sometimes i cry

It happens infrequently, but I'm always caught off guard. I'm so used to pouring out my thoughts into writing that the days when I have nothing to say seem somehow wrong. The past few have been like that.

I'm not sure what's been stopping me. I don't want to sit here and moan about how sad things are on D Ward, but the truth is, they are. After my shift on Thursday, I came back to my cabin and I cried and cried and cried. The kind of tears that jut run down your face and you can't do anything to stop them because you know, deep down, that it's okay to be hurting.

There are three little ones on the ward who are getting treatment for Burkitt's lymphoma. It's a cancer that is both incredibly fast-growing and incredibly responsive to treatment, and the drugs are available in Benin. This shouldn't make me sad, I know. But I look at Rachelle's swollen face and the tumors showing through the skin of her abdomen and I wonder if we caught it in time. I look into the eyes of Madinath's mama, and I see desperation, a silent fear that her only child will be taken from her. Aime's name means like, but he screams when we come near him. This is his second round of chemo, and he knows that we hurt him and he's only two so he doesn't understand that it's the only way to make him better.

On the other side of the ward, in the corner beds like bookends, are the two little babies who were admitted through the feeding program. Their cleft lips and palates are in various stages of repair, and neither of them is eating enough to gain weight. At four and nine months old, they weigh as much as average sized newborns. And their mama's don't seem to care. They hand them off to any white person who comes near, hoping that they won't have to do the work of mixing the bottles. They lie curled up in blankets while their babies scream next to them, and they don't hear. Or they won't. I'm not sure which.

And little Joy, my darling little girl who had surgery to remove the tumor that took the place of her eye? She's home now, with an appointment card and a phone number. The card is for a date three months from now, when she'll come back to get the biopsy results and have her other eye evaluated for possible surgery. The number is for The School for the Disabled here in Cotonou. Because her right eye doesn't have a cataract like we thought. It's more than likely that the tumor that took her left eye will grow in the right too. And even if it doesn't, her retina is so hardened and scarred that she has no chance of ever seeing.

So I sit here and I cry, because I can try to smile, but sometimes I just can't. Sometimes I cry.



(Stay tuned and I'll share a much more upbeat story with you, the story of my shift today. It included so many ridiculous events and featured, at one point, my fine African shape. I just don't have the heart to type it all out right now.)