Beads and concluding thoughts!

Hey friends! I'm assuming this will be my last post here on the Africa blog. Thanks for reading and keeping up with my big adventure. My appreciation for your support and prayers during that time is absolutely without measure!!

First, I want to invite you to think about supporting the children at the Kibuye Primary School by buying some jewelry. Every day after school, the 7th grade children, Deepa, and I would sit and make beads out of recycled magazine paper and posters. The process is tiring, but the results are beautiful. The school sent me back with a lot of jewelry to sell, all of which was handmade and hand-strung by the students at the school, as taught to them by an HIV+ woman named Madam Sara. The jewelry is beautiful and lightweight, and you would never know that the beads are made from paper after they've been rolled and lacquered. Please consider making this investment. I'm selling necklaces for $5-$10, and $10 is enough to buy 10 students' lunches at school who normally wouldn't have anything to eat!

 As for concluding thoughts, I'm still just as conflicted as before with the problems of processing this experience. It's like I don't know how to believe that my life here and their life there can coexist. The two lifestyles and resources and cultures are just so different. The problems over there are SO big. There is so much factoring in to the problems that abound in Uganda and all of Africa: poverty, hunger and malnutrition, a history of war and governmental corruption, the presence of diseases that are easily treatable and eradicated with very little money (tuberculosis, cholera, malaria, polio...), and those that are easily treated with money to enhance quality of life and prevention of transmission-- namely HIV. I can see now why people choose to just ignore it. It's easy enough to go on living in our priveledged bubble and to leave "them" to solve "their problems." The problems are too much anyway, right? My 4 weeks or my $100 donation or my prayers...none of that is big enough to even create the smallest dent in the problems there. For every kid we feed there are millions, tens of millions of others who are still hungry. I now know that this kind of thinking is absolutely unacceptable on our part. Every single person is a child of God and turning our backs on one person due to our inability to help them all ridiculous. That one person or child, while part of an overwhelmingly big statistic, is still a human being with needs and wants. They didn't ask to be born into a village in Africa, to an HIV+ mother as the 6th of 8th children any more than I asked to be born to a wonderful family in America with a competent, hard-working father and loving mother. The people of Africa should not have to accept the consequences of the situation that they were born into as "luck of the draw."

My experience has taught me the true meanings of the ideas, "We have been blessed so that we may be a blessing to others," and "To whom much has been given, much is expected." I just cannot believe that God has given me all of these blessings so that I may stockpile them for my own comfort and contentment while others of his beloved children go hungry and without basic health care. That certainly wouldn't be a depiction of the all-loving God I claim to serve. And therefore, something must change: either my definition of who God is and his claim to love every one of us, or my belief about why God has blessed me with so many gifts.

I've realized that I really do not need 95% of what I surround myself with. Is it realistic to live in America with 95% less? Not really. This is the crux of the issue and the heart of my difficulty since returning to the states. I know how to live in Africa the way that I lived (with maybe 20% of the material comforts I experience here), and I know how to live here with 100% present. I don't know how to merge the two in order to live more minimally here so that others may live more fully there. The difference between wants and needs has also been clarified for me.
I hope this isn't coming off as a guilt trip. I'm just sharing the thoughts I've had about the ways this trip has impacted my life and thinking. I'm certain this will be the beginning of a few rolled-eyes and "Oh Mallory"'s and "You can't save the world"'s. But consider this:

A mother brings her baby into the hospital. The mother is HIV+ (most likely due to her husband having an extra-marital affair and bringing the virus into their marriage), and she was lucky to receive ARV drugs so that the virus was not transmitted to the baby during birth. However, breast-feeding the child will give the HIV to the baby, and she does not have enough money to buy infant formula. Does she give the baby HIV or allow the baby to starve?

This is one of the many, many, many situations that happen EVERY SINGLE DAY over there. I can't save the world, but maybe I can save that innocent, guilt-free baby.
And if that's all I can do, saving "just one life" isn't too bad for my life's work in Christ through the blessings he's given me.