A WOMAN IN AFRICA........

I am forever connected to a woman in Africa. She has trusted me with her children. We have some similarities.....but many more differences.

We both have had eye injuries. She lost her eye. I have perfect vision once again.

We both have had a baby at home. She was alone in her mud hut. No midwife. No husband. No one. I had my husband, my mother-in-law, my neighbors, a hospital five minutes away.

We both have children who can make us laugh and cry. She has watched her children go hungry, go without medicine, get ostracized for having parents with AIDS.........I have not. I have never even had to worry about where the next meal is coming from.

We have extended families. She only has two family members still living......her parents are gone, her husband, most of the others. I have parents, in-laws, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends who feel like family.

I will never understand why God chose to place me in America and placed her in Ethiopia. Her life has always been quite difficult, mine has been so easy. Whenever I begin to complain of the minor inconveniences in my life, I will remember this woman in Africa. And I am forever connected to her and indebted to her for the gift of Temamen and Tigest.