so you do

i've been filling prescriptions and doling out medicines almost exclusively in the clinic the past few days until about 4pm when i have my daily creole lesson with the boys and play with the kids for a few hours before dinner.

but yesterday, i had to leave the pharmacy to ask molly a question and there is a little girl with her mom, arguing. the little girl is laying on cot with a glucose drip because she is so malnourished. she won't take the oral malaria medication her mother is trying to give her because her stomach is so empty that the medication is making her nauseous. so her mother slaps her in the hope that she will submit and instead she just quietly cries. to date, this is one of my hardest moments.

i managed not to cry and listened while molly explained the little girl's examination. she probably had malaria in addition to the fact that she hadn't eaten in three days. to top things off, her mother had not eaten in four days. where - if anywhere - can you place blame? i don't even know which part of my brain to send that information to; there simply is no part prepared to process this.

so, last night a few of the volunteers and i were sitting in the open courtyard of the guest quad and all of a sudden we hear this "chhhhhh" sound sort of like a quiet train coming toward us. because we're in such a flat place with no buildings and very few trees, you can hear the rain approaching.

these are the mountains the rain has to cross.
it's beautiful because everyone stops to watch the rain come. it developed into one of the most awesome thunderstorms i've ever seen with lightning filling the sky and thunder shaking the ground. it was a long storm and i stayed up for it, even when the other folks went to bed.

this will sound strange, but i could hear God's anger in the thunder and feel His tears in the rain. anger for the poverty and tears for the pain of these people - His people. i've been here a week now and i think the reality of this place is sinking in.

espwa gives out over 1,000 meals each day to the children here and as many as possible to people from the outside community. and there will still be little girls coming to the clinic, on the verge of starving to death. it seems like there isn't much that can be done that will make a dent in the daily misery. and when you do make a dent, there's a million others asking why the dent wasn't made for them.

so i called mom last night and i think my last sentence was, "you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't." and she said, "so, you do."