Culture Shock NOT A POST FOR SENSITIVE READERS

Culture shock
Two nights ago several member of the cup team sat around in an informal meeting at the Rogers’ house. Ben asked Teresa what some of her goals for the future of our medical program are.
Her response?
Child hospice.
I’ll let you think about that for a moment…


She wants a program in place where children can die with love, comfort and dignity.
Oh that still makes me want to cry.
Later in the evening, I found out how invaluable life is here in Swaziland. Charles told a story of how he’d seen 2 go-gos (grandmothers) fall out of an over-packed kumbi, and cars simply zipped past. No one stopped for them, no one seemed to notice they’d fallen out.
Ben and Susan said it’s uncommon to drive through South Africa without seeing a body on the road. Once, Ben said he’d seen, what he thought was a bag of trash in the highway. Cars zipped over it unaware or uncaring, as it was further mangled and mutilated .
It was only when he passed in his own car that he realized it was a child’s body.
Assuming that the child fell from a car and would be dead upon impact, no parent/guardian had bothered to gather the body and remove it from the highway. They simply left it.
The conversation left me confused and angry. How could a people be so uncaring? So unaffected? My dog had puppies once, and would growl and bark if you came too near. When the runt died she acted strangely for a while. If a dog knows to protect her young with simply animal instinct, shouldn’t we as humans do so much more?
But the team explained the culture of death here. Teresa says that Swazi’s here experience death greater than we could ever imagine. Swazis go to funerals for their families every weekend.
Every weekend.
It is so common to them, they begin to shut down, harden their hearts just as a means to survive.
As I talk to the Swazi here, that is beginning to make sense to me.
Sigh
This is Africa.