Now to be honest, I'm rarely even in American hospitals and so you can imagine what was going through my mind as I walked through a legitimate third-world hospital. We started off by going through the maternity ward. It was pretty cool seeing all the newborns, but at the same time, I couldn't help but think, "Man, how many of these kids are going to make it to my age? Even if they do, how many of them will be stuck in poverty for the rest of their lives?" Pastor, Dylan, and I soon arrived at another ward that housed sick infants and HIV-infected women. My heart broke seeing infants with tubes in their nostrils, children who couldn't walk, women (old and young) suffering through HIV, and all sorts of people going through circumstances I will never have to go through. We saw people whose whole bodies were in pain, whose legs were either nonfunctional or amputated, whose voices barely could be heard.
This is the reality of the third-world which is pretty much the majority of the world. We are the lucky few who get college educations, cars, and squeaky clean hospitals while everyone else gets cheap beds, flies, and mosquito nets.
I hate to belabor the point but...what the heck? I find it both disappointing and sad that while all I can think about is: my career, school, and stuff like that, there are probably 100 other people starving, suffering in piss-poor hospitals (if they even have those), and probably wondering, "What the heck?" On my bad days, I sometimes think, "Dang why does my life suck?" Then on days like this, when I'm going through my journal, I'll remember that there is not one Kenyan I met that day in Chuka hospital who wouldn't gladly trade places with me.
What am I supposed to do? What are we supposed to do?
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