There but for the grace of God go I.

No, the Pentecostal Christians have not gotten to me, although I think my coworkers are trying to 1-up the Muslims and pray 7 times a day – in the morning, before tea, after tea, before lunch, after lunch, at 3, after using the latrine, etc etc etc. . .I do enjoy working with them, but I miss the Catholic comforts- not knowing the books of the Bible, only singing if there’s a choir, only saying “God” and ‘Jesus” once or twice in a prayer instead of every other word. But they do good work here, in Jesus name.. jk jk.
SO, the title of this blog, although a religious message, is as well, a lyric in a Jenny Lewis song (Renaissance- that’s SYWLM for you) “Rise Up with Fists!!” and has been stuck in my head. For good reason, I believe.The majority of my work currently includes visiting some of our project children living with HIV and taking antiretroviral therapy. I hop on my mountain bike, with my helmet, of course, and follow my counterpart, who’s helmetless and sidesaddle on the back of a motorcycle and calling out encouragements to me, and we take off for various homes 3-5 km away. I bike along dirt roads past small stores, meat hanging, banana plantations, through coffee plants and up mountains where the road becomes a 6” wide dirt line.
Visiting these “homes” is always a shock. Each child in our project is an orphan- meaning they’ve lost 1 or both parents, often related to AIDS. The houses are made out of dirt, with hatched roofs, some fortunate enough to have steel sheets to keep out the rain, but lack any kind of structural support. We ask the children to get their medications, and then we count them. This happens every 2 weeks, and there are often discrepancies, meaning many of the children are not adhering to the medication, often because of the side effects or miscommunication of the medical staff, or mostly, uneducated caretakers. We counsel the child and caretakers on the correct dosage, and follow up with another visit in 2 weeks.
I both love and hate these visits. As I bike, I feel thrilled to be in Africa, to be a health volunteer, look at me: making home visits, speaking the local vernacular. But I hate them too. I sit in these homes and I look around the house and the conditions and I feel guilty. Guilty that this isn’t me suffering, that instead it’s this child who smiles shyly every time I look at them. We then pray with the child, and I find myself mumbling the responses to the prayers, but still thinking- there, but for the grace of God, go I.