Thursday, October 05, 2006

More from Malawi

Back on September 1st, Rich, over at No More Counting the Cost, brought a new blog to my attention. Much like myself, Rich is an adoptive parent. In fact, he and his family are currently waiting for their two beautiful girls to come home from Ethiopia. I notice his name pretty often in the comments sections of the blogs I read, so I decided to check out this new place. Wow! The story that is unfolding at Suffer the Little Children is nothing less than incredible. Talk about hearing the call, and acting without question. I have been a faithful reader ever since.

malawi_01_map

It just so happens that this family heard the call to go to Malawi, Africa. Now, a couple years ago, early on in our adoption journey, any news or information from Africa was interesting to me. Then I went through a phase where I only wanted to learn about Ethiopia. After traveling to Ethiopia this past Spring, I find myself attracted to news about humanitarian needs everywhere. This blog fits that bill. This family has moved to Malawi, and proceeded to take in six babies so far. They are not just talking the talk. They are walking the walk.

When I wrote my
post about Madonna yesterday, I hadn't considered that I actually knew of people who were in Malawi (the same country Madonna just took by storm), working with orphans. As I was making the rounds through the blogospere this morning, I came across this post. Please take a minute to go read it.....I'll wait.

malawi-child

I know that I am a terribly spoiled American, that is hopelessly uninformed of the true reality of living in Africa. Sure, I can quote statistics with the best of them. I have even traveled to Ethiopia, and felt like my heart could not be any more broken than it was every time I saw the children begging in the streets. The fact of the matter is, I still have no REAL idea what it would be like to live like that. This post was written by someone that lives in Malawi. Someone that cares for 6 helpless babies that would surely have died without her care. She lives it and sees it every day. She has the benefit of the news in Malawi, not the watered down version that we get of African news here in America.

I'm certainly not saying that ONLY bad will come from Madonna's actions, but I believe in weighing the pros and cons of a thing before I form an opinion. The scale seems awfully lopsided to me.

2 comments:

Jane (a.k.a. patjrsmom) said...

Yes, yes and YES! I couldn't agree more. Thanks for pointing out your blog to me.
Jane

At A Hen's Pace said...

Fascinating--I had not heard about Madonna's visit. Such a Western solution--just throw money at the problem! You have to feel sorry for the poor orphan that Madonna adopts.