Rita and I often joke that life here is like life on another planet. The truth is that it isn’t another planet, but it’s easier to think that than it is to think that all of these things are happening in our world. All over the world there are children looking for food in trash cans. Food. And I’m sure some of them will die because they can’t find any. It’s just not ok. Just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist and closing your eyes doesn’t make it go away. On OUR planet there are babies, teenagers, adults, grandparents, PEOPLE dying from things that should not be killing them, things that do not kill other people in other parts of OUR planet. It just isn’t ok.
Happy things…
I got to spend lots of time with Anesipho today. She is 3 months old and about the size of a 3 week old and also ADORABLE. All she does is eat and sleep and cry and poop and I’m ok with that. She is going in for immunizations tomorrow and I will not be attending that event. Oh and I lied! She does something else and that thing is swinging her head around a ton because she is becoming less of a blob child and starting to hold her head up! Exciting.
Also African Salad is not salad, do not let anyone fool you about that ever. I don’t even know how to explain it…think really dry mashed potatoes with absolutely sour, sour milk poured on top. And don’t listen to Sarah if she tries to tell you that it is ok with regular milk and extra salt, it just isn’t. They call the sour milk stuff Maas, which to me sounded like moss, which sounded like something green and salad like. The food is good, I just cannot handle African Salad night.
I hope things are BEAUTIFUL in your life. Also it makes me happy when you send me e-mails and comments and messages because it reminds me that I have a life and loves on the other side of the world.

KB

p.s. I think I might be closer to Antarctica than I am to America, so that is strange.
p.p.s It was raining all weekend so we did typical rainy day things like make banana bread and watch movies and take naps. Also I was SO sick, especially with the bad weather, I was mostly the SICKEST. Trust me. I am feeling soooo much better.
p.p.p.s I was going to try and upload pictures but too many things have occurred in the time it took for me to write this that I cannot do it this time (one of them is that I had to catch some flying bugs in a bottle. It started out innocently. I had every intention of releasing them outside. Then I learned that there was still juice in there and that it killed them. I don’t know if you heard, but Africa has turned me into a bug killing machine. I’m a pretty big deal.) Sorry!
p.p.p.p.s My Dad figured out how to comment on my blogs! yay Dad!