The people

This has to be one of my favorite pictures that I have ever taken. His eyes go right through me every time. His picture in the center of my “Africa” wall.

There are times when his sweet little face comes to mind. Those eyes overwhelming my heart, just thinking about it makes me teary. He’s beautiful. I don’t know his name. He was too shy to tell me, he never said a word. But when he warmed up to me, he gave the sweetest hugs and had the brightest smile. I imagine he’s only 3 or so, however I could be way off. Due to the overwhelming malnutrition in Africa, he could be 5. I don’t know his story, but his eyes look so sad. He’s not alone though. When I was in Liberia, I met dozens of children. Most ran to me and wanted to touch, play, or pull my hair, while others weren’t so sure at first. I understand the fascination and the fear. I am a white girl with blond hair, not a very common thing in Africa, especially Liberia. I loved on and played with kids who probably only had one meal a day, if that. Their parents probably couldn’t afford school and they definitely didn’t have running water. In fact, I watched one little boy use bathroom in the same water a little girl drank from and a woman washed clothes in. It was devastating.

You know those dramatic commercials asking you to sponsor a child? They show a child playing in trash, filthy, and crying. They make some claim like this 9 year old boy is raising his siblings. They don’t bring in trash and make the situation look bad. The situation is atrocious. I’ve stood in the middle of the largest slum in Africa. Over one million people living in a tiny area built and surrounded by trash.  Not everyone in Africa lives like that, but just one should be enough to disgust anyone with a heart. Knowing that children live like that should bring you to your knees. You can’t imagine it and you can’t begin to comprehend it if you haven’t seen.

According to World Vision in 2009, 30 children died every 2 minutes from preventable diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia. Twenty-four thousand died every 24 hours. That means 8.5 million died in one year from preventable causes! PREVENTABLE CAUSES! 

In Liberia, we met with health officials and they told us that a major cause of infant death was tetanus.  Tetanus is generally caused from an infected wound, that’s why if you step on a rusty nail, you need to get another shot. If you think about it, how would an infant get tetanus? Well in the rural parts of Liberia, it is believed that stuffing the umbilical cord with dirt or feces will protect them. Open wound + diseased substance= tetanus.

There’s a tribal group in Ethiopia that throws their children in the river if their top teeth come in before their bottom teeth, because they believe the children are evil.

Although the statistics are astounding, these are just the reported ones. These aren’t statistics though, these are children, families, people.

I don’t mean to get on my soapbox, but it’s not just that all these people I’ve written about love Africa, they hurt for the people and that’s what it’s all about for me. The people. And this picture reminds me of that.