Poop, Tears, and Amoebas

For the past several months I have been suffering from symptoms I self-diagnosed as IBS. (I won’t go into detail but if you’re really curious what I’m talking about you can google the acronym.) I considered my discomfort part of the cost of living and working in Honduras and ministering to dump-dwellers. Then one morning I woke up to see a wiggling 3-inch worm in the toilet after I used the bathroom. I was so disgusted by the thought of what this meant that I immediately woke up my husband and demanded that he call our doctor with tears in my eyes.

After a lab the doctor determined that I was llena: llena, llena, llena (one llena would have sufficed) with amoebas, the kind that live in some type of fecal matter and get passed into our digestive system when we put something dirty into our mouths. Ugh. Perhaps a worm living inside of me would have been better. After his diagnosis the doctor chastised me: “You know Elise, you really need to work on your hygiene.” Me, work on my hygiene? Does he know who he’s talking to? He is telling an OCD North American, who has several bottles of Purel stationed around her house, one in her car, one in each purse, who also bleaches every vegetable, the water in her reserve tank, the sink, the counters before she goes to bed, the floors of her house…that I need to work on my hygiene. I felt like saying: “YOUR COUNTRY needs to work on IT’S hygiene!”



Soon it was determined that Elijah and Rey also suffered from these amoebas. And the cause of our bloated, engorged stomachs was explained. When I returned home I took a look around our house and was chagrined to admit that perhaps our doctor was right. Although I sanitize all the time, how clean can we be when we rarely have running water? (A series of unfortunate events has made it the norm that our reserve tank and pila are often empty). Also, our bathroom sink has been broken (despite several attempts to fix it) pretty much since we’ve moved in. So if we do have running water we must wash our hands in the kitchen sink. My eyes darted around the place to see every possible infection-point and my eyes welled up in tears again. My family has been getting sick; Elijah is barely eating, all because I have not been doing a good job of taking care of them. I am doing the best I can, but how can I do any better under these circumstances?

In one moment I felt so much. Frustration: I know what to do to take care of my family but I can’t do it. Lack of control: How is good hygiene feasible when we can’t count on running water all of the time or the sanitation of food we purchase? Injustice: rich children do not suffer from amoebas. They have running water every day. The food their parents purchase at high-end grocery stores is not infected. Then it occurred to me. Perhaps this is a tiny bit of what they experience: the roughly 2 billion mothers who live on less than $2 a day , who struggle to feed and care for their children, suffering from anemia, malnutrition, and a host of parasites that live in their bodies. Yet, despite my sudden sense of empathy, the different between me and the majority of the mothers of the world is profound (85% of the world’s population lives in developing countries ). I can get medicine to kill the amoebas. I can take precautions so that we won’t be infected again (hopefully). And, if I really want to, I can move back to the United States or to a nicer home in Tegucigalpa so that my family doesn’t have to suffer. I have options. Most families trapped in poverty do not.

Sometimes visitors ask me how I can subject my child to the dangerous conditions we experience living and working among the poor. The truth is that this is how the majority of the world lives. How can I not?




http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats