We have been here in Swaziland working at care points for the last couple of weeks.
A care point is a place where poor or double or single orphaned children go to be fed and taught basic pre-school material.
The poverty that I have seen here is immense.
The children are dirty from head to toe.
Their clothing is all torn with some children not even having pants or underwear.
About half of the children have shoes and the other half go bare foot everywhere.
They all have very wet congested coughs with snot running down their faces.
My heart breaks for them and I wonder to myself “will I ever been the same again after seeing this?”
“How can I go back home some day and live my normal life knowing what poverty exists here?”
We begin our day at the care point around 9 am.
We pull up in our car that we rented for our time here and the children begin to run.
The second they see us they smile and jump and come towards us.
Their smiles are huge and their giggles are music to your ears.
We sing songs, have a story for the day and play games.
But mostly we just love on them.
Sometimes they just want to be held or hugged.
They love to hold your hands.
A few of the children have their siblings on their backs.
Basically it is children caring for children.
They range from 4-9 years old and everyday they bring there less than one-year-old sibling with them and care for them all day long.
The children will pick anything up off the ground and put it in their mouths.
They have picked anything from food found on the ground to condoms.
I know the sounds unreal but honestly we have had 2 children that were sucking on condoms found on the ground and blowing them up like balloons.
I have also been to the hospital with a 6-year-old girl a couple of times.
She stepped on a nail in January and has had infection ever since.
She had been to the hospital previously and was on antibiotics and told to follow up.
I took her for her follow up appointment and she was referred to a surgeon for possible osteomylitis.
What is hard to believe and so amazing is that the total bill for both visits was around 3 dollars and fifty cents.
She is scheduled for debridment of the wound on August 28th, so prayers for her would be greatly appreciated.
