Hope can be found in unexpected places. A few months ago I walked into a place of hope. At first glance the urgent care ward for severely malnourished children in a hospital in Zambia may not seem as a hope-filled place. Looks can be deceiving.
Quite honestly, when I first entered the ward I was filled with despair and sadness. The eyes of over 60 beautiful children who suffered from severe malnutrition gave me a sense of hopelessness. I was wrong. There was no denying that I came face to face with a crisis. Still, crisis is not hopelessness. One encounter, one conversation, one look awakened me to other possibilities.
The ward was filled with mothers and babies from all over Zambia. Mothers sit bedside for days with their children until their nourished past the point of crisis. Despite the discomfort the mothers persisted. Love often persists. They persist because they believed that the crisis of undernutrition, stunting, and wasting can be overcome. In Zambia, where malnutrition has led to 45% of children being stunted hope is not gone.
As I walked through the ward I noticed one father sitting with a beautiful little girl with big brown eyes. Their eyes told a story I wanted to hear. I sat with them to listen and learn. The father said, "My name is Hector." Hector is my father's name, I listened with my heart not just my ears. He said, "My baby's name is Juliet." After hearing them for some time I learned Hector was there because his wife was at home with their two other children. The tone of concern in Hector's voice was unmistakeable. I held back tears as I thought of my sons who had abundance of nourishment back home. But just before I left came the glimmer of hope from Hector, "Juliet will be fine if we get the food." There, in that moment, with those words a "stone of hope was hewn out of a mountain of despair."
My trip with Bread for the World was listening to a cry of hope. We are focusing on listening to the voices on the ground for the African nations that are part of the SUN (Scale Up Nutrition) movement in Africa. All the Juliet's of the world need a collective Christian Voice to call for foreign assistance of those programs that empower nations to feed themselves nutritiously. The SUN (pun intended) can rise against incredible odds of maternal and child malnutrition. In the words of Shakespeare, "Juliet is the sun."
