This picture is when we were out doing home-based care last week. The patients and orphans came to meet us outside their homes. This baby on the back of his mother is very sick. His lymph nodes are enlarged like nothing any of us have seen before (even a couple nurses who have worked in Africa for a number of years). We spent some time educating the mother on how to properly administer the HIV meds to the baby and encouraged her to take him to the hospital for more intense care. We will follow up on him and see how he is doing in the upcoming weeks. I look forward to getting to know these areas and the people in them.
The people here are so resilient. They are hurting and lost but they have strength unimaginable to me. From many of them hopelessness seems to spill out of their eyes. The sparkle is gone. Yet each of them matters. They all deserve a fair chance at life- this child longs to grow up and run and play. It doesn't seem quite fair that he doesn't have the opportunity to be given every chance at life. It isn't fair. It's sad, it's hard. In the midst of it all, God knows...David tells us in Psalm 9:18 "For the needy will not be forgotten forever; the hopes of the poor will not always be crushed." This is my prayer- may they not be forgotten!