up and down, round and round

Yesterday I took a friend to the orphanage with me.

She wanted to see what the handicapped children's floor was like, to understand the world that I talk about daily and incessantly.

She left in tears.

Traumatized by what she had witnessed, the way the children are treated, the noise and the heat, the screaming and the crying, wet diapers and force feeds, she turned to me and asked one simple question.

"Why?"

Why are things here the way they are? Why can't it be different?

And now, after a few weeks here, I'm starting to ask another one. Why do I feel a need to change it.

A colleague recently wrote me an email about change. She said
People don’t need to be “changed”
they just may hear another opinion
and it is up to them what they will do with it....
people hear and learn what they need to hear and learn
at that moment in their lives




Which I understand, but leaves me feeling like here, in this place, what I am doing is completely futile. Because it really doesn't seem like people want to hear and learn much.

When the feeding workshop ended, it felt like we were making progress. Like people were listening and prepared to integrate new thoughts and ideas into their work here.

But after Alexandra left the orphanage in tears, I wondered to myself if in fact it wasn't the people here who were changing, but me.

Have I just gotten so used to the way these children are treated that it seems to me like things are getting better? Maybe nothing is improving, it's just me that's becoming...blase? desensitized? blind?



Why do I feel the need to change something that I understand so little that I can't even maintain a concrete perspective (opinion?) for a week?!?

Why am I here?