All the Happiness Left Me

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Little Ripples teachers, I asked them, “Tell me about your summer. What was the rainy season like?” As she often does, Fatima offered to go first.

“The rainy season started very happily. I was pregnant and delivered two baby girls. I loved them, and it made me very happy. Then they got sick, and they passed away. All the happiness left me.”

It’s hard to describe Fatima. When you look at her, and she looks back at you, she makes you feel good deep inside. She is warm and loving, and the children in her classroom respond to her as if she was everyone’s mother—or maybe a favorite aunt.

During training and with her students, Fatima has been as active and loving as ever, but this time, you can also see a deep sorrow within her. She believes it was malaria that killed her baby girls. I cannot imagine the powerlessness that Fatima feels at having been unable to do anything to save them.

Little baby girls should not be dying of malaria in a refugee camp that’s under our care (through the UN and humanitarian community). Life here is as valuable as life anywhere. Fatima needs to know that.

Peace, Gabriel

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