Tough Realities

20 November 2009

Today was awful. Got up and was tired after a night of little sleep and I was not feeling great, but we were scheduled to give a presentation so I got ready and we headed down to the CWCD. Before the presentation Mama wanted to show us an apartment we could possibly rent out that her sister owned. We left the CWCD and turned onto Arusha to Moshi to road. Not far ahead of us there was a large group of people standing around and the cars were backed up. We figured there had been a fender bender with a daladala or something. As we got closer I couldn’t see any sort of cars and all of a sudden Mama was saying something about, “Oh! Watoto! Oh!” I looked out the car window and saw a small body lying on the road. All around on the ground were body parts and insides scattered around. It must not have happened very long before we drove by because the only person around helping was an older lady who was just laying some cloth over the bodies when we drove by. There were no policemen or doctors anywhere to be seen, and also no car that seemed to have been the one that hit the children. Supposedly when this happens here, the driver just keeps on driving because if they were to stop and pull over they would be beaten or stoned to death by the bystanders of the crash.

When we pulled away I became increasingly nauseous and could not get the image out of my head of the children on the road. I told Zach that there was no way I could go give a presentation right now, so Mama dropped me off at the house and Zach went back to the CWCD to talk to Peter about rescheduling our presentation. For some reason Peter was really insistent on going, so Zach told him to at least call and confirm and tell them that they were going to be late. The head teacher at the school told Peter that they would not be able to go because the two children who were killed on the road were students at their school and they were trying to put together a school assembly to calm all the children down. Zach came back home right away.

When I got home I walked straight to my room without talking to anyone and shut myself in the bathroom. I immediately started sobbing. I composed myself as much as I could and went into my room and crawled into bed to try to rest, decompress and try to make sense of what happened. I lied there crying for probably a half hour before finally falling asleep. A few of the girls in the house came in to try to check on me, but there really wasn’t anything that would make me feel better or make those kids live. That was the first dead body I have seen and definitely the most graphic display I have been exposed to. I think the reality of life and how quickly it can end hit me really hard. The fact that it was two children only made it worse. It was also a reality check at how brutal life can be here, especially for children.

(The picture here is of the security fence around the CWCD. Many of the houses and buildings in town are surrounded by these walls...pretty intimidating.)

Written by Whit