7 - Friday

On Friday, I had a re-realization of the extreme sympathy I have for these villagers being born into the lowest of social ranks of our world. Like most of the distributions, there were lots of women that came at the end that were not registered but had a baby and desperately wanted a net. One girl, probably about 20, was remarkably beautiful and patient in waiting to see if we had an extra net for her, both qualities in contrast to all the other women. It's tough to put this into words without sounding derogatory, but you really feel disconnected from these women because you are so disgusted with the way they act and smell, and I had become accustomed to numbing myself to all of what I saw when these women came across in ways that would be completely inappropriate in the West. When this in-particular girl that was so different came over, that's when it really hit me. This girl was more clean, pretty, and reasonable in behavior than all the others, and in the West a girl like that would get whatever she wants. Especially considering it was all men distributing these much sought after nets. But here, the men saw her just like the rest. Someone easy to ignore who got no special attention, because she was a villager and they were not. Unlike at all the other distributions we ended up giving all the unregistered women nets since it was the last day and we had plenty extra in the truck. I think we passed out and extra 150. It was a really good way to end the work for the week.