The Kids Aren’t Always Alright

I am stressed. Definitely stressed. Almost like my body is a test tube and the stress is the liquid rising slowly to the top. Some people might not think that volunteering for nine months in East Africa in the land of Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti ever gets stressful, but I assure you, they are wrong. Without going into too much detail, I’ve felt pretty overwhelmed and alone at work lately sometimes taking care of thirty kids at one time and I don’t feel like the kids are getting even close to enough attention as they both need and deserve.

More so than the stress, I am silently in shock. The shock shows itself gradually like an entity unto itself. I used to feel guilty seeing small children carry giant water buckets from the village taps, but now I just feel grateful that I had such a labor-free childhood without the early onset arthritis, etc. There are things that are harder to confront: the lack of healthcare access, the pain and excessive work that comes with being a woman, the inequality of life on a global scale and of education, or hearing stories of people dying that didn’t have to day after day after day. I mean, there is a point where my emotions just can’t handle anymore stories, anymore tragedy, anymore outrage or either my mind will burst or there will be nothing left to feel.

The thing is, I love the kids I’ve come to know here. But I want better for them and I feel so powerless and so terrible sometimes. I’ve gotten in the habit of visiting the kids living on the street in Moshi every week or two and buying them some bread and water or some bananas. It’s really not too often, and it doesn’t make that much difference in the end, but it’s something. At Amani, I don’t feel like I can do anything after a certain point, and I think that’s the worst feeling of all. It’s not that I’m trying to be God or something but I do want to feel like I am helping. I didn’t have high expectations before I came here. I can feel myself starting to submit to pessimism with a side of cynic. There are people that come to poorer countries and because they are white or educated or comparatively wealthy, they think they will institute social change, like they are entitled, which when you think about it is really pretty racist of them. There are plenty of people like this living in Moshi now. But I really just thought that I’d come here and be a friend. I didn’t want to become too emotionally involved with the kids although I already have, but I don’t know how to stop caring for these kids, how to leave here and go about my life and forget that I’ve stopped fighting for them. Stopped being a mother to them. Stopped hugging them. Stopped teaching them. Stopped listening. I am so heartbroken for them sometimes. Comparatively of course, I know that their lives are much better than before. Street life is not easy, particularly when you have nowhere to go but an alcoholic father or a relative that doesn’t want you. But still, I want so badly for each of them to have homes and loving parents and happy days at school and hopeful futures, and the security and success that comes as a result of a nurturing environment. But the world doesn’t work that way for everyone. I can’t be their parent. With the amount of kids at Amani right now (93), it’s really not possible that each child is receiving enough care both emotionally and simply in terms of logistics. It’s not right; I feel it in my gut that it’s not right. But is it better to turn a child away? I don’t know. I do know that their hygiene, their education; everything could be improved. Nothing is perfect and this is how we learn as we live. Maybe I’m expecting too much, but I want to leave the kids lives better than they are now.

There is an eleven-year-old boy at Amani named Kalisti whose mother died of AIDS when he was a baby. With his father gone, he lived on the street with his grandmother until she was too weak to take care of him. His smile is a little funny because of a bad case of malaria he had when he was little which paralyzed part of his face, but when he smiles, he really smiles. He never gets angry or impatient. He loves to play the piano and draw and he has this inner warmth that is so contagious and comforting and calming that it makes you feel more beautiful. He deserves to have someone constant in his life that returns this beauty too.