What do you do….???
Most days the awareness of the poverty is, hmm… lets say “manageable.” There is enough laughter- like for example, watching three children repeatedly attempt to build a bench to sit- that always breaks within a matter of seconds. Trés drôle!! Laughter is an effective remedy.
Other days…. well, your heart breaks and anger boils. And you laugh harder to keep the tears inside because of the children surrounding you.
Some days, everything builds. From the beginning of the day- REALLY noticing the swollen bellies. And then thinking of the food in your house. How come I have to manage my food intake in a country where 2 in every 5 children are malnourished? But yet if I gave all my food, it would feed the 17 kids in my courtyard, for a meal. What is the solution to this inequality that I perpetrate?
And then it is the French nursing student, after examining an infected bike wound on an 8 year old boy, asking why the wound is not covered. It is his face when you tell him the reality that there is no money for clean bandages. And then the all too common conversation with the older men who wants to be taken to America because Burkina is ‘pas bon’.
Sometimes it just hits you…. Because inequality, suffering, is unnecessary and unfair.
Being in the midst of it, what do you do? I am not a doctor, so after cleaning and covering my young friend’s wound, when a women asked for help with her swollen cheek, I am of no help. I continue to be over-fed surrounded by malnourishment. I share but it is certainly not the solution. I have not been taught Moore therefore I can not communicate with those I live with. And my French is bad enough that I do not serve as much of a teacher. Even if I gave all the money I had to my host sister- she still would not receive a quality education.
This is the reality. Some days it is difficult but not disempowering. There are solutions and methods to work toward equality. But with each day I spend ‘integrating’ (aka- reading, writing, smiling and laughing) another burinkabè becomes too old or sick to benefit from future solutions.