Baseline

Today we visited one of the villages in Mozambique that Care for Life does not work with. The idea was to get a “baseline” so that we could better understand and see changes that may have occurred in villages that Care for Life has been working with. So we walked around to random houses in the village and asked people to describe their life to us, tell us things they wished they could change in their lives, and tell us a bit about what would help them make those changes. We tried to talk to people of different age groups (mostly young adults and older adults) and different gender to make our sample as varied as possible. It was informative but incredibly difficult. It was hard to have people share their experiences with me and talk about the things they needed. I felt so helpless and hopeless, which is exactly how these people feel. I wanted so bad to be able to improve their lives for them and give them hope but it was hard to do when all I had with them was 5 or 10 minutes and I wasn’t feeling much hope myself. The children, however, always make me smile. Despite the fact that their conditions are miserable and they live at a level of poverty that we can’t really begin to understand they are cheerful, and playful, and fun, and man can they dance! But the brightest spot on this trip to the village was a little boy wearing a “pair of glasses” of about the same size as mine – apparently large glasses are also “in” in Mozambique!