J-Term Journal: Africa: Reconsidered

One was a two-year old boy, the other a nine-month old girl. The girl weighed 10 pounds. Both were HIV+ and both died from malnutrition.

This was the Africa I knew I was getting into when I traveled to Uganda with a group of Harvard students taking part in the Initiative to End Childhood Malnutrition. But everyone knows that starving children die in Africa. Haven’t you cleaned your plate at dinner because of that exact line?

What I didn’t consider was that these African children would have two pairs of dark brown eyes that watched me as I checked their charts or touched their hands, two mothers who stood by them, comforted them and loved them to the very last, and two feet that would never run; two personalities that would never develop; two futures that would never be fulfilled. These were not numbers or statistics; these were people, babies, who never had the chance to live.

But just as I wavered on the brink of cynicism, of hopelessness, I was pulled back by the group of children who survived, who left Nyakibale Hospital healthier than when they arrived because of the treatment and education we could provide—an opportunity to do justice for those lost. The children we screened during outreach flocked to our cameras and stretched out their arms to be measured for malnutrition. They played soccer with us and followed us as we jogged, laughed at us when we attempted to speak their language. They sought to show us everyday that Africa is a happy place. Its is a life as rich and vibrant as the green of the Ugandan hills, as the mixed hues of the African fabric, and as the red of the dirt road.