I'm mad

I’m not really sure who I’m mad at but I’m just plain mad. Today at school, a little girl got a deep cut under her eye. You see the swing set is rusted out so that there is no seat on one side and instead it’s just a rusted chain. The kids still swing on it and today somebody swung the rusted chain back and it caught Joann in the eye. There was a huge cut and it was gushing blood. (that’s her in the picture above, a few weeks ago we were playing with my hat and I snapped these photos)

As previously mentioned, the school has no soap. They also had no disinfectant or even a band-aid. Mary took her to wash it off while I ran over to the primary school (the kindergarten and primary are on different sides of Diani Beach Rd) to see if they had any. They didn’t so by the time I got back, her eye was swollen shut. The teachers rinsed her eye with the well water but my first thought was “untreated water is flowing into her eye which may have tetanus from the rusted chain. Awesome.”

I was so fed up that I grabbed my wallet and ran to the nearest supermarket and brought back soap, bandaids, and disinfectant. The suckiest (yeah, I know that’s not a real word) part was the fact that Mary kept apologizing to me. As if she has anything to feel bad about as she frantically tried to stop the girl’s bleeding with ice borrowed from one of the houses next door to the school. I helped her clean up Joann and we used my phone to call the girl’s mother to come pick her up. We handled the situation but I was mad and I’m still mad.

Mad because the school is supposed to have budgeted for disinfectant and included the price in tuition – so someone is either being lazy or mismanaging funds (Mary told me this and I believe her). Mad because if anyone would have spoken up to the US-based ministry that helps to support the school, I imagine that disinfectant could have been procured. Mad because at least twice a week tourists drop off idiotic things like candy instead of asking what we actually need and then providing it.

But as I think more about it, I think I’m mad because it’s just patently unfair. You know the phrase “there but for the grace of God go I”? That’s all I could think about. Why do some of us get born in the US where schools have nurses and decent (or at least non-injurious) playground equipment and others are not? It’s just really frustrating and there’s no easy solution.

Mary was very thankful that she now has the disinfectant but she did say that she’s now concerned that no one at the school will ever buy the supplies. She is concerned that once you give someone something for free, they now don’t want to buy it. So in the long run, I may have made the situation worse. I think that’s a risk I am willing to take though, I couldn’t have forgiven myself if her eye got infected because I didn’t buy the disinfectant. I just needed to do something. If I’m honest with myself, I’m sure it was to selfishly assuage my own guilt at being so privileged in comparison to these kids. So maybe I’m also a little mad at myself while growing up for ever being disappointed up with my lot in this world.