Day 158 - Duty to Comfort

December 16, 2012 (Sam)

      There are two pictures I always carry with me in my back pocket here. One of my family, taken right before Christina and I left to come to Kenya, and one of me and my older brother taken back in the summer of 2000. They go everywhere with me and whenever people ask about my family, they come out. It helps people, especially people who are culturally different from us, to connect to me as a person when they see that I have a real live family too. I think somehow, it helps make me more human to them.

      But besides young women occasionally asking if any of my brothers are single, rarely do people actually ask me any questions about my family. Last Friday was an exception. I was sitting with a prenatal care counselor in her office, helping her download a program onto her computer, and she started asking me about my family. I pulled out my photos and showed them to her. She looked first at the photo of my brother and I, and then the one of my family. “Where’s your brother in this picture?” she asked, referring to the more recent photo. I was caught off-guard. I’ve been showing these pictures to people for five months and no one has ever asked me that question. I cleared my throat. “He died 11 years ago.” I told her. “How?” she probed. “He killed himself.” I told her, avoiding eye contact. She continued her interrogation. “What happened?” I was surprised the conversation had gone on this far. Even with other Americans, once we get to this point in the story, the conversation usually dead-ends in an awkward silence. But this woman continued asking me question after question, wanting to know more.

      After I revealed to her the detail that I was the last person, to my knowledge, to ever talk to my brother, she asked me if I felt guilty at all. I told her I didn’t; I had no idea what his intentions were the night he died.

      I finally asked her, why did she want to know if I felt guilty? She told me her story. When she was 17 years old, she got married. Her and her husband moved into his parent’s house, and she got pregnant shortly thereafter. Her husband left to go into the city and find work. She only saw him once in a while after that. What little money he made working, never made it home to her. She eventually gave birth, but had no money to take care of her baby. Her child quickly became malnourished. She went to her in-laws for help and advice, but they refused to help her, assuring her the the infant would be just fine. One day, when her baby was 8 months old, he started to have diarrhea. She pleaded with her in-laws to give her money to take the baby to the hospital. They refused again, promising her it would go away. The diarrhea went on for three days. Each day, she’d plead with them for money to go to the hospital, and each day they would turn her down. On day three, her baby boy died. She told me that she wanted to know if I felt guilty about what happened to my brother because she has been racked with guilt every day for the last 15 years. She blames herself for her child dying because she had no idea how to take care of a baby by herself. No one ever taught her any better.

      This woman, as I mentioned earlier, has since dedicated her life to helping young, pregnant mothers understand how to take care of themselves and their future children. She has made it her life’s mission to never see another person suffer the way that she has because they “didn’t know any better.” She has suffered in a very unique way, and this suffering has inspired her life. She’s not just sitting idly by, letting the pain eat away at her; she is doing something about it.

      I hope that my life never becomes defined by the bad things that have happened to me; rather, let my life’s work be about how I’ve reacted to those bad things, and how I will use them to try and make the world a better place.

      “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)