Two weeks ago the bad news started steamrolling in. First tens of thousands of deaths in Myanmar then tens of thousands of deaths in China. The news was full of Cyclones, earthquakes, volcanoes and tornadoes. Made the twenty something deaths in the American mid-west seem like nothing. It was almost enough to make me wonder if the Jehovah's Witnesses are right!
As the days have gone by the tens of thousands have turned into 50 thousand and 100 thousand. It is too much, boggles the mind, too much... At the same time, I found out that a little girl, baby, really, whom I love as much as my own, was finally released from the hospital in Botswana where she has lived since her mother died when she was only three months old. She was taken to live with her great grandmother in Zimbabwe. both her parents were illegal residents of Botwsana when she was born- hoping for a better life than the chaos and massive unemployment at home in Zimbabwe.
In the end, or in the long run, this will be celebrated as a blessing, but in her short life Hilary Shula Ndebele has never known any other home but Nyagabgwe Hospital Children's Ward. Not a great place for a baby to grow up, you say? That's what I thought in the beginning, too. But there she was fed and cared for, developed attachments, learned to walk. She became a happy, slightly spoiled and mischevious toddler. Sent to Zimbabwe, to a great grandmother she's never known before, in a country in dire trouble, where political disasters foster famine and inflation beyond belief, what will happen to her. How must she feel uprooted form all she knows and everyone she loves and who love her? She had never been outside of the hospital, before this.
Am I weeping just for her? or is it a place that I can actually feel the heartache and sorrow, when for the nearly two hundred thousand dead, it is just a kind of numbing statistic that I can't quite fathom? She who has fallen asleep in my arms, whose chubby hands I adore, whose smile brightens up my day even when I can only see it on my monitor and not in person. I fear for her, for hear physical and mental health, so little, so innocent, so sweet- yet not at all different than the tens of thousands of other little ones who have died or are now orphans- all vulnerable, to hunger, abuse, disease, starvation ,death, living a nightmare, I hope Hilary never will.
I dream that her great grandmother adores her, loves her, soothes her fears and cuddles her to sleep. I dream that she gets to play in the dirt, feel the rain on her arms and the sun on her face. I dream that she looks at the green leaves and the blue sky and makes friends with the insects and birds and lizards. That she has enough to eat and hardly ever goes hungary. That the lessons she is learning are not so much that everyone she loves and depends on leaves, but more that everywhere she goes people love her, one one person dies or leaves another appears and takes care of her, that, for the most part, this is a marvelous place and that she has been lucky, indeed.
Of course this is what I wish for every child. Hilary is just the one that has touched my life. I can imagine what she is going through, it seems real and not so overwhelming that its numbing. I can pray for her, I might even be able to make a small difference in her life. What if each of us allowed ourselves to be touched like that by just one child? Allowed ourselves to fall in love and dream and try? would it make a difference?
Perhaps I am fooling myself, in this, but Mother Theresa's words come to mind. Few of us get to do great things. We get to do small things with great love. And that, my friends, makes all the difference.