(no subject)
*****
Every once in a while, you hear a story that makes you reflect on everything that was previously packed tightly into your box labeled ‘Human Nature.’ The benevolence and the vindictiveness, the generosity and the greed - two ends of a very wide spectrum that encompasses all emotions, thoughts and deeds that make up human interaction.
One of my friends here is in a relatively remote part of the country. It’s difficult to reach from any direction, the road nearly impassable in the best of conditions. We talk often on the phone via texting, and he writes of the intense isolation that I’m lucky enough to experience at a minimum. The story I’m about to tell I had only heard bits and pieces of because he preferred to relay in person. Now I understand why. Messages limited to 256 characters just wouldn’t have done it justice.
While doing a community census, my friend noticed this little girl, about six, living in the house behind his. She was living with her grandparents because her (and her little brother’s) parents had both died. He didn’t think much else of it other than seeing her around the village a little bit. She was very quiet and withdrawn, easy to miss if you weren’t watching.
This was during the rainy season and sometimes, when the rain falls hard, the mud houses will just collapse. One night during a bad storm, he heard the sound of a wall falling in the house behind him so he went to see if the older man (who is not in good health) was okay. He noticed the little girl again and she seemed to be getting smaller and even sicklier than she had been before. The grandfather was okay, so my friend started talking to the little girl, trying to engage her in some form of interaction, but she wouldn’t speak.
He started coming back every day, trying to get her to talk and it became clear that she wasn’t being fed very well or being taken care of at all. She was dirty (which is uncommon here since keeping clean is very much a part of culture here from North to South) and lethargic. While letting her stay in the house, it was fine with the grandparents that my friend come and feed her, bring her toys, bathe her, make sure she was clothed. Make sure the urine and feces in the room she was living in was cleaned up every day…
He couldn’t figure out why this was happening, so he started asking around the community and it instantly became clear why this little girl was being neglected. The village had decided she had bad juju and that she was the one who had killed her parents. That just made the situation even more complicated because once someone’s been labeled as a witch or practicing bad juju, that’s it. There’s not really any convincing people otherwise.
So he starts trying to look for some place to take her and eventually finds an orphanage in the central part of the region. He goes and checks them out, makes sure it will be a good place for her. The people even came from the orphanage to inspect the family situation to make sure it was a legitimate removal from the home. They soon found out that it was.
They took the girl from the home with no qualms from the grandparents. After she was taken to the orphanage, she was given a round of medical tests and it was found that she had traces of poison in her blood. It’s hard to say if anyone was actively trying to kill her since it would be very easy to have done it right away. But it was obvious that someone - probably her grandparents - was intentionally trying to make her sick.
And now it’s been a few months since all of this has happened and every once in a while he’ll stop by the orphanage to visit the little girl. She’s like a different person now - playful, engaging, talkative, alive. Just like any six year old in the world has a right to be. It’s an amazingly good ending to a story that happens every day in a lot of communities here.
At first I hesitated in writing about this. I feel like sometimes what I write can be taken in the context that I’m living with a bunch of backwards people who are so far removed from civilization that they still believe in things like black magic and hexes. I know it can seem like that because I’m coming from much of the same place as you who are reading this.
But I have one added ingredient - a relationship. It’s not that things like juju and eating with my hands have become normal - odd things are odd every time I witness or experience them. But now that I know these people, it’s like I’ve become protective of them. I don’t want outsiders to think negatively of them and I know that when writing, you sometimes run the risk of shaping your words toward that end - even if what you’re writing about is something horrific.
Then I decided that, even though juju was involved, things like this happen every day no matter how developed the society. Children are neglected, abused, murdered. The elderly are avoided or forgotten, regardless of whether they’re suspected of witchcraft. The middle class has become anorexically thin. Politicians are liars, women are paid less for equal work and the uber-educated typically look down on the poor. It’s like I’m in the same country but I get to be a minority. It’s an interesting non-reversed reversal because the depravity of man exists within every border.
And then I think about people like my friend. The situation could’ve turned out very differently for him. Sometimes people aren’t so apathetic about someone they’ve labeled as having done bad juju. Some grandparents would’ve kept the child and shunned any intervention. What he did could’ve affected his work in the entire community and possibly led to him being sent home (not for disciplinary reasons, but for safety). But he did the right thing. He took a risk that probably didn’t even seem like one and found a way out for this child.
Almost every volunteer has a story like this that most people will never hear. The details become forgotten during service and the shininess of the good deed always looks duller to the person who’s done it. So I wanted to write this down, to make sure that at least a few people get to hear this story. Because it’s worth retelling, especially for one little girl who’s just started kindergarten.
Every once in a while, you hear a story that makes you reflect on everything that was previously packed tightly into your box labeled ‘Human Nature.’ The benevolence and the vindictiveness, the generosity and the greed - two ends of a very wide spectrum that encompasses all emotions, thoughts and deeds that make up human interaction.
One of my friends here is in a relatively remote part of the country. It’s difficult to reach from any direction, the road nearly impassable in the best of conditions. We talk often on the phone via texting, and he writes of the intense isolation that I’m lucky enough to experience at a minimum. The story I’m about to tell I had only heard bits and pieces of because he preferred to relay in person. Now I understand why. Messages limited to 256 characters just wouldn’t have done it justice.
While doing a community census, my friend noticed this little girl, about six, living in the house behind his. She was living with her grandparents because her (and her little brother’s) parents had both died. He didn’t think much else of it other than seeing her around the village a little bit. She was very quiet and withdrawn, easy to miss if you weren’t watching.
This was during the rainy season and sometimes, when the rain falls hard, the mud houses will just collapse. One night during a bad storm, he heard the sound of a wall falling in the house behind him so he went to see if the older man (who is not in good health) was okay. He noticed the little girl again and she seemed to be getting smaller and even sicklier than she had been before. The grandfather was okay, so my friend started talking to the little girl, trying to engage her in some form of interaction, but she wouldn’t speak.
He started coming back every day, trying to get her to talk and it became clear that she wasn’t being fed very well or being taken care of at all. She was dirty (which is uncommon here since keeping clean is very much a part of culture here from North to South) and lethargic. While letting her stay in the house, it was fine with the grandparents that my friend come and feed her, bring her toys, bathe her, make sure she was clothed. Make sure the urine and feces in the room she was living in was cleaned up every day…
He couldn’t figure out why this was happening, so he started asking around the community and it instantly became clear why this little girl was being neglected. The village had decided she had bad juju and that she was the one who had killed her parents. That just made the situation even more complicated because once someone’s been labeled as a witch or practicing bad juju, that’s it. There’s not really any convincing people otherwise.
So he starts trying to look for some place to take her and eventually finds an orphanage in the central part of the region. He goes and checks them out, makes sure it will be a good place for her. The people even came from the orphanage to inspect the family situation to make sure it was a legitimate removal from the home. They soon found out that it was.
They took the girl from the home with no qualms from the grandparents. After she was taken to the orphanage, she was given a round of medical tests and it was found that she had traces of poison in her blood. It’s hard to say if anyone was actively trying to kill her since it would be very easy to have done it right away. But it was obvious that someone - probably her grandparents - was intentionally trying to make her sick.
And now it’s been a few months since all of this has happened and every once in a while he’ll stop by the orphanage to visit the little girl. She’s like a different person now - playful, engaging, talkative, alive. Just like any six year old in the world has a right to be. It’s an amazingly good ending to a story that happens every day in a lot of communities here.
At first I hesitated in writing about this. I feel like sometimes what I write can be taken in the context that I’m living with a bunch of backwards people who are so far removed from civilization that they still believe in things like black magic and hexes. I know it can seem like that because I’m coming from much of the same place as you who are reading this.
But I have one added ingredient - a relationship. It’s not that things like juju and eating with my hands have become normal - odd things are odd every time I witness or experience them. But now that I know these people, it’s like I’ve become protective of them. I don’t want outsiders to think negatively of them and I know that when writing, you sometimes run the risk of shaping your words toward that end - even if what you’re writing about is something horrific.
Then I decided that, even though juju was involved, things like this happen every day no matter how developed the society. Children are neglected, abused, murdered. The elderly are avoided or forgotten, regardless of whether they’re suspected of witchcraft. The middle class has become anorexically thin. Politicians are liars, women are paid less for equal work and the uber-educated typically look down on the poor. It’s like I’m in the same country but I get to be a minority. It’s an interesting non-reversed reversal because the depravity of man exists within every border.
And then I think about people like my friend. The situation could’ve turned out very differently for him. Sometimes people aren’t so apathetic about someone they’ve labeled as having done bad juju. Some grandparents would’ve kept the child and shunned any intervention. What he did could’ve affected his work in the entire community and possibly led to him being sent home (not for disciplinary reasons, but for safety). But he did the right thing. He took a risk that probably didn’t even seem like one and found a way out for this child.
Almost every volunteer has a story like this that most people will never hear. The details become forgotten during service and the shininess of the good deed always looks duller to the person who’s done it. So I wanted to write this down, to make sure that at least a few people get to hear this story. Because it’s worth retelling, especially for one little girl who’s just started kindergarten.