Just to prepare you, the posts from these days are not the most pleasant. It was one of the hardest places I had ever been in, especially as we continued to get hammered with rain and sleet off and on.
Today I walked with the team to the location of the clinic. The people are wonderful, appearing somewhat rough, but actually very kind. In the full sunlight, I got to see more of what this village really looks like, and it's grim. The school did not receive foreign sponsorship for the year so it has been closed. You can see here first hand what good a school can do and what harm its absence can do. The children are so dirty, and I'm not saying that in a judgmental way. If you could hear me, you would hear the voice of a mom who wants to hug those little babies and clean them up so they'll not get sick, not one who is judging them. When the focus is survival here, things like brushing hair and teeth or washing hands are just not on the list of priorities. As previously mentioned, the few toilets here let straight down into the roaring river below. Everyone else just uses the bathroom wherever they see fit. Trash is everywhere. When you walk down the narrow lanes, you walk through a mixture of animal waste (to be expected in the presence of massive herds), animal parts like legs, ripped cloth, random old shoes, thousands of empty drink cans, etc. There is very little actual mud under the road to be seen through all this stuff on top. I have never seen anything like it.
Today I walked with the team to the location of the clinic. The people are wonderful, appearing somewhat rough, but actually very kind. In the full sunlight, I got to see more of what this village really looks like, and it's grim. The school did not receive foreign sponsorship for the year so it has been closed. You can see here first hand what good a school can do and what harm its absence can do. The children are so dirty, and I'm not saying that in a judgmental way. If you could hear me, you would hear the voice of a mom who wants to hug those little babies and clean them up so they'll not get sick, not one who is judging them. When the focus is survival here, things like brushing hair and teeth or washing hands are just not on the list of priorities. As previously mentioned, the few toilets here let straight down into the roaring river below. Everyone else just uses the bathroom wherever they see fit. Trash is everywhere. When you walk down the narrow lanes, you walk through a mixture of animal waste (to be expected in the presence of massive herds), animal parts like legs, ripped cloth, random old shoes, thousands of empty drink cans, etc. There is very little actual mud under the road to be seen through all this stuff on top. I have never seen anything like it.
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