Yesterday and Today

There are really sick children here. I think I first got here and everything was so new, so overwhelming, that I just kind of put "sick children" in it's neat little box to revisit another day. Yesterday was that day. I've read stories with some of the kids, made them laugh but that was away from the wards. Away from the place where they spend the bulk of their time. Yesterday I visited them in their area. There were no doctors on the floor. I took it upon myself to walk through and see what was going on. From wall to wall hospital beds filled with children in various stages of infection and disease. Let me restate the number that I mentioned in a blog the other day...around 150 children die every month here at an average hospital, that's 4 or 5 a day. That's unreal. That's unimaginable by US standards where 2 die a month and 1 case of swine flu gets national media exposure...Before yesterday that was just a number. Yesterday I saw that I will most likely lose the children that I've gotten to know and play with. Their mothers and fathers will lose them as well. It just hit me yesterday. There's one young boy who had a great time during story time. He was a latecomer so I didn't get his name. He has one eye that is removed from having a cyst on his eyeball I believe. He likes to smile. The other day during story time I saw him having fun, jumping into games and everyone was having a great time. I felt like I was back teaching at the Public Theater in NYC. Just young kids coming in to learn and play. Everyone would participate fully and there was never a huge concern on my part whether or not those children would be safe and healthy in the near future. It was kind of a given. I think in my mind out of just sheer repetition kind of convinced itself that that was the situation here as well. That's not the situation here. The odds are that this boy will die. A lot of the children here that I've had the chance to meet will most likely die. It's so insanely sad that I find it difficult to even be in the building right now. As tears well up in my eyes I know I have to choke them down because the last place you want to have a sad atmosphere is in the waiting room, offices, hospital wards of a pediatric HIV clinic. The ongoing cry of babies that when I first got here I think I must have blocked out, now come screaming through my chest and grab hold of my heart...I was one of these children actually. My heart, soul and all the memories that I never knew I had are coming up. For those of you who don't know, (mainly all of you reading this will have some idea) I had a brain abscess when I was 8 years old which prompted me to have seizures for a little while. I spent the better part of 3 months at North Shore Hospital on Long Island. I was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and that I had 2 months to live. Needless to say I did not die. I grew up strong, it was only an abscess. I took medication and it shrunk. I remained on medication for over a year to prevent further seizures. I was lucky, for whatever reason that wasn't my time. I'm very lucky. I've had the chance to experience, love, travel, laugh, cry for an extra 25 years. Most of these children will never get to do that. They will be robbed of the opportunity to get an education, to have a family of their own, to fall in love. I say this with tears streaming down my face in an empty conference room. The life expectancy here in Malawi is 39 years old. I need to get myself together before my meeting, but what do you do with that. When the initial shock and awe of being in Africa wears off and you start really getting to the work of helping Malawians help themselves, how do you start? Where do I begin? This is my experience so far in Africa. Some days are great...I play with the kids, go on Safari, get to research GIS mapping systems and help with the hospital budget...and then there are days like yesterday and today. Where when every smile I try to illicit from my young friend with one eye just doesn't work. He knows that I'm trying to make him laugh and I think he gives me a few courtesy laughs to make me feel good, but something has changed. There's something profoundly sad about today. There's no story time, and he seems resigned to his fate. I try to leave smiling with my head held high and my spirits together like this is just another day here at the hospital and everything is going to be alright. That "hey I'll see you soon, are you feeling ok"...I may not see him soon and he's just not feeling ok. I had nothing to say when I left my young friend yesterday and I look forward to seeing him tomorrow when I make the rounds with Eric. I had this very real experience today after I wrote yesterday of giving acknowledgement to all of a personality to make it whole. This is closer to the whole experience of Africa. Safari was great, part of Africa. Soccer practice last week with a bunch of teenagers, part of Africa. And knowing that 150 children a month that pass through this hospital will die of HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Cancer, respiratory failure, a very real and large part of Africa. It's something that I don't like to speak of that often because it had been uncomfortable and it's just sad. Sad though is part of life and if this is "Journey On...Traveling with Adam" it will not simply be a tourist guide to Africa, India and Europe, it will be all of me, all of what I experience. Sad, happy, fun, fast, slow, frustrating, loveless, loving...That's completely real, that's completely all I can ask of myself and will I know fuel me to do the best I can to help out here in any way to take away some of the pain from these children, the doctors, staff and even myself...