Perspective

I watched last night on BBC (American news never shows world news like BBC and I get to watch it occasionally thanks to PBS since we don't have cable) as people in Haiti battle another hurricane in less than a year.  They showed I think 11 people living in a tent as the water in some places rose knee deep and cholera has become an epidemic.  People have been displaced from their homes living in tents (and not Northface insulated American camping tents, but more like what we would call tarps) for 10 months. I repeat 10 MONTHS. Can you even imagine?  I can't.  I can't fathom that being my life. And I lived among poverty for two years in Eastern Africa working with HIV/AIDS patients.  I think of those African ladies a lot these days as I experience this pain. I know there are ladies in Haiti and in Africa who have pelvic pain.  They have lots of babies often with insufficient medical care. Some of them surely have pelvic floor dysfunction or pudendal neuralgia and I know some of them struggle with incontinence.  But they don't have the money or the resources to get help.  They struggle just to get food for their children.  I remember watching African women "dig" as they called it (literally taking a hoe and digging for food) for hours a day with a baby strapped on their back all in exchange for maybe the equivalent of a dollar.  Do they have pain? I'm sure they do, but what can they do, they don't have the resources to get help.  So they work and endure the pain.

And I wallow in self pity because I can't do things I loved so much like travel anymore while people in Haiti just want a roof over their head.