Oh, Anniversaries!

It was five years ago today I graduated from Wayzata High School. I wonder if anyone back in MN will have a reunion? Or they've fallen out of style cause everyone practically stays in touch whether superficially or not through Facebook.

The mood of the day, pensive, and the fact that I was not getting off my mat other than to run to the latrine, gave me time to reflect. I was happy Safi, a 2 year old was brought into the hospital with a bad case of whooping cough because at 6kg390g and 79cm with an arm circumference of only 9cm (average is 12cm), she seriously needed nutritional rehab. It was the obvious illness that caused her parents to bring her in, not the silent killer: hunger. Now, Bebe reports to me when she visits that Safi's mother is refusing to prepare the rehab milk. It is incredibly frustrating when the resources are available and people don't use them! Maybe the shiny silver packaging is just too foreign, or the idea that the mother's milk isn't enough is offensive. Maybe the parents don't even want the burden of their child anymore. Safi is just so small!! And she'll only keep wasting away unless the worms are killed and she starts eating. I want to be back at the hospital! My foreign presence can be a blessing and a curse: people fear or don't trust the white woman, the outsider. Or, they are more likely to act because I am there, "we'll do it if the foreigner says so." But in this case I feel because Safi didn't cry when I weighed her, the mother just might warm up to me enough to let us treat her daughter.