What would you do?Hilda Reinauer-Stark -- Burlington, ON Poverty exists in many places at different levels. I came to Zimbabwe with Sleeping Children for a distribution of bedkits knowing very little about the country. I knew it was poor but the poverty here takes on a different level. How would you like to live in a tiny stone house or thatched hut with one room for up to three, four, or more people? This room is bedroom, kitchen, living room, and dining room. You sleep on one bed, with maybe some of your children on the floor. It gets cold here in the winter months. You might not have enough blankets. There are mosquitoes, but your only mosquito net is not treated with repellent. You have no electricity. It gets dark at five in the afternoon and your children cannot do their homework even if they had notebooks or pens.
In your neatly-swept yard is a well you share with the rest of the villagers but the water is not drinkable. You have a new baby and can't breast feed but in the morning you discover that a rat has bitten the nipple on the bottle and left a hole so big that the milk pours out too fast and your baby has a hard time swallowing. How would you feel if you had no income, there is no welfare, your grandchildren's parents have both died of AIDS, and you can't send them to school? What would you do if you went to your children's school and there were wet, dirty, moldy, and smelly ceilings threatening to fall down? Or you saw that the school roof was made of asbestos? A sign over a door says Library but you can't even step inside the room because there is sheet metal and other junk lying on the floor and only a few dust-covered old books. Classrooms have fifty children so teachers cannot give your child enough attention. What would you do? The school is so poor it can't afford enough books and computers are unheard of. Your child is mentally or physically challenged and therefore not allowed in the school. How would you handle this? What if your child got ill and you want to take it to the doctor but there is a fee of three or five dollars which you don't have? If your eleven-year-old child has cerebral palsy but you have no wheelchair for him, how long before you would be unable to carry him around?
We saw many children with coughs, runny noses, deformities of one kind or another, shivering in the cool weather, with torn shoes, a different shoe on each foot, or no shoes at all. Toys in homes or school yards are nonexistent. Sleeping Children Around the World brings some relief to these children: a mattress for comfort, a blanket to keep warm, and a treated mosquito net to keep them healthy. All made possible through the generosity of donors back home in Canada. |
