This is true not only in Haiti, but in many countries in South America, in India and China, Thailand, Cambodia, Viet Nam, and most African countries. I have seen these babies, and held them - abandonded at the hospital - as they died. No drugs for them. Not enough food at home even though many mothers try very hard.
**I hadn’t gotten back to thread as it is obvious.
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I’m sorry that has happened as my friend graace said this that the first time was really hard to see the baby die in my arms.
Yes, they do, but they cannot pay for everything they need, and sometimes tanks and airplanes are more important than babies. Or the money just ‘disappears’ if government is corrupt. Or the country is just bankrupt. And sometimes the aid workers don’t have good enough ideas about how to help: I know because I have been one for some years. For babies, a development worker has to teach a lot to people about how to care for the babies, how and what to feed them, where to get emergency food etc. It is hard to plan such programmes, and people do not change the way they behave very easily.
**My friend Grace says that is why the hospital has been established the group is called “Meidical Missions for Haiti”**but it does not yet have a site she said.
This is one of my problems with the Catholic Church, and we discussed on another thread on HIV: BC is not allowed by the Church, but so many mothers and babies die because there are too many for one poor family which cannot feed, educate and keep them healthy. Abstinence is often not a cultural choice for women in these societies. Husbands insist on their rights.
Grace and I have discussed this as she is christian church I am catholic. But the Dominican Republic is very modernized. It even has a Walmart
We do the same. We cannot say, well why help one. Have you heard the starfish story? A little boy was walking along a beach where many starfish were dying - they had been thrown onto the beach by a huge wave in a storm. So he started throwing the starfish back into the sea. A man came along and watched him, and finally said ’ Boy, why are you doing that? You know that you can’t make any difference when there are thousands and thousands of starfish on this beach, and you are only a small boy.’ The little boy looked and him, and then picked up a starfish, and threw it back into the ocean. And then he said to the man ‘I made a difference to that starfish’. He picked up another one, and threw it back into the sea and looked at the man. ‘It made a difference to that starfish’, he said. And so we often talk about the starfish story: we cannot help all but we can help some.
This what she feels and I but we must not abort any either as that is as bad and I’m not sure bc would haelp aids. She sends money to one child where I think it should be more distributed evenly. the little children at the orphanage each have one dress to wear all week and must not grapple in the dirt to keep it clean a way to get them not to go naked and to not play in the mud like an animal.
One young man from Malawi whose father died while he was writing final secondary examinations in Malawi, wrote to me (I only knew the father and not the boy), asking if I could help him with further studies. After about 6 months, I wrote back and said yes, I am not sure why. He went to college, got a teaching degree, met a wonderful volunteer from Oklahoma, married her, and last week they had their first baby in Okla City. They will get further education and then come back to Malawi (a neighbour of South Africa where I live) to help build education systems in Malawi.
Yes she met the young man and he could not speak english so she said she would pay an extra 10 a month to get him a tutor for learning english, boy what we take for granted.
We have ‘children’ in South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, Nepal and although we have to juggle our coins, we watch them becoming people who might make a difference in the world. Yes, it takes them away from their own culture in some ways, but it also gives them a chance to build that culture, if they are educated and alive!
In Thailand hospital, there are two rooms for abandoned babies - 100s of them. One room will get drugs and food and the other room will only get some food and will die.
WOW
I think this is a wonderful observation: that He meant not just physical but also spiritual sleeping. Taize has a great chant ‘Watch and pray’ which I love listening to, and I shall remember your idea!
But I think you are not sleeping. Why not volunteer somewhere out in the world? I did forty years ago, and I am still away from Canada, working and doing my thing, and have loved every moment of learning the world, learning the needs, and learning the real meaning of what Christ taught us.
Love ever,
When we say give us this day our daily bread I think of the Eucharist as God is feeding our soul everytime we receive Him in the name of Jesus Christ so I am glad to pray the Our Father at the mass.