Good night…
It´s hard to think that while I am here sitting in front of my computer, complaining because I ate too much for dinner and my stomach is churning…there are many of those children with the immortal smile that I saw today that will probably go to bed tonight without having eaten anything today.
I really wonder why life is so unfair. I trust that there is a purpose for most of the things that happen. Actually I would not dare to say that the ones born in the 1st world countries are more lucky that the neglected Ones of this world. Because what we see sometimes in our countries is that people have so much that they forget the essence of life. As the Little Prince said in the book that carries his name:
“LO ESENCIAL ES INVISIBLE A LOS OJOS”
“Here is my secret. It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye. "
The Little Prince
“He aquí mi secreto. Es muy simple: no se ve bien sino con el corazón. Lo esencial es invisible a los ojos.”
El Principito
"Dit is mijn geheim. Het is heel eenvoudig: alleen met het hart kun je goed zien.Het vezenlijke is voor de ogen onzichtbaar. "
De Kleine Prinz
A new year has started and with it my new life! I set a few resolutions that I am going to work hard on to achieve. This New Year is going to be an interesting one. I will finish my master and I will have to start working. I also need to decide where I want to live, if I want to stay in the Netherlands, go back to Spain, or go somewhere else. Right now I feel like I´d like to stay in the NL, so I will try to make that happen at the end of my studies; I am even going to take a Dutch course when I am back in Holland, so I am serious about it.
This week I have been very busy. Myriam and I are now fully working on the study and we have been visiting many schools this week to select the children that will participate in the study. Most of the schools are far away from the main road, so we have to take a taxi-motorbike that takes you pretty much through the bushes, herds of cattle and big paddles in the dirt roads. We enjoy the experience, but the heat and the multiple trips sometimes make you very tired. But anyway…I just have less than one and a half months left so I am going to try to enjoy it and get ready to go back to Europe. The rest of the month we will be fully engaged working in our thesis and in the beginning of February I will go to Nairobi until I fly to the NL.
Maybe I should talk a bit about how Xmas was. Last time I wrote it was the 24th December in the morning. It´s interesting that the same day in the evening I was in the shopping mall waiting for my friend Maina to pick me up to go back home and have a nice Christmas dinner when I girl came up to me and asked me if she could talk to me. My first reaction was to tell her that I was not going to give her money, but she said she just needed to talk because she had recently lost her parents in a car accident and the only relative she has had left her alone, so she had nowhere to go and was contemplating to commit suicide. As you can imagine I felt overwhelmed, I didn´t know whether she was telling the truth or not, if she was I didn’t know how to help her; so when Maina finaaaaally arrived I passed it over to him. After listening to her again we decided to go to the police station (place where she asked us not to take her because she was afraid to be raped by the police officers…apparently it is very common in Kenya). After reporting the case we took her to a catholic convent where she has been taken care of until now. We have been trying really hard to find a way for her to start a new life, go back to school, find the rest of her relatives, claim the property of her parents, etc. But we just recently found out through an institution that helped her last year that she is not 14 years old, but 25 and that she has used that story before to get help. After finding this, we left it in the hands of the government because I do not trust her anymore. The police called me yesterday to tell me that it is true that she is the ones she claims to be. Sincerely I do not know anymore what to think or do. I was willing to go all the way through for her, get money to pay school fees, find a future for her, etc. But know it seems like she´s been lying to us. The sad part about it is that there might be genuine people out there that really need the help, but you loose trust and might not want to help the next person that comes asking for help.
Many people in Kenya are suffering from lack of food, water, basic sanitation, education, corruption, etc. You live all surrounded by it, but also learn to go on with you life and get used to it. Sad, huh?. I still think that probably I cannot save the whole world, but I can at least touch one or two lives. I am trying hard to do my best, to find ways to help others and to impress these things upon my mind TO NEVER FORGET. I really want to live my live in a balanced way and not give much importance to material possessions. It is true that “What is essential is invisible to the eye”, so one of my resolutions for this year is to learn to see from heart to heart.
Have a good night.
Cris
