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Down a small embankment forcing the heavy rains away from a paneled wooden door, which scraped along the gritty floor of a darkened room we entered.
It took a while for my eyes to adjust from the daylight in to this hovel of filth. A torn and dirty sheet hanging from rusted nails from the soot-covered webs for privacy lifted and there a small child stood with his mother with a baby in her arms. The whites of the child’s eyes began to fill with tears and then a squeal; To this small boy we are beings from another planet, our white skins, our bodies a confusion of smells from odour to exotic perfumes. The squeal turns to a cry of panic, I take the baby from the mother and she lifts the child up over her already swollen pregnant belly. The child’s cries are soothed but the tiny head remains turned away, we see now little legs of a severely malnutrition body. As the little boys body is further exposed ribs press against his darkened skin, his crying subsides. The baby that I hold too young to care about our differences looks at me inquisitively and laughs, eyes bold.
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