Close your eyes...

Just close your eyes, imagine the early morning sun's faint rays shining through the bamboo thatch wall and roof as you sit on a stool next to your daughters bed. Sweat slides down your face and drops onto your already sweat stained shirt as you cover your feverish daughter with another blanket. Her eyes open for a second and you see the yellow that has drowned the white of her eyes, it's the same yellow color that has stained the rest of her body and all these symptoms assure you it's jaundice. She's been in bed for 2 days and you've tried every herbal treatment ever recorded but nothing seems to change. But now it's not just jaundice, malaria has somehow entered the front battle line against her fragile and weak immunity. As a single parent you can hardly put rice on the table for your daughter and son, let alone find proffessional medical care. The herbs and prayers are all you've got as you watch your daughter walk closer and closer to the edge of death.

It's been finalized, there's nothing to do about it. A life or death situation has been decided before a decision could even be made. It makes me more angry than anything. Why must money, rather lack of, be the determining factor of a life? But now it's too late and there's nothing that can be done. It angers me that this mother wouldn't ask for financial help, it angers me that she would watch her daughter die because, "sometimes these kind of things happen and there's nothing we can do", but more than anything it angers me that this happens everyday. Everday small and innocent children loose their lives because they don't know that there's an alternative. Something can be done! What will you do? Just close your eyes...