Adjusting Reality

A little girl died in Africa today, just one of a couple thousand children on that continent on October 9, 2005. If it were in a newspaper it would hardly be noticed, "Child Dies in Africa". So what else is new? Is that a real surprise. We see it all the time, an earthquake here, train wreck there, a tornado or hurricane, particularly in the third world. What is the death of one little girl in Africa? She was not killed in some terrorist act, as part of a war or some preventable tragedy. She got sick and died, and that happens all too frequently there. It is a way of life.

In Mozambique when they don’t know what you died of doctors will say you died of malaria, though AIDS is coming on strong. Malaria is the catch all disease; it is an easy explanation that everyone will believe because it kills a considerable number of people there every year. But we will never know what killed Graca (pronounced Grassa); autopsy’s are not done in third world countries like Mozambique unless you are rich and someone wants to find out what killed you. Graca was not rich and in Africa they concentrate on the living.

I met Graca and her family in Tete, Mozambique on a mission trip with the Nazarene Church in June 2003. Her father Albino was the pastor of a local church and would be heading up the pastoral training center our mission team of about a dozen was going to help build. Graca was the second of three children Albino and Agnes had (I later found that they had already lost two children already). Life is hard there in Mozambique and that is a reality we all had to adjust to there. The mission team got all the inoculations to prepare to come to Africa: Hepatitis A & B, Tetanus, Yellow Fever, pills for malaria, etc., etc., all to prevent getting sick during the three weeks or so we were there. It probably set us back $300 or more. But the $300 most Americans could afford was about a year’s wages to the average man there in Mozambique. Going to an Indian buffet here in Seattle I spend more in one meal than most people in Mozambique make in week.

What is different about Graca is that her death requires me to adjust my reality. I knew that sweet, innocent little girl. I held her in my arms, talked with her, watched her play with her friends and sister, I photographed her wonderful smile. When we read or hear about someone we don’t know that died, there is recognition of the loss. We acknowledge the tragedy of their passing, and most of us subtract our age from theirs figuring that is the minimum amount of time we have left. But that is is a mental exercise; it has little or no impact on us. When a child dies at four, it is something of a shock to our system. We don't know exactly what to think, something just seems so wrong with that. Children should be playing, laughing, enjoying the innocence and simplicity of childhood. They shouldn't be dying.

I have been fortunate in that few people I have known have died in my lifetime. Most have been elderly, and their passing was a blessing because of their condition and the pain experienced in their life. Graca, fits into that category of a handful of lives taken before their time. Her death brings a certain awareness of the brevity of life and the lack of certainty one has of tomorrow. It requires me to relegate Graca to the fond memories I have of the time spent with her, and now to her absence in my life. To "adjust my reality" so that it no longer includes her in the physical realm in which I exist, but only to my memories and the corresponding grief that brings in my life.