TheBanyanTree: Early June

[NancyIee at aol.com]

How well I can relate to your love for the children.  I am loosely  
affiliated with a Christian group that sends missionaries/volunteers, to all  parts 
of the world.  A close friend has gone on a few of these trips, and  she 
reports back to me the poverty, the sweetness of the children.  She is  a 
retired nurse, and so volunteers her skills on these medical missions, where  
they go and treat parasites, inoculate, and treat illness and/or wounds, 
perform  simple teeth hygiene, etc.  In Honduras, four hundred orphan children, 
from  age three to twelve, live in the dump, a huge mountain of waste.They  
are orphaned by civil war in those places. If the young girls are  pretty, 
they are sometimes "taken in" by some "kind man".  The medical  clinics for 
the poor and rural peoples, are ill-equipped. When my friend goes,  she takes 
a second suitcase filled with OTC meds, aspirin, mouth wash,  toothpaste, 
shampoo and soaps, antiseptics, head lice meds, bandaids, whatever  she can 
cram in, for the clinic have none. In India, families sell their young  
daughters, in order to have money to feed those left in the family. (A Christian  
group "buys" these girls if they can, house and feed and educate them, and 
hope  they can do better in life than become a rich man's pleasure.)
 
My friend reports having a very hard time leaving them behind when she  
returns to the States. I know that if she would ever bring someone home, I 
would  also welcome them and look after them.  However, most of those countries 
do  not permit "their"  children to leave, even though they have no 
intention  of caring for them.
 
At least the poor in this country have the chance of getting help from the  
govt or charitable institutions. In those other countries, the poor are 
simply  dirt in the streets.
 
When she returns from such a trip, my friend often cries for days  
afterward.
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