I'm coming nearer and nearer my time to go home and it just gets harder and harder to actually leave. I know I've spoken of these difficulties before, but because I can't exactly explain why it's so hard to leave I feel the need to continue to speak about it. Here's one of the most difficult reasons I find to leave.
One of the kids that I know pretty well from my work at club Espoir during my 2 years here, recently retold a story how, after her two parents dying, and her then being placed with her Aunt, the Aunt then told her daughter, the cousin of the child, that the girl was HIV positive and she should tell everyone at school that she was HIV positive. Aside from this extreme humiliation, the girl is also called a dog at the house, and is always the last one to be fed, if there is food that remains after everyone else eats that is. Whenever she brings food home from the NGO that tries to take care of her, the family steals the food and sells it. She's HIV positive through no means of her own, just simply by being born from HIV positive parents, and completely marginalized as a result of this. She's only at the junior high level and extremely polite and surprisingly optimistic considering her situation. Why I should leave and leave her in her situation and return to my comfortable situation just because I was born healthy and in a developed country is the reason I struggle to go home. I come and I spend two years just befriending her but little to change her lively hood, then I leave to return to my comfortable lifestyle.
I wish I could bring her home with me, I wish I could bring many of them home with me. Give them the opportunities that are available to them after all the money the U.S and other developed countries have spent on research. But it's not feasible, and it's also not feasible that I can bring this to their country. As I see it there's not much I can do other than befriending them and telling them how special they are. So then what happens to that after I leave? The one ounce of anything I can do for them is removed and I only hope that there's someone else to fill it once I'm gone. This is the reason I'm having such a hard time leaving. I know my life is calling me else where for my own personal reasons, but I know I could do so much for a few children's self esteem by staying here. It's a decision I wish I didn't have to make, but it's one I have to make no matter what. The fact is, a cold as it sounds, there will always be suffering in this world, and no matter how much we like to ignore it, or pretend that it's deserved, that isn't always the case, many times it's just innocent children that suffer and there's not much we can do despite our best efforts. Why a child should suffer through no fault of their own is beyond me, but that just seems to be the way of the world at this point. I hope one day it can change, but I'm not too optimistic. In the meantime, I hope we all do what we can to at least alleviate to some degree their suffering. And for that I'm finding it really difficult to leave this country.
One of the kids that I know pretty well from my work at club Espoir during my 2 years here, recently retold a story how, after her two parents dying, and her then being placed with her Aunt, the Aunt then told her daughter, the cousin of the child, that the girl was HIV positive and she should tell everyone at school that she was HIV positive. Aside from this extreme humiliation, the girl is also called a dog at the house, and is always the last one to be fed, if there is food that remains after everyone else eats that is. Whenever she brings food home from the NGO that tries to take care of her, the family steals the food and sells it. She's HIV positive through no means of her own, just simply by being born from HIV positive parents, and completely marginalized as a result of this. She's only at the junior high level and extremely polite and surprisingly optimistic considering her situation. Why I should leave and leave her in her situation and return to my comfortable situation just because I was born healthy and in a developed country is the reason I struggle to go home. I come and I spend two years just befriending her but little to change her lively hood, then I leave to return to my comfortable lifestyle.
I wish I could bring her home with me, I wish I could bring many of them home with me. Give them the opportunities that are available to them after all the money the U.S and other developed countries have spent on research. But it's not feasible, and it's also not feasible that I can bring this to their country. As I see it there's not much I can do other than befriending them and telling them how special they are. So then what happens to that after I leave? The one ounce of anything I can do for them is removed and I only hope that there's someone else to fill it once I'm gone. This is the reason I'm having such a hard time leaving. I know my life is calling me else where for my own personal reasons, but I know I could do so much for a few children's self esteem by staying here. It's a decision I wish I didn't have to make, but it's one I have to make no matter what. The fact is, a cold as it sounds, there will always be suffering in this world, and no matter how much we like to ignore it, or pretend that it's deserved, that isn't always the case, many times it's just innocent children that suffer and there's not much we can do despite our best efforts. Why a child should suffer through no fault of their own is beyond me, but that just seems to be the way of the world at this point. I hope one day it can change, but I'm not too optimistic. In the meantime, I hope we all do what we can to at least alleviate to some degree their suffering. And for that I'm finding it really difficult to leave this country.
