This should have been written long ago, but I never really
got a chance to type it out….
My third visit to
the hospital was my favorite. I took
Telfer with me. The adventure started in
getting there. We had a hard time
finding someone going that way and then coming back. When we did, it was only a one-way ride and
we didn’t have any money to get home. I
started praying that everything would work out and that we would have a ride
back across town. Our contact ended up
picking us up in the end, so it all came together perfectly! J
Outside of the
hospital, I recognized a mom of a girl I had met with the day before. She saw me, came up to me, and in broken
English asked if I had come to color with the kids. I told her yes, that I would stop by to see
her daughter, and she smiled and clasped her hands together, which made me
happy that even the smallest thing I was doing, had an effect on lives there.
We made our way to
the corridor and went in. Chris went to
the back and started coloring with some of the older kids, while I went around
and checked in with all the kids. The
kids and moms were very welcoming to me.
The little boy that had shied away from me before, now talked. At one point they took him out and when they
carried him back in he was in tears. I
went over, talked with him for a while and stroked his head and soon he was
smiling. (which made me smile) Another
little guy that we saw the day before with a broken arm, was extremely
talkative and quite the little flirt.
His mom (who spoke English well) told me, he wanted me to spend the
whole time with him. She had him talk to
me in English as well, which was fun.
My little girl, I
found out later, is also Michelle’s little girl. Neither of us had planned for that to happen,
so when I talked to Michelle about it at debrief, it was fun to not only say
that we ran into her, but also to share the progress that she was making. I asked the grandmother what happened to her
through another woman in the room. The
lady replied that she was burned without asking the grandmother. So, I’ll never know specifically what’s going
on, but to know where she came from to where she was now, was more than okay
for me.
The day that I was
there, she was sitting up her wheelchair and coloring with me. She was so cute and would often mimic whatever
face I was making, which would crack both of us up. It was just an awesome day to close up my
time there and left me with a bunch of great memories.
We left Swazi a few
days after that and made our way to South Africa for a debrief. We went to a mall there and I think it was
the biggest mall I’ve ever seen. It was
a weird feeling to be in Africa and see that.
When we left Africa, it was bittersweet. I was happy to be moving on since Africa had personally been rough for me. At the same time though, all the memories of
the things we had done, places gone, and more flooded back and realized that
the past three months were better than I thought.
