Too Many Bandaids

Today we went to one of the Mamas from Jipe Moyo house . In her "house" lived her mama, her two grand children, and herself. The room was about five feet wide by ten feet long. Her mama has diabetes and just had one leg amputated from the knee down and two toes amputated on her other foot. The wounds were really infected and their was flies and other bugs living on the bandages. The whole thing smelled really foul. The mama needed desperately to go back to the hospital but didn't have money for the 4 dollar cab fare to get herself there, let alone the fees to pay for the hospital visit. The woman who we had come to visit, Mama Perpetua, just had a tumor removed from her neck. She is HIV positive and has her HIV meds paid for by one of the non-profits in town but doesn't have money for other hospital visits. She relies on Jipe Moyo for food. Her daughter-in-law had just recently come from Arusha to dump her grandchildren off and leave without a word. So this Mama, mama perpetua, is living with her two grandchildren that don't have any parents, her own mama who can't move around because there are no crutches or wheelchairs and can't run her own business because she spent the capital on the hospital visit.

This is just one of many opportunities I have had here to slap a bandaid on a desperate and depressing and overwhelming situation. I could have easily handed her twenty dollars and made her so happy. But this is just one bandaid among many that is needed and that is just too many bandaids for one person to handle financially and emotionally. The biggest struggle I have here is, ironically, not doing anything. It is a miserable feeling knowing that you can't do anything. But even if I were to help one woman with her cab fare, what effect am I going to have? So I do what I can. We brought sugar to the woman (whose mother turned out to be diabetic....) as per custom, we teach their children, and we try our best to spread hope and optimism and to let them know that we have come from across the world to say that we care and that we are thinking about them.