"GADE!" LOOK!

There is a room in the hospital we tend to refer to as "the abandonded room." Unfortunately, it is not the room that has been abandoned, but the children who live there. There is some kind a law that children who are abandoned need to kept for a few months before they can be placed permanently (being abandoned is different than being brought to an orphanage and having a relative place a child in a program.) The children in the abandonded room are not living in a hospital because they need medical care. This week three young children who reside at the hospital, began attending kindergarten classes at the school. On their third day of school I had the privilege of being a fellow passenger during the very short ride from the hospital grounds to the FWAL school. The children were so happy to be going to school, so happy to be in a car, probably so happy to leave the walls the hospital room. Everything the saw seemed to bring them joy. "Gade moun!! Moun!", they would say everytime we passed a person on the road, which means, "look people! People." They would say, "Bon Jou" to pedestrains who could not hear them and then giggle with pure delight. Every time we saw a car one would say, "Gade, Gade machin!!" They were thrilled to see a street vendor selling food; "gade, gade manje, manje!!" The excitement level only rose as the van pulled into the gate of the school, "gade lekol!" as we rolled across the stones on the school grounds they proclaimed, "Gade woch! Woch!" Which means, "Look, rocks! Rocks!"

Their joy was contagious. Sometimes I take the beauty of people and objects around me for granted, and forget to notice all that is gift. (It may be okay, however to take some of the rocks for granite.)  They helped me to recongize the beauty.  Other events remind me too of the gift of life, people, family and relationships. 

Most daily liturgies this week were funeral masses, most who died were victims of cholera. One morning there were three bodies on the floor, all in white body bags, sheets decorated with religious symbolism draped over them. The one in the middle was small, a child of six. The dead child's mother and a couple of other relatives were there. This was not the first child in that family who had died, I am told. The mother wept and wailed loudly much of the time, as is common for grieving family members in this culture. She cried and yelled, calling out for God. At one point during the mass, the mother pulled out an adorable red plaid child's dress and held it up for all to see. This was her child's dress, and now her child was dead. It was as if that mother were saying "look, look" and we did, getting a glimpse of her pain held there in that little dress.

This week I felt immense joy when being directed by children who had been abandoned to look at rocks on the ground, This week I felt deep anguish at the sight of an adorable dress in the hands of grieving mother, whose dead child lay in a white body bag covered by a decorated cloth, on the ground of the chapel.