dawn: adventures of a journeywoman

Where to start??? I have now been living without electricity and running water-see picture of women carrying water from the river (and many other amenities most of us don't even question) for a week. I can't shake the feeling that I am living the life of Laura Ingals Wilder, Christy,and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman as I try to make a difference in a new community with different cultural values. (It doesn't help that I'm dressed a bit like these characters in my long skirts and modest blouses). Learning the stories of the people's lives I interact with is usually joyful (like introducing my younger brothers and sisters to bubbles-see picture) but has also been painful.
I'll never forget my first patient in Africa. As I approached the clinic I could hear a labored panting and my first thought was that we had a patient in the maternity ward (which made my heart skip a few beats). But as I came in, I saw the 7 year old boy with his parents laying in their lap in what appeared to be a bad asthma attack. With the nurse instructing me on how to give the proper injections, we gave him several shots of epinephrine, bronchodilators, and IVs of juiced up saline. But after 2 hours, he had passed away. With no previous symptoms of asthma in his history, and the attack starting just 8 hours before, I found it hard to grapple with and not to question everything that occured in this sudden loss. He was my neighbor, and a year younger than my brother. As the extended family came to claim the body, their prayers, wails, and songs echoed into the other rooms of the clinic as I saw pregnant women, and kids with malaria, and women with oozing wounds. I was reminded of the fragility of life: "life is but a mist": in one room I saw death and in the other the stages of life.
We have a young boy that lives at the clinic. Bahati, which means luck, has been adopted by the clinic because a year ago, his mother (whom many think was HIV postitive) died in childbirth after complications at the clinic. He seems to always have a forlorn look on his face and my latest mission has been to have him walking by the time I leave at the end of August. Just sitting in his crib most of the day, he doesn't have much opportunity to develop his leg muscles in pulling to stands, so in between patients I hold his hands and guide him around the clinic.
The daily stories of tragedy are many and hard to get used to but I am learning and listening with compassion. I want to learn from the Prince of Peace to pour open my heart and be a vessel of mercy.