A blog post named Desire

As promised, here is the post I have been formulating for a few weeks. It started when I was having a bit of a tough week. Since coming here I have always done my best to find the best in Africa. I don't ever want to portray this beautiful place in a bad light. I don't want to give those of you reading an image that would for a second make you think that wherever you live is somehow better than here, that you should somehow pity these people. In balancing that, however, it is hard because what I see on a daily basis IS different. Parts of this place ARE much worse than in other regions of the world. Of all the places I've been, not one has it just right. There are positives and negatives regarding every inch of inhabited earth.

I was driving to the local hospital a couple of weeks ago and while stopped at a light I caught the familiar scene of a child, no older than 5, walking up to my window. She held in her hand a dusty rag no cleaner than the rags covering her own body. She had the intention of wiping down the window of the land rover. She couldn't even reach it she was so small.
I looked her in the eye and shook my head 'no'. She twisted her wrist, turning her palm up, a gesture for money, and again I shook my head. I glance up and not 10 feet in front of me I saw who I assumed to be her father. He was just sitting there, staring back at me with his empty eyes.

How could you sit there while your daughter begs right in front of you? I wanted to yell. Get out here yourself and do it, don't send your little girl. What does she think, does she even realize that this isn't how life is supposed to be? Does she know that she should be in school worrying about which color to paint her picture, not asking strangers for a few cents?

I caught myself in this line of thinking and forced myself to stop. All week I had been letting the conditions here get to me. I am sick of seeing malnourished/exploited/abandoned/the list goes on- kids. I am tired of not having answers for patients who are dying only because there isn't basic interventions in their health care available. I hate that parents here are resolved to the fact that their kids die. Regularly.

Suzanne, I hate it too. This wasn't My plan. It's normal to want more for these people, I do too.

I got to the hospital, still trying to shed my crap attitude. The thing is, I'm not any help to anyone if I don't keep going. If I succumb to the despair that so easily could envelope me here, the enemy would win.
And that's not going to happen.
I have the answer too, which is my only comfort. When I feel the devastation of watching a baby die and crying with a mama as she washes him one last time, I know. When I see children barefoot in the street and wonder about their future, I remind myself of one thing.

This isn't it. We were written into an eternal story. CS Lewis got it right;

"If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world"

So I stay in Africa. I continue to follow the calling to live here, clinging to the promise that one day there will be no suffering. These children will know love someday. Its what I desire, and its what God desires, too.